The key word is THINK (RED)

“Appeals to the past are among the commonest of strategies in interpretations of the present.” Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism, 1993

I’m currently working on several research projects, including a project that explores President George W. Bush’s rhetoric concerning the Department of Homeland Security, how violent crime has been covered in Philadelphia, and how AIDS awareness ads have represented both gay men and AIDS. The last thing that I need is another project, right? Wrong. At the end of the spring semester, two of my colleagues said they wanted to pitch a panel for a conference coming to Philadelphia. We opted to look at cause-related marketing campaigns. A friend suggested the Red campaign because of my interest in AIDS and AIDS awareness. My interest in the campaign was double-pronged: first, I am really interested in AIDS awareness, and second, I have listened to U2 since I was 13 years old. Bono is a hero of mine.

Cause-related marketing, campaigns that bring corporations and social causes together to raise money and awareness, is not my area of interest or expertise, but the Web 2.0 environment fascinates me. Social networking and blogging are only two of the many features offered by this evolution in Internet technology. When the paper is finished, I will have examined how Red’s digital platform brought corporations, consumers, and the cause together into one online community.

Those who tout the capabilities of the Web 2.0 environment say these Internet tools can enable social and political change through collaborative knowledge and interaction; on its face, the Red campaign seems like an electronic web of interaction about products, information, and communication from those who’ve joined the fight for the cause. But my optimism about these changes is tempered with the knowledge that often something is lost in translation when American consumerism is brought into the mix.

According to its website, Red is a branding mechanism – a business model - that pairs global corporations with the Global Fund. The model involves corporations like Motorola, The Gap, and iPod, which have created product lines and donate a portion of their profits directly to the Fund. Bono and Bobby Shriver, its founders, hope to establish sustainable revenue through building a community around the issues like HIV/AIDS in Africa. So far, how has it done?

Chasing the Numbers
The campaign began in October 2006. To date, the Red campaign website says the money raised has helped:

*770,000 people with the treatment for HIV and AIDS;
*nearly 9 million people with voluntary HIV testing;
*more than 1 million orphans with care and support;
*2 million people with treatment for tuberculosis;
*more than 22 million people treated for malaria;
*nearly 18 families with insecticides treated mosquito nets.

Co-founder Bobby Shriver wrote not too long ago that the fund has raised $25 million USD. His response countered another article in AdWeek, which claimed that the campaign had only raised $18 million. Shriver argued the Fund has raised 5 times – quadrupled – the funds in one year than it had over the previous four years. His responses, I believe, can be found at Red’s website. While the disputes over how much has been raised are intriguing, I am actually drawn more to the campaign.

The campaign is unfolding in print, in music, in video, and of course, through the Internet. AIM and MySpace are both partners of the campaign. And recently, Vanity Fair released its Africa issue – with 20 separate covers. The MySpace page, of which I am a member, promoted the issue with several bulletins. According to the Vanity Fair media pack, which is available at its website, the UK magazine boasts a readership of 214,000. Red’s MySpace page boasts 630,406 friends, as of July 15. Likewise, Red’s blog has seen 313, 971 visitors since it was launched. The reach of the two Internet sites exceeds the readership of the magazine; I wonder if the Africa issue exceeded any expectations.

Nevertheless, the campaign has caught on; if you visit the MySpace page, you see happy people wearing Red t-shirts or holding up their Red iPods. They are more than willing to let people know what they have purchased, sometimes mentioning they bought for a worthy cause. What worries me is Africa.

Commodity=Simplicity
On the surface, the ability to help people in Africa through the purchase of a product is remarkably simple. Unfortunately, I think more often than not, American consumers reduce issues with exact simplicity: fixing Africa requires throwing money at a problem that simply revolves around disease and poverty. Neither the AIDS epidemic nor the poverty issue should be mitigated; in fact, in a June 4 Reuters’s article, AIDS is viewed as a new threat to African democracy, Bate Felix writes AIDS has had a devastating effect on governance, particularly in Southern Africa.

Poverty and disease have their devastating roles. But they play roles in incredibly complex machinery that predates any of my living relatives. This machinery grew out of now fallen empires that moved into these areas, took what they could, and eventually receded. Their remnants were left behind, and the inhabitants left to pick up the pieces. Two of the countries mentioned on the Product Red website are Swaziland and Rwanda. Let’s take a look at a little bit of history for each.

According to the Swaziland government website, Swaziland is located in Southern Africa between South Africa and Mozambique. The people of Swazi descended from the southern Bantu, and in the 16th and 17th centuries, migrated from central Africa. Swaziland is a former British colony; the British signed a convention recognizing the country’s independence, but “controversial land and mineral rights concessions were made under the authority of the Foreign Jurisdiction Act of 1890 in terms of which the administration of Swaziland was also placed under that of the then South African Republic.” Long story short, Swaziland finally received its independence from Britain in 1968.

According to the Rwanda government website, Rwanda was once a centralized Tutsi kingdom. Although Rwanda became a colony under German control in 1899, it became a mandate territory of the League of Nations under Belgium control in 1919, following Germany’s defeat in World War I. Under Belgian rule, discrimination based on ethnicity was introduced in 1935, and eventually led to massacres of Batutsi. Rwanda gained its independence in 1962.

The history of both countries is tangled with different Western powers; each is similar insofar as a Western power has tried to make it its own, and different insofar as they are separate entities attempting to exist, like every other nation-state in the world. As Tony Barnett (1997) writes in Beyond Cultural Imperialism: Globalization, communication & the new international order, “The varieties of colonial state influenced the specific organizational form and administrative tradition inherited by the successor post-colonial state. Other factors which affected state formation included the particular circumstances arising from economic developments in each area, as well as forms of resistance to colonialism and, related to these, the forms of political, social and economic organization which had pre-existed colonial rule or developed in relation to its encroachment.”

It’s not simply about buying products. It’s about understanding the history of each nation-state, the struggles of the people, their natural resources, the investment by NGOs and corporations, and their relations with other nation-states. Specifically these are my concerns:

1. As Sut Jhally said in part one in his lecture, Understanding Globalization, a good starting point to understanding globalization is through understanding our relationship vis-a-vis commodities. I have to say the Gap’s website offers detailed information about how it chooses manufacturers and promulgates corporate responsibility. Interestingly, one of the factories producing Gap products is located in Lesotho, one of the countries devastated by AIDS. One way to truly understand how you are helping is to begin with the products that you are purchasing - Get the bigger picture.

2. Along those same lines: What do we understand about AIDS and Africa? Charity with no historical context only serves to perpetuate what we might already think about many around the world. They are helpless and need to be saved. Adding historical context for American consumers is a double-edged sword; in the very least, the truth is not sexy. Some of these governments are struggling to maintain stability, are rife with civil war, or are overwhelmed with corruption. You want to help with AIDS in Africa? Let's start by opening a dialogue about the social, political and economic conditions that led us here to begin with, so that the peoples of each of these countries can work toward their own independence and build their own narratives.

3. Where is the African narrative? While my look over Red’s blog is cursory, the African’s narrative is scant, if it even appears. In the coming weeks, I hope to find people who can shed some light on how the Red campaign is received locally. And there are positive things about many of these countries, their people, and the cultures. Put a human face on the "cause," on the "disaster." I want to hear their voices; I want to know who they are as they see it.

Red’s reach impresses me, and I cannot wait to see how it will fare in the coming years. What seems absent, though, is the substantive understanding by consumers about Africa as well as explanation about Africa from Red. We should not overlook those throughout Africa; after all, the campaign was designed with them in mind. Many of the nation-states in Africa are still struggling, particularly to meet Western guidelines to receive aid. In fact, according to the Swazi Observer, Swaziland has lost $50 million USD in funds from the Global Fund, due to the lack of a patient management system. While we are first-world consumers who can speak with our pocket books, we can also be knowledgeable participants in the global environment. If you choose RED, then the key word here is THINK.