Sunshocked

I should be happy about people adapting their buying habits to incorporate solutions to the world’s problems. If you’re going to buy an iPod Nano, why shouldn’t you get the red one for the same price and help fight AIDS in Africa, right? Still, the whole thing puts a really bad taste in my mouth.

The term “Conspicuous Consumption” was coined in 1899 to describe (with no small amount of disdain) the buying patterns of the Nouveau Riche. They suddenly had lots of money and wanted to let everyone know. Huge cars, lavish mansions, fur coats, sparklin’ dookie, etc.

Who’s sexier: George Cloonery or Al Gore?

The same thing seems to be happening with the trend-setting creative class in the present day. These Nouveau Righteous have developed a conscience and, by god, they’re going to let people know. Fashion magazines this summer were abuzz with the new “Eco-Chic” trend (as opposed to Eco-Chick, which is always in season). Everyone was checking labels to make sure they were toting certified organic, sustainably cultivated, fair-trade clutch bags that really reflected their worldly values on the way to the plastic surgeon for lipo, in their Hummer.

Evangeline Lilly thinks you should wear more hemp.

Making known one’s ethical affiliations is nothing new. Bumper-stickers proclaiming preferences for love-making over war-making could have grandkids by now and the colored-ribbon frenzy of the 90s has merely evolved into the colored-bracelet frenzy of the 00s (no, not that one). Still, there’s something about the ultra-ubiquitous white iPod as symbol for cultural capital that suggested to me that this (RED)^TM coalition was more about capitalism than activism. Afterall, fancy iPods and Bono go hand-in-hand.

The (RED)^TM campaign (yes, they’ve trademarked the term “(RED)”) has a wonderful manifesto that explains their intention with the branding strategy. My favorite bit is reproduced below:

(RED) is not a charity. It is simply a business model. You buy (RED) stuff. We get the money, buy the pills and distribute them. … If they don’t get the pills, they die. We don’t want them to die, we want to give them the pills…

Does that read like a protection racket to anybody else? “Hey kid, buy this iPod or Africans die. I could help ‘em out y’know, all you gotta do is buy this iPod. C’mon, you wouldn’t want anything bad should happen.” This is strange to me, because the (RED)^TM products seem to be priced exactly the same as their non-African saving contemporaries, what kind of “business model” is that?

The new face of activism?

In the end, I don’t think this campaign is truly about leveraging the power of consumption to help resolve the world’s tragedies, it’s leveraging the world’s tragedies—and the incredible transformative power of activism—to further fuel consumption. Otherwise, we could skip the iPods and just send $10 to The Global Fund ourselves and save $189 plus tax. The truth is that many corporate business plans rely on Third World poverty to keep costs down and if we really want to address global inequities, it’s probably not best accomplished by pouring money into the very institutions that have perpetuated them.