Red is not my favorite color but I’m thrilled with the success Product (RED) has enjoyed thus far. When I first wrote about the Bono-inspired fund-raising effort back in November, I was simply hopeful that it would become a “poster child” for Marketing for Good. Thanks to a detailed cover story in PROMO magazine, I’m delighted to relay that Product RED is an unequivocal success helping participating marketers sell their products and raise millions for fighting AIDS in Africa. Let’s look at the GAP for example:
Gap has set up RED boutiques in its top 200 stores, and smaller displays in the rest of its nearly 1,300 outlets. The products include T-shirts and jeans…The RED T-Shirt is already the bestseller in Gap’s 35-year history, says Gap spokesperson Erica Archambault. Even better, Gap generated an estimated $60 million to $71 million in revenue and has donated an estimated $2 million to $2.5 million to the Fund, enough to pay for AIDS medication for 14,000 Africans for a year, she adds.
A brief excerpt of a recent speech given by Tamsin Smith, President of (RED), which was posted on the JoinRed blog, provides further evidence of the success of (RED):
To date (RED) sales have generated over $20 million dollars for the Global Fund, which has gone straight into programs focusing on women and children affected by HIV/AIDS in Rwanda and Swaziland. Hundreds and thousands of mother, grandmothers, infants and orphans are profiting from (RED) purchasers.
When some folks hear about my job, they sometimes say: “How wonderful of you to do what you do for people you donâ€
t even know.†And I tell them: “I do what I do for me. I do it for how good it feels.†That†s to me is what will make (RED) a huge success at the end of the day. It empowers, it connects, it inspires – things that do that are things that you do over and over again. That†s what will sustain this effort… We never want anyone to shop (RED) out of guilt. Shop (RED) out of love. Shop (RED) for the sheer joy of it.
Not everyone shares my point-of-view regarding the (RED) effort. Ann Handley reports on her Daily Fix blog:
An interesting response to the ubiquitous (RED) campaign kicked off yesterday in San Francisco.
The BUY (LESS) campaign—with its tagline “Shopping Is Not a Solution” and the pointed domain name of BuyLessCrap—is spearheaded by words pictures ideas (WPI) and Romantic Static as a direct dis of corporate cause marketing efforts, but particularly Project (RED), launched in the fall of 2006 by Bono and to engage the private sector in the fight against AIDS in Africa by chanelling funds from the sale of (RED) products to the Global Fund.
BuyLessCrap is actually quite an amusing parody and is also an indication of the broad exposure (RED) has achieved thus far. You don’t go to the trouble of creating an elaborate parody like this unless you know lots of people are familiar with the idea. I suspect the folks at (RED) are laughing too since this continues the dialog and provides further proof of the pervasiveness of their concept.
The brilliance of (RED) is that it designed to be a win, win, win from the beginning. Marketers win because they sell more product and burnish their reputations. Consumers win because they buy things they would have bought anyway and can feel better about their purchases knowing some of the money they spent goes to a good cause. The Global Fund wins because they have established a continuous revenue steam for AIDS relief ($20mm so far) and built awareness of the importance of this relief effort. This win, win, win scenario is the very essence of Marketing for Good.
–update
Rohit Bhargava had some smart insights about this campaign on his Influential Interactive Marketing blog today.