Project Red: Blog 3

In class we recently covered boycotts and buycotts and how our roles as consumers in these actions influence companies' actions. I was particularly interested in Product Red, a brand associated with corporate companies such as Apple, Emporio Armani, Converse, and Starbucks. Product Red's overall goal is to use the purchasing power of Red-labeled products to help fight HIV/AIDS. I found the Red site visually pleasing: clean, minimal, easy to navigate. They even include other global issues such as education, agriculture, and elimination of debt. However, that's all it was. What irked me the most was the lack of resources to investigate the statistics and statements presented.

An article critiquing Project Red's motives and actual success claims that around 160,000 Africans will be put on anti-retrovirals, orphans are being taken care of in Swaziland, and an HIV/AIDS program has been established in Rwanda. This information still provides the general public without a good idea of how Product Red delivers the money, or how any other aspects of poverty mentioned above tie into these funds. This also might just be more difficult for me to understand since I am a science major, and have never taken economics or business.

What I do know, however, is that the overall goal of treating people with HIV/AIDS is not a solution to poverty or disease in developing countries, and I do not feel like Project Red helps motivate people to actually prevent disease, or get involved with the larger issues. HIV/AIDS is not only a retroviral disease, but also a political one. For example, the former South African president, Thabo Mbeki, claimed that AIDS was a plot in order to defame Africans and was instigated by "avaricious" pharmaceutical companies. Only until 2008, after Mbeki's forced resignation has South Africa become successful in obtaining and distributing antiretroviral drugs.

Although the purpose of Product Red clearly means well, could it end up doing more harm than good by saying that joining their website and buying their product is enough?

Click HERE to open the feedback tool.