Rethinking 'Brand Aid' in an Increasingly Unequal, Unstable, and Global World

Richey and Ponte (2011) explore the dark side of corporate social responsibility as practiced by the RED campaign. The campaign was launched in the 1990s to celebrate the possibility of doing good and helping impoverished, diseased Others in the South, while consuming products produced by its members including Starbucks, American Express, Emporio Armani, Converse, Gap, Apple, and Motorola. Buttressed by the power of celebrities such as Bono, Oprah, and Angelina Jolie, as well as development experts/celebrities such as Paul Farmer and Jeffrey Sachs, the RED campaign has provided Northern consumers with a rationale for feeling good while purchasing expensive lattes, sneakers, clothing, and computers. As the (RED) Manifesto claims, if you buy RED products, you will also support the efforts of “good, socially conscious companies” to save helpless, diseased Africans from dying of AIDS. The RED campaign thus not only provides a rationale for conscientious shopping, it also dramatizes the gap between the “rich” North and the impoverished, diseased bodies of the global South, and reinforces the neoliberal claim that unfettered but responsible capitalism is the key to solving the problems of the poverty-stricken global South

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• Brand Aid

  Mark Wheeler•The Journal of Development Studies•2012

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