Breast cancer tie-ins give firms rosy glow

Oct. 15--It used to be that orange was the color for October. But now it's pink. Breast-cancer pink.

This is the 26th Breast Cancer Awareness month. And the mantra is to buy pink -- pink vacuum cleaners, irons, spatulas and mixers. Pink tweezers, pink Tic-Tacs, pink running shoes, pink wallets and passport holders. Pink mattresses, teddy bears and, new this year, SpongeBob PinkPants.

The buy pink and pink-ribbon campaigns have been around for decades and have helped erase the stigma of a terrible disease, made mammograms routine for most women, and raised millions of dollars in research money. But many breast cancer advocates are now saying that enough is enough.

Breast Cancer Action, a California advocacy group, calls it breast cancer industry month. Buying pink, they and others warn, is as much about corporate marketing and profit as breast cancer advocacy.

"This whole pretty in pink, pink products situation is almost getting out of hand," said Chris Norton, a breast cancer survivor and president of the Minnesota Breast Cancer Coalition.

"It almost makes breast cancer seem like a pretty and pink type thing, which it isn't, especially for the 40,000 [American] women who die from it each year."

Some companies, however, do launch their campaigns with genuine, heartfelt goodwill. Take the Ty Beanie Baby creation called SpongeBob PinkPants, for example. All profits from the sale of the pink version of the iconic cartoon figure -- the eternal optimist -- will be donated to breast cancer charities. And while Viacom and Nickelodeon have done other health-related benefits and promotions, this is the first time they have devoted one of their cherished cartoon creations to one.

"The last thing we wanted was something that felt commercial," said Leigh Anne Brodsky, president of Nickelodeon and Viacom Consumer Products. "We want it to be embraced as something that people would feel good doing," she said. Whether or not the company benefits from it was never part of the conversation, she said.

In 2005 alone, cause-related marketing generated more than $30 million for research and community programs for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. And the Avon Breast Cancer Crusade has raised more than $400 million worldwide over the life of its campaign, according to a spokesperson.

But the power of such marketing campaigns raises important questions about how research gets funded, said Jeff Kahn, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Minnesota. Breast cancer, after all, is not the biggest health threat to women -- heart disease is. It's not even the No. 1 cancer proving fatal to women -- lung cancer is.

"But how we allocate dollars tends to be about advocacy and whose voice is loudest," he said.

The first Breast Cancer Awareness Month was in 1985, conceived by the pharmaceutical company Zeneca, now AstraZeneca. Its original purpose was to promote mammography as the most effective weapon in fighting breast cancer, hence the emphasis on awareness.

But the campaign has exploded beyond its founders' wildest expectations. Originally led by companies with female customer bases such as Avon and Estee Lauder, and nonprofits such as the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation and the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, the pink frenzy has been joined by countless companies and organizations.

It's probably the single best example of cause marketing ever conceived, experts say. Samantha King, author of a new book, "Pink Ribbons, Inc.," says it probably only could have started in America, where philanthropy and charitable giving have become inextricably linked to consumerism.

"The U.S. is unique in that," said King, who is from Great Britain and a professor of women's studies at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. "In Britain your moral worth is so not attached to whether you give to charity. It's more attached to whether you pay your taxes."

Breast cancer awareness, it turns out, has also become a risk-free cause for corporations to promote. It's viewed as an innocent disease. Unlike heart disease, diabetes or AIDS, it's not associated with bad lifestyle choices. In other words, it's not your fault if you get it. That's not necessarily true for those other diseases, either, but often that's not the public perception.

It's also a disease that involves the breast and everything it symbolizes -- femininity, motherhood and sex. "All that sells," King said.

And then there's that color -- a perfect pale pink.

"It's symbolic of a soft, nurturing quality," said Leatrice Eiseman, a color expert and executive director of the Pantone Color Institute in Seattle. Associating it with breast cancer "takes pink out of the realm of being girly and cutesy and raises it to a new level," she said. "It speaks of a social issue."

Companies and their products like to bask in some of that glow, experts say. Consumers are more likely to be loyal to companies they believe are good corporate citizens, regardless of how much money they actually donate to the cause, according to King and breast cancer advocates.

That's why Breast Cancer Action (BCA), a San Francisco advocacy group, has for three years been urging consumers to "Think Before You Pink."

It advises asking questions before buying a product that promises to donate proceeds for breast cancer. Make sure, for example, that it's clear how much money will be donated, which organizations it supports, and whether it will truly affect the fight against breast cancer.

"If they can't tell how it's being used, find something else," said Barbara Brenner, executive director of BCA.

Think twice about the economics, she said. For example, Yoplait donates 10 cents for every pink yogurt lid mailed back to the company. But it would take four lids just to make up for the price of the stamp used to mail them, BCA points out on its website, www.bcaction.org. It might make more financial sense to mail a contribution directly to the organization of your choice, said Brenner and others.

On the other hand, those lids add up. General Mills' pink lid Yoplait campaign has generated a total of $15.5 million for breast cancer causes, said Scott Beaudoin, a spokesman for Cone Inc., which advises companies such as General Mills on cause marketing.

"Every lid matters," he said. And consumers rarely send in one or two lids at a time. They send in envelopes of 50 or more, he said.

Brenner says it's time to move beyond awareness.

"If you are not aware of breast cancer by now, you are living under a rock," she said. She and others say efforts should be more focused on research into the causes of breast cancer instead of detection and treatment. That could lead to prevention. And more money should be directed toward finding the answers to the questions posed most often by women who have the disease: Will it spread? When is chemotherapy necessary?

Norton says she fears that people become complacent when they buy pink products.

"I challenge those people to do something that has more substance to it," she said.

Josephine Marcotty -- 612-673-7394 -- marcotty@startribune.com

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Copyright (c) 2006, Star Tribune, Minneapolis

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