Are corporate advertising budgets just too influential?
If corporate advertising is seen as a problem because of its size, the finger should be pointed first at self-interested corporate advertising, not the RED campaign. RED should get credit for generating money that will substantially expand anti-AIDS programs in Africa, where 5,500 lives are lost each day to AIDS (more than two-thirds of the global total of daily AIDS deaths). 4. Does offering a cause-related product reduce charitable giving to the cause? In economic terms, is the RED campaign a complement to private charity or a substitute for it? The theme of the anti-RED Buy Less Crap website is that buying crowds out giving. But it just ain’t so. The RED website announces data showing that because the campaign contributes to public understanding of the AIDS issues in Africa, people are giving more money to this charity than less. 5. Finally, and most essentially, is the money going to the wrong cause? The underlying problem for critics may be that they don’t like the RED cause. Is t
