Bono and his celebrity friends' Red campaign has raised $18 million worldwide - that's nothing to sneeze at except that they had spent an estimated $100 million promoting it!
The disproportionate ratio between the marketing outlay and the money raised is drawing concern among nonprofit watchdogs, cause-marketing experts and even executives in the ad business. It threatens to spur a backlash, not just against the Red campaign -- which ambitiously set out to change the cause-marketing model by allowing partners to profit from charity -- but also for the brands involved.
The backlash has already started:
The campaign's inherent appeal to conspicuous consumption has spurred a parody by a group of San Francisco designers and artists, who take issue with Bono's rallying cry. "Shopping is not a solution. Buy less. Give more," is the message at buylesscrap.org, which encourages people to give directly to the Global Fund.
Link - via A Welsh View
Maybe now's not the right time to judge the idea, and let it roll for a while longer to see if the costs eventually recoup. It's a shame though, I really dug the idea.