The RED charity brand from the Global Fund has reported that they have raised a total of $11.3 million in contributions in the year that it has launched. A tiny fraction of the $6.6 billion funds the Global Fund has committed to 460 programs in 136 countries. 2006 witnessed a huge marketing push which leveraged partners including Nike, GAP and American Express. The charity itself spent less than a million dollars, the LA Times reports but we assume that the advertising spend by the partners must have been massive. We tried our best to find out what the total marketing budget associated with the RED campaign was for 2006 but we couldn’t find a figure.
So we’re left thinking: all the marketing activity behind RED made you aware of the brand, not the underlying message of plight in Africa. If the combined marketing activity raised only $11 million and no one has been left better educated about African concerns, wouldn’t it have been better to have just redirected the ad budget straight into the charity?
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After working in non profit development for a few years now, I find it all plays toward the marketing budgets of the big players. This ’cause marketing’ is labeled a win-win-win for all parties, but no one claims it is an equal distribution of success.
Frankly I think major companies should be more committed to doing good just in the name of doing good. Solving poverty, hunger, world wide epidemics, even local problems (Katrina anyone), would go a long way to building up the available customer base for their products. Then when it comes back that American Express or Apple did all this good and didn’t ask for a word of thanks, the payback will be 100 fold.
February 19th, 2007 at 2:07 pm