AWARE OF THE ISSUES

˜AWARE OF THE ISSUES

Every year we make it through one of them after another. I refer to those ubiquitous ˜awareness months (or occasionally weeks)-organ donor awareness, diabetes awareness, volunteer awareness, kidney disease awareness to name but a very few. My personal favourite, and clearly a favourite among those corporations seeking to spend their strategic philanthropy budget, is breast cancer awareness month. Let's use breast cancer awareness as an example of a cause as we discuss the ethics of public relations campaigns hooked to the coattails of good causes.

Before we embark on this discussion, I feel the need to provide full disclosure. I do not have breast cancer. However, before you begin to draw conclusions, you also need to know that both my mother and my sister had breast cancer. So, I suppose that I might develop it some day, too. But then so might many other women, since the main risk factor in the development of this disease is being a woman . That said, you need to know that I feel no particular compulsion to ˜run for the cure , to ˜cook for the cure ˜, or any of the other activities that are designed to enhance the images of organizations ”from banks to vacuum cleaner manufacturers ”that have pinned pink ribbons to their products, services and employees .

Cause- related marketing and strategic philanthropy programmes are bedrock public relations tools with enormous capacities to develop mutually beneficial outcomes for both the sponsoring organization and the cause being supported. ˜Good causes are usually in desperate need of support from the profit-minded sector and profit-minded organizations need to enhance the communities in which they function. So, it seems like a marriage made in heaven. But are there any ethical lines that need to be considered in the strategic decision-making about which causes to support? I believe that there are ”however, they are murky and fraught with controversy. Breast cancer is only one of a number of what appear to be clearly good causes that might be less clear on second thought.