'Cause Marketing' Blurs Line Between Product, Cause, Columnist Writes

Main Category: Breast Cancer
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The current trend of "pinkwashing" -- applying the color pink to products "in the name of raising money and steering women toward the radiologist's office" -- for Breast Cancer Awareness month "does seem to get broader and cheerier each year," Boston Globe columnist Joanna Weiss writes, noting, "We have consumer products marked with pink ribbons and the sometimes-vague promise that some proceeds fund 'breast cancer research.'"

"On the surface of it, cause marketing feels like one of those win-win situations," Weiss writes. Susan G. Komen for the Cure "leads the way in forging corporate partnerships and the benefits, in dollars, are hard to refute," she continues, noting that the group in 2009 invested $59 million into research projects and more than $93 million into outreach programs.

However, "even prophets of 'cause marketing' went nuts" last year when KFC began selling pink buckets of chicken and giving some of the proceeds to Komen, in what is "perhaps the most outrageous sign of how closely breast cancer have become linked to' cause marketing,'" Weiss argues. Critics of the campaign said it "showed a gaping disconnect between product and cause," as obesity is "known to increase the risk of cancer, and nothing says 'overweight' like a tub of fried chicken," she writes.

Skeptics of cause marketing "raise more fundamental concerns," such as the "outsized profits" companies earn from pink products, Weiss continues, adding that the "lure of pink can deflect attention from another important strain of research: finding potential environmental causes of breast cancer," such as the chemicals found in cosmetics. Angela Wall -- a spokesperson for Breast Cancer Action, which works to counter the pinkwashing trend -- said that people can feel good about buying prink products, but "think about the power if we withheld our money every October," avoiding products known to have links to cancer and only buying from companies that make significant donations to trusted groups. Weiss concludes that "it's true: In the cause marketing world, as in most others, money talks" (Weiss, Boston Globe, 10/31).

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