Buying to Donate is (red)icu(less), Says New .org


3/01/07 -- Angela Natividad
 While we're sure retail campaigns like Gap's (red) and Kenneth Cole's Are You Putting Us On? mean well, they don't always ring sincere to the adxhausted audience they aim for.

With fingers on the pulse of a social backlash, Words Pictures Ideas and Romantic Static
marry up to bring us the cynical Buy Less Crap, a pithy-prints effort pushing for less, not
more, purchase-oriented donation.

In contrast to Gap's campaign, where donations are tied to purchasing (red) clothing
modeled in the ads, (less) ads feature naked models with headings like (red)icu(less),
meaning(less) and point(less). The website lists multiple charities where people can
donate without having to purchase a heart-warming hoodie.

This isn't the first spoof on Gap's (red) but we dig the way it makes the point. While we see
the benefit of turning philanthropy into its own sort of brand in a consumer culture, we can't
shake the feeling there's a conflict of interest in blurring the lines between purchase and
social responsibility.

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