Blushing for a cause
For people whose favorite color is pink, October was a great month. Others may have been wondering where all those suddenly pink products come from and how much money they bring in for breast cancer research and treatment. Concerns have also been raised recently about whether unscrupulous companies might be taking advantage of people’s desire to donate to worthy causes during Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Here’s a closer look at the purveyors of pink.
Yogurt, hairbrushes, crackers, eye shadow: Consumer items (or their packaging) have a habit of turning pink in October. This hue change started 23 years ago, when people concerned about breast cancer started the National Breast Cancer Awareness Month -- NBCAM. “It was a movement to educate people about breast cancer and the importance of early detection,” says Donna Huang, a spokeswoman for NBCAM who also works at AstraZeneca, a company that makes breast cancer therapy products.
Marketing strategists point to the pink campaign as the most successful example of “cause marketing,” or selling products by connecting their purchase to a worthy cause.
Nonprofit organizations that fund breast cancer research or provide support to cancer patients, such as the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, Susan G. Komen Foundation and CancerCare, participate in NBCAM as a way to bring in revenue. TicTac, for example, will donate $100,000 to CancerCare from sales of pink breath mints during September and October, says Diane Blum of CancerCare and one of the founding members of NBCAM.
Not all products are actually pink. They can have pink packaging, be marked with a pink ribbon or simply state that the purchase of the product will raise money for breast cancer awareness. (And not everything pink raises money for breast cancer groups. Victoria’s Secret’s Pink label, for example, is just a color.)
Although the nonprofits don’t sell the products, they tell consumers how they can buy them, how much money is being donated, and how long the promotion lasts. “We call it ‘clear and conspicuous disclosure,’ ” says Karen White, manager for cause marketing at Komen. “We’re making sure consumers have all the information they need.”
The organizations’ websites are also a way to make sure companies really are donating to the cause.
The donated amount varies. Some of the pink products on the Breast Cancer Research Foundation’s website are:
Conair hair dryers. Between 50 cents and $1 per dryer -- and a minimum of $100,000 from the company -- goes to the foundation.
KitchenAid mixers. Donations are $50 per pink mixer, and the pink ones don’t cost more than the other colors. (This isn’t always the case for such products. You’ll pay 14 cents extra for an awareness postage stamp.)
Sony portable DVD players. $10 a pop goes to BCRF.
Dyson vacuum cleaners. The foundation gets $40, half from Dyson, half from Target.
The pink marketing strategy brings in a lot of money for nonprofits, but no one keeps track of it as a whole, Blum says. “We have no idea how much money is being raised,” she says. Komen brought in $58 million last year from the pink marketing campaigns of companies it partners with. This represents about 20% of Komen’s revenue, White says. (Komen funded $77 million in research last year, second only to the federal government. It also spends money on education and treatment in communities.)
BCRF says it raised $35 million last year, $15 million of it through pink products, and gave more than 90 cents of each dollar to research and awareness programs. CancerCare says it expects to raise at least $125,000 this year from pink Tic Tacs, tweezers and staplers.
Reputable funding organizations are careful about whom they partner with in the pink campaign. “We turn away [companies] if we think their heart is not in the right place or if they’re doing it for the wrong reason,” says BCRF spokeswoman Anna DeLuca.
But critics still worry that the awareness month allows anyone wanting to jump on the breast cancer fundraising bandwagon to do so, whether it’s a business selling a product or an individual putting together a money-raising golf game. “Folks can decide to have an event and take the NBCAM logo off our website and use it,” Huang says. Companies can donate as much or little as they want, although larger groups such as BCRF work with a business to come up with what both partners think is fair.
This lack of regulation has some advocacy groups seeing red. Breast Cancer Action has said companies might be exploiting the cause to pad profits. It advises consumers to evaluate whether their purchase will make a difference.
Some states have full-disclosure regulations for companies that want to interact with nonprofits, White says. She says consumers can ask the attorney general’s office in their state to find out what regulations exist where they live. Komen and groups such as Breast Cancer Action have guidelines on their websites that can help people ask the right questions.
Although breast cancer interests benefit greatly from pink, some people think the attention is overblown. “My concern, as the director of an organization that works with all kinds of cancers,” Blum says, “is that it’s worthy but disproportionate.” Lung cancer, she says, is the main cancer killer for women. “Far more women die of lung cancer each year than from breast, ovarian and cervical cancers combined,” she says.
