Nice article on Project (Red) in The NYT a day or two ago. The whole thing brought up some curious numbers. The first are the oft repeated stats given back in March 2007 by Advertising Age Magazine, which said that all the companies involved in project (red) had spent a total of $100 million on advertising while having only raised $18 million (the Red campaign claims the numbers were $50 million and $25 million respectively). This would suppose on one level that the campaign is more a ad campaign to tell consumers that so-and-so company (say, Gap) is socially responsible/cares about Africa and the poor, yadda, yadda, yadda, than an effective tool to combat diseases that afflict the poor. For instance, if instead of telling everyone that they were selling these products that would contribute to fighting poverty they simply gave that $100 million (or $50 million) to the (Red) Campaign they would have contributed more money.
Anyway, those numbers aren’t as crazy as the stats given for the total raised for Project (Red) (which donates all its raised monies to the Global Fund, a fund that raises money to spend on groups that are working to treat people with AIDS, TB, and malaria). To date, the article says, project (red) has raised $59 million from its corporate partners… For me, I don’t know, those numbers seem surprisingly low and makes me question the potential of “compassionate/responsible consumerism”, or whatever you want to call it. I guess $59 mil is better than nothing…
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