Marketing is design

In the USA there is a long-time running campaign of the Breast Cancer Association, to raise awareness about the disease and most of all raise fundings to fight it, called the Pink Ribbon.

The association allows companies to create and sell specifically designed products or services -mostly targeting women of course-, displaying not only a pink ribbon but sometimes a fully pink outfit, and whose purchase will participate in real dollars to the fundraising for the association . So whenever the consumer buys the "pink" product, a variable part of the money spent will go to the research funding.

I did indeed work on that kind of operation a few years ago, developing a "pink" iron , whose margin did go, for each sale, to the fight against cancer; the product was a real hit, with its ad-hoc colour found so elegant we event thought about selling it in other countries where the pink ribbon deal did not exist.

However it seems the marketing operation meant to fight the diseases actually backlashes into "pinkwashing": in the same way so-called green companies implemented "green-washing", some "pink" companies claim to be protecting ....while at the same time destroying !

As RetailCustomer blog says : It turns out that many companies that promote a cure for breast cancer are at the same time contributing to rising rates of the disease through the products they make. Like companies that make unsubstantiated claims to being green, it is a flagrant abuse of a good cause for the sake of profit.

Indeed what these companies do, is claiming to help fight breast cancer, while maintaining in their component chemicals that are actually proven causes of cancer!

So beware pinkwashing!

As a consumer, try and check what you buy exactly, and ask yourself where and how the money is donated, with the help of "Think before you pink".

As a marketer with ethics, notwithstanding the commercial attractiveness when you claim being pink, asks yourself if you are being coherent with your products, your promise, and your company values (or your own), !

Next time I get the occasion, I'll do it !