Marta Ortiz Núñez (Oct, 2008)
Nobody can deny that a new way of international aid is appearing with strength. According to the article: ‘Better (RED) than Dead? Celebrities, Consumption and International Aid’ (Richey and Ponte 2008), celebrities such as the singer Bono, the economist Jeffrey Sachs and the medical anthropologist Paul Farmer, joined with a common aim, to fight against poverty and to provide health around the developing countries. In order to achieve these aims, the product (RED) was created, which can be consider as a new way of commercialization. This new model of commercialization was created by Bono in order to provide with more help to The Global Fund, which was madden for finance a radical change in the fight against diseases such as Tuberculosis, Malaria and HIV/AIDS. Richey and Ponte (2008) argue that they do not seek support the Bono´s idea, what they state is that RED’s campaign is a way to join consumption and international aid, all protected by the guaranties from the celebrities. Richey and Ponte (2008) try to show how the celebrities can have a certain influence on policy making and how beneficial is that the profits generated by the RED products are allocated the African citizens with AIDS. From their words it can be inferred that this new type of help is efficient and the use of celebrities could contribute to reach the RED´s goals in an easier way. And sometimes is better to do something to try to alleviate poverty even if the contribution is small, than only watch how the time is wasted without doing anything.
Analysis
Richey and Ponte (2008) explain how RED helps to Africa having The Global Fund as a link. The Global Fund works not only with funds from RED´s profits but also from other private sector’s helps or from Governments and International Organizations. The Global Fund is connected with the Country Coordination Mechanism (CCM), who determines the strategies to follow and gives priority to places where the aid needs to be focused on. According to the RED website: the CCM is comprised of representatives from all relevant sectors such as Government, Civil Society, the Private Sector, and Communities and determines the projects and charities to be included in the national proposal of an specific country and submits this proposal to the Global. In relation to this we can find the first weakness of this type of aid. We can think about how the type of regulation between the RED´s consumers and the final NGOs works directly with the beneficiaries of the projects. The consumers can ask where my money is. How and by whom is my money managed? Is there any type of bribe between NGOs and the Government? Therefore, we can infer that this kind of “good” business could not be too clear. According to Frith (2005), some auditing concluded that more progress needed to be made to ensure that western countries did not impose crippling new trade deals on the world's poorest countries.
Another important point mentioned by Richey and Ponte (2008) is how celebrities have done stated since 1960 onwards (Huddart 2005). So why not continue with the aid from celebrities? May be is a good venue for marketing. Therefore, the authors agree that RED counts with three important components: the success of Bono, the efficiency provided by Sachs and the solution supplied by Farmer. These ingredients seem to give to the world, with the perfect recipe although there is a mix between Band aids to Brand Aid. Additionally, the article shows how RED has as recipient people from Africa. Since time ago, the image that everybody has about AIDS is linked with sad poor world. However RED´s launch does not want miserable and melancholy images from dead or suffer. Hence, RED tries to show their products with glamour. We can infer from this point of view that RED incites to desire, to be specific, to consumption desire.
Undoubtedly, another weakness of the Richey and Ponte (2008) study is related to consumption. Although buying RED products consumers are helping others without any additional cost for them, we have to be careful because there could be a consumption effect. In other words, individuals could increase their consumption in products related to the brand RED such as t-shirts or laptops without feeling guilty about consuming because they feel this way of consumption is not bad because it is form of charity. Another important effect of buying something from the brand RED could be a substitution effect. To be more specific, consuming this type of products could lead individuals to change their behaviour in relation to charities and maybe allocate less from their own money to fight against other ways of poverty. “The message of Product (Red) is that we can buy that new cell phone or wrist watch and feel good about it because we are helping victims of AIDS”(Gunther 2008). In the same line, according to Richey and Ponte (2008) relate this type of consumption to “commodity fetishism” that RED products suffer. The company does not give too much information about the quality in the label’s products. Nevertheless, RED provides with the celebrieties´label, which for them seems to be more important. In fact, Bono thinks that is worst that the people die for AIDS reasons. We could think, that the product does not specify some details about where has been made or by who is a transparency failure. Thus the RED products become global instead of local. Besides that we can think about the idea of why the partners of RED only provide to The Global Fund a small percentage instead of giving more than half of their sales. For brands such as Apple, Converse, Dell, Gap, Hallmark, and Microsoft, would not suppose a big lost, because this companies already have really high incomes. Buying Converse’s shoes, you’re getting exactly the same product, the only difference is that a fix percentage goes to The Global Fund, but why do not the RED´s partners companies do more? Why do not these companies give 50% of the buying price or even all the returns from this sale? People know the RED brand, but not what exactly it does, where it works or how the money is spent.
Another weakness, which can be inferred from the article, is whether it is necessary or not spend too much money on the RED campaigns (Mya Fraizer 2007). And if it would be better to use this enormous amount of money directly on to the Global Fund instead of proclaim how GAP or Motorola contribute to RED.
On the contrary, RED campaign is a way to let the people to know what happen with some diseases around the world and specially focus on poorest places such as Africa. Other campaigns such as: ONE and 46664 are having susses among the citizens around the world. We can also find more celebrities in favour of RED and similar companies and ways of charities. Bill Gates (2008) states that this type of aid is related with the concept of ‘creative capitalism’. With creative capitalism we could spread around the world the good effects of capitalism and increase the quality of life of those parts of the world that remain outside capitalism. Of course the companies involved in this type of actions want profits on return. The opportunities for creative capitalism can be found by the partners firms and Governments and non profits organizations can help to create this opportunities.
Another strength that can be inferred from Richey and Ponte (2008) article is that RED campaign promotes the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in the enterprises, corporate responsibility or corporate citizenship. According to Jenkins (2005) development agencies take a much more positive view of the development impacts of CSR. At the present companies from the public and private sector are developing departments of corporate social responsibility. The aim of the CSR departments is to promote the allocation of a percentage of the company’s profits into social action or development projects and raising funds for good causes (Ponte, Richey and Baab 2008). In the same line, Hoskins (2005) states that companies need to regard NGOs as being part of their stakeholder audience and, as such; they have a right to comment on the quality and veracity of the information put before them.
Conclusion
After analyzing Richey and Ponte (2008) article, we can also have a critical view about the RED campaign and other similar ways of international aid. There are negative points to consider in relation to this type companies. For instance, we could think that the money spent in launching advertisements could instead be spent to the international aid and we could also consider how clear the measures of security and transparency of the sent money are. The most important weakness that I can see from this type of aid is that the compassion consumption turns to be on compulsion consumption, creating a problem to the final consumer, not allowing them to see what the real cause of consuming these products is. However, it is clear that campaigns with celebrities and partners brands help to promote not only the consumption but also knowledge about what happen in 75 percent of the “real world” while the other 25 percentage is discussing this type of issues. Unquestionably, at least we can help to improve people lives.
References:
Fraizer, M (March 2007), Costly RED Campaign Reaps Meager $ 18 million, Advertising Age
Hoskins, T (2005), Corporate Social Responsibility Handbook; Making CSR Work for Business, ICSA Publishing: pp 5
Huddart, S. (2005) ‘Do We Need Another Hero? Understanding Celebrities’ Roles in Advancing Social Causes,’ mimeo, Montreal: McGill University.
Jenkins, R. (2005) “Globalization, Corporate Social Responsibility and Poverty’, International Affairs 81(3): 525-540
Official The Global Fund website, at thttp://www.theglobalfund.org/en/
Richey, L and Ponte, S. (2008) Better (RED) ™ than Dead? Celebrities, Consumption and International Aid, Third World Quarterly 29(4): 711-729
