While many businesses have gone pink for Breast Cancer Awareness Month throughout October, don’t be completely blinded by those pink-tinted goggles.
It’s easy to go out of your way to buy something pink this month in the name of charity – whether it’s loading up on flavours of yogurt you don’t even like or purchasing a different, more expensive brand of makeup than before.
Driving some of the changes to consumer spending lately is the persuasion of a particular brand that has promised to donate portions of their October revenues towards breast cancer research and treatment.
However, changing spending habits in the name of charity should be thought about critically.
While some companies genuinely want to make a difference, there are also companies simply putting up the façade of doing goodwill to attract your hard-earned dollars.
In most cases, the donated portions of purchases are only a few cents and would be more beneficial to the cause and your wallet to simply donate sveral dollars to the charitable foundation.
Even if you are buying your regular brands, a company’s promotion of their goodwill efforts will encourage consumers – either consciously or unconsciously – to buy more than they usually would to further benefit the cause and the company’s profit margins at the same time.
“You have to ask yourself: how deep does this commitment go?” says Bernard Gauthier, a communications instructor at Carleton University. “If the commitment only goes as deep as wearing pink or doing something pink . . . then they’re just riding the coattails of a campaign without necessarily being part of the solution.”
The CIBC Run for the Cure is one example of successful branding through goodwill, with its fundraising efforts going to the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation. Throughout the run’s 17-year history, many millions of dollars have been raised.
Breast Cancer Awareness Month has been around for nearly 25 years after AstraZeneca, which manufactures breast cancer treatment drugs, first conceived the concept to raise awareness and ensure women undergo regular mammogram examinations.
Since then, business and corporate support of Breast Cancer Awareness Month has grown exponentially with the pinking of product lines and promises to donate portions of their sales to the cause.
But after all this awareness and fundraising every year, there still isn’t a common understanding of how breast cancer works and the best ways to treat it.
In some cases, buying pink might actually perpetuate the problem rather than solve anything.
According to Think Before You Pink, a watchdog project launched in 2002 by Breast Cancer Action in San Francisco to monitor the marketing strategies of breast cancer awareness products, the cosmetic, food and automobile industries are some of the most problematic in going pink.
That is because the use or consumption of the goods produced in those industries has been scientifically linked to breast cancer.
Many body care products are manufactured with reproductive toxins and carcinogens. Cars, for example, emit air pollutants linked to a variety of cancers, including breast cancer.
But Think Before You Pink’s most successful campaign to date has been against General Mills’ pink lids on their Yoplait yogurt in order to put a lid on the disease. Up until last year, the yogurt sold under the pink lids contained dairy stimulated by bovine growth hormone rBGH, which has been linked to cause both breast and colon cancer in women.
Ironic, isn’t it?
The important lesson is to think critically when you buy. While temporarily switching toilet paper in October may be harmless, not all the pink changes to your regular purchasing habits are beneficial to yourself or the cause. Which just goes to show, simply shopping for pink brands will not solve anything.