Product RED is an innovative approach to raising funds for HIV/AIDS treatment in Africa, focusing less on charity and more on creating a sustainable source of funding.By partnering with well-known companies such as Gap, Apple, and Motorola, Product RED is able to offer quality brand name products to consumers. These companies then decide how much of the profits from Product RED purchases will be donated to the Global Fund. Instead of encouraging companies to give all of the Product RED profits to the Global Fund, Product RED sees the ideal as having businesses be able to make a profit while also fulfilling corporate social responsibility in helping poor people in Africa.
Ultimately, Product RED’s targets are individual consumers. It emphasizes the fact that we have the money and therefore the power to choose what we want to buy. This scheme definitely makes it easier for me to “choose” to save those dying people in Africa, but perhaps the decision is almost too easy. I am not necessarily sacrificing or donating anything, since all I have really done is bought that red ipod or that INSPI(RED) t-shirt. Instead of sending the message that we should learn to live with less and give away the excess unnecessary stuff, Product RED is encouraging my consumption habits. Buying more of these products means I am raising more money for a good cause.
Product RED differs from other global health campaigns in creating an image that distances itself from the health issue being adressed. Gone is the emphasis on tugging people’s heartstrings with pictures of dying African AIDS victims in a poverty-stricken country, and to replace those images, which have been seen too many times to generate an emotional response anymore, is Bono. As a celebrity co-founder to Product RED, Bono promotes the idea of HIV/AIDS and Product RED as having some young, hip, and cool connotation to it. An INSPI(RED) t-shirt is meant to look fashionable, trendy, and sexy, not to encourage safer sex practices and condom use to limit risk to HIV. The problem in Africa stays overseas, and we are left with buying a product for a good cause. Do we really need to know what HIV/AIDS is to those people far away, or can we be rest assured knowing we have done the right thing in choosing Product RED over that other t-shirt?
A better question to ask may be whether we can keep the consequences of our excess consumption out of sight and out of mind. Could we be helping HIV/AIDS efforts whilst simultaneously supporting exploitative labor? Gap does claim that its Product RED t-shirts are made in Lesotho by many HIV positive women. While this may be true, Gap has also been accused of international labor exploitation in the past. Another Product RED partner, Motorola, keeps quiet about the environmental damage and the conflict resulting from its cell phone production in East Congo. Product RED’s focus is on saving lives of a disease and not on the underlying issues of poverty and inequality that contribute greatly to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa.
As a response to some of the criticisms of Product RED, a spoof site was created that encourages “Buy (LESS). Give More.” Some early reports suggested that Product RED had contributed $18 million to the Global Fund but had also spent $100 million towards advertising. With that in mind, individual consumers would make a far greater impact if they contributed directly to the Global Fund or other charities. The spoof site also would like to see greater transparency with the contributions by showing consumers how much of their purchase is really going to the Global Fund.
Overall, I think Product RED is a successful strategy in supporting a global health problem and appealing to the private sector, both businesses and consumers. Product RED is not perfect, but it has generated over $160 million to the Global Fund.
REFERENCES
Richey, L. A., & Ponte, S. (2008). Better (Red)TM than dead? Celebrities, consumption and
international aid. Third World Quarterly, 29(4), 711-729.
Youde, J. (2009). Ethical consumerism or reified neoliberalism? Product (RED) and private
funding for public goods. New Political Science, 31(2), 201-220.
Hi Rebecca
Great blog! A colleague on the MPH program wrote about Product RED for one of our core classes. You might find it interesting to read what she had to say – Here is a link to her paper, http://moattari.info/guests/ashley-dunkle/
The issue I take with campaigns like RED, ones that distances themselves from the issue at hand (in this case, HIV/AIDS, an issue that is very close to my heart), is that consumers aren’t even necessarily aware of what their purchase is supposedly supporting. I think large corporations like Gap and Apple are in a wonderful position to educate people about issues like AIDS, because they have so much advertising power and such large audiences. But most people probably don’t even know that the RED products give a portion of their sales to the Global Fund. Also, there’s no way Apple and Gap actually need the revenues from their RED products to survive – they should just give it all to the Global Fund. I don’t buy the “then there would be no incentive for them to do it” argument, because the welfare of humanity should be enough of an incentive.
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