Buying to Donate is (red)icu(less), Says New .org
3/01/07 -- Angela Natividad While we're sure retail campaigns like
Gap's (red) and Kenneth Cole's Are You Putting Us On? mean well, they don't
always ring sincere to the adxhausted audience they aim for.
With fingers on the pulse of a social backlash, Words Pictures Ideas and
Romantic Static
marry up to bring us the cynical Buy Less Crap, a pithy-prints effort pushing
for less, not
more, purchase-oriented donation.
In contrast to Gap's campaign, where donations are tied to purchasing (red)
clothing
modeled in the ads, (less) ads feature naked models with headings like (red)icu(less),
meaning(less) and point(less). The website lists multiple charities where people
can
donate without having to purchase a heart-warming hoodie.
This isn't the first spoof on Gap's (red) but we dig the way it makes the point.
While we see
the benefit of turning philanthropy into its own sort of brand in a consumer
culture, we can't
shake the feeling there's a conflict of interest in blurring the lines between
purchase and
social responsibility.
