Enough reader Aaron With recently wrote to us to share info about a campaign he is involved with focused on accountability regarding the philanthropy-themed (Red) advertising campaign. Aaron’s message, with links to the campaign, is below.
I thought you might be interested in this story. Its an online campaign to raise funds to get Bono to retire. People pledge money that will go towards fighting AIDS but only if Bono retires from public life. Some sites have written about it from a celebrity gossip angle, but nobody’s really discussed the the campaign’s criticisms of Bono-led philanthropy, like…
•the message to consumers that you can fight systemic problems just by buying more stuff from GAP
•the RED Campaign’s spending $40 million more on marketing than they’ve raised on RED product sales
•the counter-productive image he spreads of a monolithic, disempowered, famine-ridden Africa.
The VP for Marketing of the RED Campaign has gotten involved in the discussion section and has been issued a challenge to reveal RED’s marketing costs. As of now, she has only managed to skirt around the issue.
Well, the interesting thing about Bono is that he’s quite good friends with George Bush and despite his seemingly progressive politics, he’s cavorts with fundamentalist Christians who see the kind of white, patriarchal missionizing as the true way to alleviate social ills like poverty and AIDS.
And, while I’m not familiar with the advocacy work of Aaron With, I do find it completely ridiculous that *consumption* of goods from known child labor hacks and globalist sweatshop supporters like The Gap is the tie-in to activism. Really, isn’t Bono just becoming (or has become already) a super-brand? Where The Gap and the Red Campaign just reify his image as a rock-n-roll do-gooder? Check out this great article in the Guardian making some similiar claims:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2005/jun/21/development.g8