Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Buy less

Although I admire its good intentions, I have to say that in terms of efficacy and overall business model, I'm not a big fan of (RED). Worldchanging and SSI made some particularly strong critiques in fall 2006... I would love to see some more recent and more complete data.

Today, one of my clients showed me this serious parody site, which makes some of the same points a bit more provocatively.

1 comment:

The Food Guy said...

I've read through the critiques and I find the on point. That said, I bought some (Red) shirts from the GAP in the hopes that exactly what has happened would. Random people saying to me some version of "so what's the deal with the shirts, I see posters with them everywhere." And then I get the chance to talk about HIV/AIDS in Africa and elsewhere.

Certainly the program could be better (Greenblatt's list of suggestions are excellent ones) but the "education" and opportunities for dialoge are what I find most exciting about the entire effort.

I also don't know exactly what I think about criticisms of using proven advertising techniques; ie, partial nudity, etc. It seems to me that you have to choose which part of the world you want to try to save first and that trying to save multiple parts all at once is often a no win proposition.