Back in March I have seen stories like this describing that the (RED) campaign has been tanking.

That feel good Red campaign isn’t working out after all. It seems it took up to an estimated $100 million to bring in $18 million for the charity effort. Not exactly the best ROI for a campaign of any kind.

Groups such as Buy Less Crap  have derided the campaign claiming it’s stupid to make people spend money to buy stuff when they could just give directly to charity far more efficiently.

(RED) Failed For A Few Reasons:

• When did you find out it was for charity?I have seen buses and walls plastered with Buy (RED) visuals, yet I didn’t know it was for charity. Forget about knowing for which cause. You could claim I am clueless, but if that’s so then the campaign did a really bad job at educating me.  I happened to read about it much later, and said “ohhh, that’s what they meant”.

  It’s to battle AIDS, but look at the image above. You only see this footnote hidden in the corner, so there was no way for me to see this in any of the big visuals on buses or walls. Neither have I heard people talking about it which would educate and connect things in my head by the time I saw this ad.

  So if there’s advice here it’s that when you are putting a campaign together, make sure that people at least get it instantly. And we’re not even on conversion yet.

• Wrong Color!You must be thinking, Ari, you are nuts. AIDS and red, you know, that is adding a visual element. Well yes, but the wrong one. Red is an alarming color in our culture – and it’s true, the AIDS cause truly is alarming.

  But the last thing you need is for people to feel alarmed when you want people to open their wallets.

  People typically spend money on themselves, things that make them feel good, and out of compassion. They rarely spend money when they are alarmed without the direct dangerous cause over their own heads (at which point it would fall into the first category).

  This is why we saw a huge influx of donations for the Tsunami that hit the other year, or Katrina. That’s compassion. There are even stats that show people contribute only when they feel it can help solve a problem, where as they contribute much less for causes that become very big and rhetorical. But that’s for a different post.

  Sufficient to say that seeing red all over is not a good subliminal color for getting the desired effect.

• Sending Conflicting Messages
  
  Picking the wrong color was bad enough. But they put this alarming color all over otherwise innocent products which are very mundane.In my opinion, alarming red superimposed on Gap clothes, iPods, and expensive watches simply didn’t form a central theme. On one hand battling AIDS is a serious topic, and on the other hand I am left thinking something like this;  If this is so urgent why are we pretending life is so grand. It tries to tell us: let’s all go about our business of buying all this crap (‘our’ crap), oh and by the way, send in your money here. There’s just no sense of any urgency at all.

  On top of that, many people don’t even like to mix these topics. They may want to donate to the cause but feel it’s a bit in bad taste to put it all over the products they otherwise want to enjoy. Not everyone is into showing off what donations they make, you know.

• Feels Like a Cheap Gimmick by Big Brands

  Maybe it convinced some people, but I am sure the campaign felt like a gimmick to others. Seeing a lot of known brands trying to convince you to buy their stuff to benefit charity pisses off a number of people who feel used. The question is always, why not just donate your own portion to charity after a regular sale?

  For example a couple of months back I was shopping at Shop and Stop, and ShopRite for that matter, for food. And at checkout they tried to surprise customers with “would you like to donate a $1 for so and so kids.” It works because they sneak up on enough people who feel guilty even questioning what the cause is. 

  So instead I asked right back “Is Shop and Stop going to match my dollar with its own?” Boy did that trip their prepared lines. No, they weren’t matching, they just wanted you to feel bad, and so they didn’t get my dollar.

  There may be matching going on with the (RED) campaign, and maybe it’s not a cheap gimmick - but I don’t know about it. The fact that I haven’t bothered to even look or otherwise hear about that aspect speaks volumes about first impressions.

So yeah, I’d say, they should stick to good old donations. I don’t think I walk away thinking of (RED) something that made the battle against AIDS more urgent, more like it exploited the cause.