For those that might remember opinions I have previously stated about Bono & the RED campaign, or additional thoughts I expressed, you might be interested in an article that a friend directed me to this afternoon:
Costly Red Campaign Reaps Meager $18 Million
It's been a year since the first Red T-shirts hit Gap shelves in London, and a parade of celebrity-splashed events has followed: Steven Spielberg smiling down from billboards in San Francisco; Christy Turlington striking a yoga pose in a New Yorker ad; Bono cruising Chicago's Michigan Avenue with Oprah Winfrey, eagerly snapping up Red products; Chris Rock appearing in Motorola TV spots ("Use Red, nobody's dead"); and the Red room at the Grammy Awards. So you'd expect the money raised to be, well, big, right? Maybe $50 million, or even $100 million.
Try again: The tally raised worldwide is $18 million.
[...]
But is the rise of philanthropic fashionistas decked out in Red T-shirts and iPods really the best way to save a child dying of AIDS in Africa?
(read more)
The above article also links to buylesscrap.org, an organization that facilitates direct contributions to the Global Fund and other charitable organizations without the need to buy a celebrity branded product:
Join us in rejecting the ti(red) notion that shopping is a reasonable response to human suffering
Technorati Tags: Africa, Bono, consumerism, RED
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