AntiFriday: Bono-hating; Converse murketing; etc.
Well it’s AntiFriday again, and time for a rundown of the latest in dissent, backlashing, critiques, and like that.
1. On The Point website, someone has started a campaign titled: “Bono — Retire from public life and we’ll donate a ton of money to fight AIDS.” Partly it’s an anti-Product Red effort, but really it’s about hating Bono. The “Pitch,” in part:
Bono’s philanthropy efforts are self-righteous, ineffective, & counter-productive….
The grassroots leaders of the global fight against AIDS didn’t ask for Bono to be their frontman. Its time for Bono to step down. We’ll all pledge donations to the Global Fund, but no pledges are collected until Bono retires from public life…
As I type, $1,108 have been pledged.
This item via WFMU’s Beware of The Blog, where Bono was previously assaulted here.
2. The Oregonian reports that a Converse effort to put up street-art-style ads on some buildings on Portland’s North Alberta Street has ended poorly. Somebody called the cops, but that’s not really the bad part.
The vacant building’s owner, developer Rambo Halpern, said he wouldn’t have granted permission to Nike-owned Converse to post the ads had he been asked. Alberta Street, he noted, is known as an art district and alternative business hub.
“They’re a little bit anti-corporate, anti-chain,” Halpern said. “Providing free advertising to a corporation making billions of dollars a year is not high on my list of priorities.”
Ouch! Not exactly the reaction Converse wants, I’d say. (Actually, I did say it, to reporter Brent Hunsberger. I’m quoted in this article. Just so you know.)
Related, on Public Ad Campaign blog: Converse subway ad subverted in NYC.
3. Steve Powers offers this:
Enamel on aluminum; $1,999; here.
If you missed Powers’ most recent project, here’s a Times article by Ariel Kaminer, about the “Waterboard Thrill Ride.”
More AntiFriday after the jump.
4. PSFK: “User-generated review site Yelp is getting a bit of negative feedback of its own, as of late. According to CBS News, some business owners who have received less-than-glowing yelps on the 10 million-user strong site are unhappy about the company’s faux-open platform. Some point to their ‘Sponsorship Program,’ a way for poorly-reviewed businesses to improve their presence on the site, as an example of Yelp’s unfair treatment of shop owners who can’t fork up the extra money to keep their Yelp profiles positive. According to one business owner, Selena Kellinger of Razzberry Lips (a makeover party planning company), the site responded to her dismay over her company’s negative reviews by asking her join the Sponsorship Program.”
5. A neighborhood business association in Montreal helped arrange a “summer-long festival” that included no cars on a stretch of Ste Catherine street, to create a more pedestrian-friendly atmosphere for shopping, strolling, and dining. The deal also included a $100,000 sponsorship arrangement with Bud Light, which in Canada is owned by Labatt. If I understand this Globe & Mail story on the subject correctly, the deal also entailed basically forcing restaurants on the street to sell Bud Light.
Predictably, some restaurant owners aren’t happy about that. And:
Christopher DeWolf, a writer for Spacing Montreal, an urban affairs website affiliated with the Toronto magazine Spacing, questions how corporate interests were allowed to take over a public street.
“The closure to cars has created a destination, it creates an ambience that is impossible with cars,” Mr. DeWolf said. “But here you have a product foisted on merchants and their customers. It raises the question of how far we should allow private interests to have such control over our public spaces. I think it’s a burden on merchants and it restricts public choice.”
Thx: Braulio.
6. Marginal Revolution’s Tyler Cowen says there is one blog he won’t read, and it’s written by “the most obnoxious blogger in the world,” but (as of this writing) won’t say who that is. I assume it’s Murketing.com, right?
7. Speaking of Murketing.com, Butts In The Seats expresses dislike of the term “murketing,” adds some cautiously positive thoughts about aspects of this site, and then says: “I have to acknowledge that the site’s sort of anti-guru vibe might actually be calculated, per murketing, to cater to my skepticism.”
Murketing.com — calculated? Is there no end to the cynicism out there?
Spencer Kent on 09 Aug 2008 at 8:05 pm #
Someone at (RED) responded to this on the original site:
“This petition is full of misstatements about (RED) that the simplest Google search would uncover. (RED) has raised more than $109 million for the Global Fund in just two years – ALL of this money goes to AIDS programs in Africa, with NO overhead (or advertising money) taken out.
This money is funding AIDS programs in Ghana, Lesotho, Rwanda and Swaziland that have already helped put more than 80,000 people on lifesaving antiretroviral treatment and helped provide 369,000 pregnant women with counseling and services to reduce the risk of mother-to-child-transmission of HIV…
First, I want to state that the $100M figure you mention and the basic premise of your argument about the allocation of corporate marketing dollars are wrong.
(RED) has not spent any money on advertising. (RED) gets the corporations to spend a portion of their EXISTING marketing budgets on promoting (RED) products. In response to the notion of why companies don’t just donate their marketing budgets, the simple fact is that corporations are not in the business of donating marketing budgets. They are in the business of creating products, marketing them and delivering value for their shareholders. (RED) intersects that process and convinces them to channel some of this power to raise funds to buy AIDS medicine for people who otherwise couldn’t afford them. If these companies weren’t advertising (RED) products, they’d be advertising regular products that don’t generate money for the emergency of AIDS in Africa AND they definitely would not be donating those budgets.
The only part of a corporation that is the business of ‘donating’ is generally the corporate foundation. We purposefully do not go through the foundations for this partnership. We engage the business sectors because our goal is to create a sustainable flow of dollars to the fund, not a one-time handout. This goes back to basics of “WHY” (RED) was formed. (RED) was designed to create a SUSTAINABLE flow of private sector dollars to the Global Fund (www.theglobalfund.org). The Global Fund was created in 2002 and designed to be a public/private partnership i.e. to get money from governments and business. However, it is first four years it had raised $50B from government and just $5M from business (by approaching corporate foundations for support). We needed a new way to engage business in helping to address one of the worst healthcare crisis of our times. So, (RED) was created – with the basic concept of engaging business in a way that made good business sense and creating this sustainable flow of dollars for the Global Fund.
As for the money raised, over $60 million has been raised through the sale of (PRODUCT) RED goods and over $40 million was raised through the (RED) Sotheby’s auction. 260 million media impressions were also garnered through the publicity around the (RED) Auction and the fact that it was raising money to buy drugs that cost 40 cents per day for people who can’t afford that amount to stay alive. We are in the business of raising money and awareness and it seems to make sense to do both at the same time when we can. The auction would not have been possible if the (RED) brand did not exist. It was because of the brand awareness and the excitement around it in the marketplace that many of these artists were willing to participate and one of the reasons why there was so much support to produce an event of that magnitude. All of these things work hand in hand and help build momentum that will raise even more money over time. And, as (RED) grows and matures, you will see our model continue to do more new things that surprise and, at the end of the day, raises the most money possible for the Global Fund to help finance AIDS programs in Africa.
At the end of the day, (RED) is just one way for people to get involved. It does not replace charity, volunteerism, government participation and other avenues to help. It is all of these things working together that will help address the greatest social issues of our time – not each thing working separately and in isolation.”
It’s more than a little dishonest of Aaron to not update his spiel to say that he’s been corrected – (RED) hasn’t spent any money of advertising, it’s partners who advertise their products anyway that have spent a normal share of their ad spends proportionally on (RED) computers/skateboards/shoes, etc.