I shop therefore THEY can be; but is (RED) seeing red?

In today’s hyper-competitive consumer marketplace, it takes a very pretty penny to raise a pound! It cost even more to create a sustainable consumer brand as a charitable entity in the commercial landscape. Nevertheless, social enterprise has become the buzzword of today.

For those of you who are not yet familiar with product (RED) here’s a little insight. The website states that (RED) is a simple idea that transforms our ‘incredible collective power’ as consumers into a financial force to help others in need. (RED) is a brand that works in partnership with the world’s most iconic brands: American Express, Apple, Converse, Dell, Emporio Armani, Gap, Nike, Penguin, Starbucks and recently Belvedere Vodka. Each of these brands makes a unique (PRODUCT)RED item and gives a certain percentage of their profits to the Global Fund to invest in HIV and AIDS programs in Africa. From 1% of every purchase you can make with you American Express (RED) card (in the UK only), to 50% from GAP(RED), NIKE(RED) and Penguin(RED), each product (RED) partner raises money for the Global Fund. It is probably the most developed brand in ethical consumerism. It also offers services such as RED(NIGHTS) a concert series with artists such as Katy Perry, Corinne Bailey Rae, Landon Pigg, Nas and Damian Marley, and the Veronicas as well as FLOWE(RED) an online UK flower gift service http://www.flowered.com/ .

Product (RED) is an initiative that was created by the lead singer of U2, Bono and the philanthropist and member of the Santa Monica City Council Bobby Shriver of DATA (Debt AIDS Trade Afrcia), to raise money for the Global Fund. Created in 2002, the Global Fund is an innovative partnership of governments, civil service and the private sector to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in Africa. To date it has committed US$ 21.7 billion in 150 countries. According to their website, ‘programs supported by the Global Fund have saved 6.5 million lives through providing AIDS treatment for 3 million people, anti-tuberculosis treatment for 7.7 million people and the distribution of 160 million insecticide-treated bed nets for the prevention of malaria’.http://www.theglobalfund.org/en/about/?lang=en

A glance at their website provides a good understanding of the marketing and advertising tools used to promote generosity. There is a very strong visual rhetoric that uses ubiquitous presence of celebrities, brand logos, products, text and the red color. The product (RED) sees BIG. For 2015 the it wants to achieve an AIDS free generation. Bono kicked off lighting at the Sydney Opera House, Sienna Miller did the same at the London Eye and Penelope Cruz flipped the switch on the Empire State Building to raise awareness around the globe about the (2015) campaign.

With (RED), shopping is equated to positive action without requiring inconvenience or sacrifice on the part of the consumer. It sells a lifestyle and adds a specific symbolic capital to products. Meaning and value are inherent to commodities. Sarah Banet-Weiser and Charlotte Lapansky noted that practices of consumer citizenship are not only enabled through the RED campaign but also precisely defined so as to be compatible with a capitalist political economy. If we then follow the (RED) way of thinking, within capitalism profitability has become the moral framework!

Many reject this new trend in consumption. For the Canadian social activist and author Naomi Klein, (RED)’s initiative is emblematic of the new pro-logo age where there is an evident irony of consuming to end poverty, where people can both do good and look good without changing the capitalist logic. For her, there is nothing inherently wrong with (RED)’s initiative, except that it makes radical claims that it is going to end poverty and replace other forms of politics. For Jeremy Rifkin, founder and president of the Foundation On Economic Trends, more and more areas of our lives will be colonized by business, until virtually all human experience will be mediated by commercial exchange. Indeed, Product (RED) knows many enemies who worry that if social responsibility becomes increasingly enacted through consumption, consumption will replace other forms of activism. Buylesscrap.com created a campaign of subvertising to argue that shopping is not a solution but that ‘buy less and giving more’ might be. (RED) is also being criticized for lacking of transparency with regards to the amount of money going to causes.

Recently, the Global Fund faced a media scandal. Associated Press issued an article about incidence of fraud discovered in a small number of grants financed by the Global Fund. Too many were willing to believe the worst more than spending time looking at the hard facts! Here are the facts:

• None of this involves any (RED) money.
• The Fund has best-in-class practices in place to root out corruption and publicly reports on any issues found so that immediate action can be taken. It was the Fund itself that discovered and reported these episodes of corruption - as its best practices mechanisms require.
• The instances involve $34 million out of the $13 billion that the Global Fund has at work in the world. This is less than 1% of all the money at work through the Global Fund.
• The Fund has already taken measures to address these issues - halting grants, demanding repayment of money and pursuing legal action against those involved.

Bobby Shriver, (RED)’s CEO and Co-Founder, went on Bill O’Reilly’s show to set the record straight. Click here to see his interview: http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/oreilly/index.html#/v/4515877/corruption-charges-plague-charity/?playlist_id=86923

He stated that: ‘the Global fund is the most aggressively cutting down entity in the world with over five different levels of accounting and auditing in their system’. He also showed before and after pictures of people who have had access to anti-retroviral drugs emphasizing on the good the Global Fund provides. A processed called the ‘lazarus effect’. 

Michael Gerson wrote a fantastic defending piece in the Washington Post about this scandal. 

‘The Global Fund has a difficult challenge. It gathers resources from governments, foundations and individuals but relies on local partners to implement programs’ says Michael Gerson. He argued that the Global fund is more transparent than most domestic programs in America. With the detection and treatment of 7.7 million cases of TB, distribution of 160 million insecticide-treated nets and millions of people put on AIDS treatment, can anybody say that the global fund runs a fundamentally dysfunctional program? As Gerson concludes I agree that in a scandal about corruption, the most important response is to make sure the right people get punished. It is exactly what the Global Fund is doing (measures to enhance financial safeguards and strengthen fraud prevention) but without punishing children who need a bed net, or a victims of a horrible disease. The (RED) blog states: ‘at the first sign of misuse of funds, the Global Fund takes rapid, corrective steps. (...) In addition, to provide added confidence to supporters, the Global Fund itself is creating an independent, international panel of highly respected experts to review its procedures, validate that they are of the highest standards and potentially suggest ways to strengthen them further.

 We should praise not condemn the Global Fund.  

I personally love the idea of (RED) and I have supported its work from the very day I heard about it. I believe that if it might not resolve global issues sui generis, it is a fantastic tool to promote awareness and give everyday people, (not hard-core activists), a chance to save lives through consumerism and within a capitalist framework.



http://www.joinred.com/aboutred
http://www.buylesscrap.org/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/03/AR2011020305176.html