Pinking up October

Welcome to Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

October is officially breast cancer awareness month. This month, every woman's magazine will have an article or two about survivors, treatment, breast self exams, and the like. Every talk show will have a breast cancer segment. Every store will be stocked with pink items. Breast cancer is in the air - it's on people's minds, everywhere.

Don't believe me? Just look for all of the pink merchandise. Ribbons abound.

There is a small, very vocal group of people opposed to pink merchandising. They believe that a ribbon is not a very good symbol for a horrific disease, and that it is offensive that companies are making money from their pink marketing efforts. I disagree - strenuously - with this position.

First of all, I'm not sure what a better symbol for breast cancer would be: a cancerous cell? a picture of a mastectomy? an image of a family grieving their deceased mother? I don't think that anyone would wear one of those images on their coat, or use it as a conversation starter. A pink ribbon isn't perfect, but somebody came up with the idea of ribbon marketing, and since pink has long been the color for women and girls (pink for girls, blue for boys) there you have it. A woman's disease, marked by a pink ribbon.

And pink ribbons ARE effective. In the 1970s, the word "breast" could not be published in a newspaper, even in reference to breast cancer. Women didn't know about breast cancer like we do now, and as a result, they often waited too long for mammograms or exams, and they died from their lack of knowledge. I recently saw the 1970s breast cancer statistics for my stage of breast cancer, and found that if I'd been diagnosed then, I would have been 20% more likely to die of the disease within five years. Pink ribbons have raised awareness - I did a breast self exam because I had been educated on the subject of BSE, and because, in part, pink ribbons reminded me of what I should be doing. And pink ribbon marketing has, in great part, funded the research that has improved my odds so significantly.

The argument that companies are immoral or misdirected by making money from pink merchandising is also misplaced in my mind. Companies are not, at their essence, philanthropic in nature: they are created to create profit for their owners (shareholders), and in doing so, they employ others and create livelihoods. When a company decides to ally itself with a cause, and donate money to that cause, the cause benefits. Certainly, companies do not usually donate 100% of their proceeds to a cause, but to do so would drive them out of business, and I don't expect or desire that.

Take M&Ms. I am told that a bag of M&Ms (large size) is $5 or something like that, and that only $.50 goes to Komen. On the surface, that doesn't sound like much - $.50 doesn't buy much of a mammogram, and doesn't pay for even a minute of research - but it's not about the $.50, it's about the total donation. In the past 4 years, M&Ms have donated $2.8 million to Komen from their pink M&Ms campaign. I believe that the success of this program is BECAUSE they are making a profit from the pink M&Ms: people choose to buy the M&Ms because they like M&Ms and because they would like to support the breast cancer cause, and therefore M&Ms sells more of their product. The $.50's add up, and suddenly they've amounted to $2.8 million dollars.

I would rather support a company who chooses to do cause based marketing than one who chooses simply to market their product. Certainly, M&Ms is going to do a lot of marketing of their product, and is going to spend oodles of money on marketing programs; they can do it to benefit breast cancer (or some other cause), or they can do it only for their own profit. I choose to support companies who have recognized that supporting a cause helps people, even as it helps their bottom line. Everyone benefits. Could M&Ms donate $1 per package? Maybe, but I am not going to knock them for donate $2.8 million and declare their $2.8 million a paltry sum. Sure, I'm happy to ask for more, but I will not insult the $2.8 million.

There is another argument that says that it would be better for everyone to fund breast cancer research directly, rather than to just buy M&Ms, thus eliminating the middle man. Sure, this is a great idea, except that it doesn't play out in real life. Ideally, people would recognize the needs of society and step up to pay for those needs: healthcare, health research, etc. But people don't. They are bogged down in their own need to pay for food and shelter, and their desire for cute shoes. SOME people give generously to charity, and others do not (either because they can't or because they won't, but the end result is the same). I say it would be great if companies AND individuals practiced philanthropy without prompting or marketing, but I think it's very unrealistic. So, there are individuals out there who are unwilling or unable to write a check to Komen, but are eating M&Ms anyway and decide to buy the pink package....and every little bit helps.

Also, companies have much deeper pockets than individuals. A team of 35 people - Team Kristina and Warrior Women - did grass roots fundraising over two years to raise about $120,000. I'm very proud of this work and my part in it, but I recognise that it was a LOT of effort, and though it's a lot of money from my perspective, it's nowhere near what a corporation can give. Breast cancer research needs work from people like me, but it also needs the deep pockets of the corporations. I can work tirelessly, around the clock, to raise money for breast cancer to donate directly to the cause, but I will never come close to the amount that a large corporation is going to give. This doesn't make me give up on my own efforts, but certainly, I appreciate the money that the corporations are giving, too.

There are some companies, though I think they are few, who give pink marketing a bad name by putting pink ribbons on products without benefiting the cause. I don't know who these companies are, though.

Komen has a list of million dollar partners on their website, as well as "5 Questions to Ask" for cause based marketing. If you wonder who to support, and how to determine who is legit, you might wish to take a look at their website information:
http://cms.komen.org/komen/Partners/index.htm

So, as you proceed into the month of October, consider buying pink. Make sure that you read the fine print: who is getting the proceeds of the product? Is it Komen, Breast Cancer.org, The Young Survival Coalition, The Breast Cancer Research Fund, or some other reputable organization? GREAT. What is the minimum donation that the company is giving? If a company is only giving $0.03 per item, that seems small, unless you read that they are committing a minimum of $500,000 to the cause. You, ultimately, decide where to spend your dollars, of course. But I hope that as you proceed into the pink month, you will consider supporting those companies who have decided to take action against the disease that has threatened my life, and the lives of over two million survivors in the US, as well as uncounted women who have not survived.

All of our pennies are adding up, and we ARE going to find a cure.