What's Your View of Pink October?
Okay, I should preface this by saying this post is off-topic from my usual platform, which is patient safety and preventable medical errors. But after being bombarded with "pink" merchandise all weekend (which included a pink bagel) I could hold my tongue no longer. I put a post up here on my personal blog and would love to hear your take. Has October's Pink movement worn out its welcome?
DK
DK
Tags: breast, cancer, health, healthcare, marketing, women's
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by amanda on -
I thought this was such an interesting topic too. I wrote about it here. As someone who's always fascinated with women's rights and the inner-workings of the ad industry, I can't help but take a cynical view of this pink party.
On one hand, I think it's great that women can rally together. On the other hand, I see a vague mass manipulation and taking-advantage-of this awful plight. I think the quote from the Boston Globe article about how making everything pink really just masks the horrible, real aspects of the cancer - is so true.
Why do we have to package things nicely to get them the attention they deserve? Why do we always associate pink with women? Why isn't this sort of publicity distributed among other types of cancers and diseases? In the office today we were talking about Gap's "Red" campaign and how it failed to garner the support they thought it would. They had great intentions (spreading "awareness" about HIV/AIDS) but ended up spending a ton of money on the merchandise and advertising (most of which they did not make back in profits. Ironic that the "Red" campaign is actually in the red!)
I think there has to be a balance between sensationalizing sad or depressing things for shock-value (the news, entertainment, etc) and glossing over it for show (like the pink movement). What's the happy medium? How can we stay true to life without scaring people away? Should we worry about scaring people away when the cause or disease is, in fact, scary?
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