There is definitely an issue that big business will look to link to charities in order provide a halo for their brand. Bands are just big businesses so they will do it too.

Problem is, the business will take profit and, more importantly, charge a slab of its overheads, out of the revenue. People will not appreciate the size of this element and by spending £120 on a Red ipod, they'll think they're helping rather than tossing a quid or so toward a charity.

There is an interesting article to be had out of the music and entertainment industries love of charity and the real difference these programs are or are not making.

or if they do that they're significant.

This comes across as an overly cynical view of something that is actually quite transparently cynical itself.

The quote is undoubtedly correct that Red is aimed at people who want to 'incorporate philanthopy into their lifestyle', but there's a big 'so what?' about that. Where did RED pretend otherwise? Where did they pretend that there wouldn't be something in it for the companies involved? From what I recall, it was clear that this would be the case.

But to look at the figures themselves, the claim is:

RED has spent $40 million more on marketing
than it has raised from the sales of RED products.
They should have just spent the $100 million from
marketing directly on AIDS charities & it would
have been far more effective.

As I understand it, RED has not spent $100m on marketing; the partners organisations have. While you could argue that's mere semantics, I think that's important. These people would be marketing their products anyway except without an ethical dimension, so how can this really be considered a criticsm?

It's not like they've spent $100m and only made $60m either. They've spent $100m and the proporation of their income which is donated to RED, a fraction of the total income, amounts to $60m.

Additionally, many commercial ventures take significant start up investment, largely in the marketing before they turn a profit, so is RED actually particularly remarkable in this respect.

It's all very well saying it would have been better to have spent the $100m directly on aleviating poverty; that's axiomatically true. But would they have done? There's no reason to think so.

I'm not suggesting RED's above criticism, or that Bono is super, wonderful, fabulous or anything, but the attack seems overly snide to me.

and enjoy his fame and riches.
The fact that he appears to spend a substantial amount of his time promoting good causes tells me that what we have here is a very well intentioned individual.
The fact that he is wealthy is not the point, the fact he is famous is. He uses his fame to promote what he beleives in.
If this helps his profile by default then so be it.
Of course he will always have his detractors but what more can the man do?

What disgusts me is the stance of bands such as the Rolling Stones.
Have this band ever, ever, ever done anything to benefit anyone else but themselves.
Bono can't win, but at least he's trying.

it's the fact that supporting this RED mallarkey makes sense from a purely realpolitik point of view.

I think we're all agreed that the purpose of a multinational is to increase shareholder value. Period. I'm not getting all Dave Spart about it, but that's what they do, and a board that tends to deviate from this will find their desks in the carpark PDQ.

I also think, sadly, that rightly or wrongly, people don't actually give to charity like they used to back in the day. Nowadays, we want some fun to go with it; like the point above, we want our lifestyles enhanced by our giving. So it's not enough to have an iPod, but there's a market there for an iPod that screams "Hey, i give a f**k about the less fortunate". Similarly you have all these fundraising £1,000 a plate dinners where the usual suspects roll up in the best bib'n'tucker hoping to see their gurning mugs in the papers the next sunday.

Put these two together and you can see that the only way to get some sort of revenue (not donations) out of multinationals is to ensure there's something for the shareholders, and that appeals to the consumer.

I'm probably old fashioned, but I understand charity to be a private matter. If i wish to give millions away, that's between me and the organisation to which i donate. If i wish to publicise this, it's my business, and does not take away an iota from my donation, although chances are most people'll think i'm a tosser!

I'd have to take issue with Scotties comment up there; do you know for a fact that the Rolling Stones have never 'done anything to benefit anyone else but themselves?'

Nope. Neither do i. Maybe it's private donations. Maybe Keef doesn't insist on being photographed handing over one of those oversized cheques to the local soup kitchen in Connecticut.

To be honest, i don't blame celebs anyway for getting involved. The fact is that in years gone by, organised religion 'persuaded' a lot more people to give to charity and as religion loses its hold over people and the cult of celebrity is, effectively, the new Christianity (I suspect Paris Hilton IS bigger than Jesus...) it's only natural that the better intentioned rock stars will try and persuade us to part with our hard-earned.

When you refer to "the people who do the dirty work on the ground", I'm not sure if that's what you're actually getting here. However well-intentioned The Point website is, I doubt it's where the experts gather - instead you'll find campaigns for watercress world domination, a $10,000,000,000 proposal to build a dome over Chicago to protect the locals during the winter, and people lobbying Facebook to allow them to choose the colour of their profile pages.

And while this campaign may raise points that certainly merit discussion, it reads to me like it's driven by a personal dislike for Bono rather than anything he might or might not have actually achieved.

But the Daily Mail website had a very good pic of Bono today. Who knew that Robin Williams was in U2?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1042810/Unmasked-Bono-ditch...

He may have ditched the eye-wear but he's still wearing a hat at the dinner table. My mam would have walloped my arse for doing that.

Has he done more harm than good for the cause?

That's the question to answer.

It's up to him to work out how much ego he's got involved in it.

Money is probably not an issue for Bon_O

on marketing, but I never heard of Red until this thread.
I stopped shopping in Gap when the (first) sweat shop scandal came to light - maybe that's why.

i can understand why any charity would want to have the endorsement of a celebrity - it makes you more visible, thereby increasing awareness of whatever cause you're championing, that part seems fairly straightforward.

marketing too is a fairly obvious equation - unless magazine and newspaper owners, tv and radio stations and ISP providers all decide to allow whatever they deem to be worthy causes free access to their various media channels then part of whatever you raise has to go to pay for these things...

so should we be having a go at the people who charge charities so much to advertise perhaps?

but according to their website (red) is not a charity - it's a business model... how terribly modern.

as long as it's not some thin disguise to hock some cheesy wares?

you have to ask why someone wants to wear a t-shirt or those wristbands that say 'hey i care a lot about these things you know' - what does that say about them? - do they really give a fuck or is it that they want to be seen to be giving one? whatever happened to just giving some money to a charity without ecpecting something back?

the real problem with aids in africa is the way the governments of these country seemingly couldn't give a toss about their own people, in some cases denying that aids even exists - no amount of good will, t-shirts, bracelets or celebrity endorsements will change that, i'm afraid.

coupled with the fact that drug companies refuse to allow people to make cheaper versions of their drugs - i'm guess that's their own 'business model' isn't it? not so terribly modern.

i don't have the answers (you'll be surprised to hear) - but don't blame bono - he's trying to do something at least - he just happens to be in quite a boring band too.

I doubt that U2 have sold a single CD because of Bono's charity exploits, so though it may boost his ego it hardly boosts his career. At the very least I reckon he spends 3 days a year working on charity stuff (very least), which is 1% of his time. How many of us spend even that little working on charity, or donate that much salary? I don't. Give the man a break. (and relevant or not I don't own a single U2 CD).

Ole Gunnar Soleskjar apparently gave the £2m proceeds of his testimonial match to African Education charities. Bill Gates is giving most of his money to projects in Africa. I know that they are rich, but they don't have to do it. I think the people who can criticse them are people who are doing more (in terms of effort not necessarily money). The rest of us are free to do our own thing.

Who wants to set up a Word fund to tackle Aids in Africa? I'll chuck in a few quid.

I guess this is a timely thread. Back in June,the New York Times (June 30 2008) reported that Red would launch a music download service with new songs from U2, Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello this September. According to the NYT, Red will deliver three new exclusive songs (or other content) a week for a monthly fee of US$5. Half will go to the Global Fund through Red, and the other half will go to the artists and their record companies...