• by George Simpson , Featured Contributor, March 16, 2007

According to a story I read on AdAge.com, the collective marketing outlay by Gap, Apple and Motorola for the Red campaign in the past 12 months has been enormous, with some estimates as high as $100 million. But it has resulted in less than $20 million in donations to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

How can it be that major-league celebs like Steven Spielberg, Christy Turlington, Oprah Winfrey, Chris Rock and most conspicuously of all, Bono, can't get citizens of the developed nations motivated to help their suffering fellow man? And what about all that corporate marketing muscle by some of the nation's biggest brands? They can sell iPods and jeans and cell phones by the gazillions, but they can't move their customers to fork over a few bucks that would save lives around the world?

Hmmm? How'd the wheels come off this truck?

One POV worth a listen is Mark Rosenman's, a longtime activist in the nonprofit sector and a public-service prof at the Union Institute & University in Cincinnati, who told Ad Age that "There is a broadening concern that business is taking on the patina of philanthropy and crowding out philanthropic activity and even substituting for it." He added: "It benefits the for-profit partners much more than the charitable causes."

This is a nice way of saying that perhaps consumers are suspect of the real intentions of marketers who tie themselves to worthy causes. Who among us has not smirked at Anheuser-Busch's reminders to "Drink Responsibly." Or laughed out loud at Phillip Morris' anti-smoking campaign (even if it was mandated by a court settlement). On the other hand, Avon's backing of breast cancer research is said to be hugely successful. All the polls report that younger kids like corporations that tie themselves to causes they care about.

Maybe, just maybe, the marketing of Red was all wrong. While there were lots of big names involved and the messaging tried to be hip, cool, even sexy, what might have been lost in the neon was the immediacy and importance of the cause. One could argue it is too early in the going to judge the campaign a failure and that the initial effort was to build awareness, not rake in money. But advertising and marketing live in a new age of accountability, and when the ROI doesn't measure up, the broom sweeps the CMO out the door without so much as a "Nice try, anyway."

Corporations are persistently locked in a struggle between those who subscribe to the Alfred Sloan dictum that "The business of business is business," and the more modern Peter Drucker-inspired notion of corporate social responsibility that argues you will thrive if you make the world around you a better place (especially for your customers).

I confess that I am well out of the target audience for the Red message (and in fact, until writing this, couldn't have told you exactly what diseases are in its crosshairs), so I come at this from the disadvantage of age. But as my old man used to say, "I can't lay an egg, but I know a rotten one when I see it."

All of this star power and marketing outlay for exactly $18 million in income? You be the judge.