I Saw Red

Over the last week or so I have been doing research for our final assignment. The only thing I feel I’ve uncovered is more questions.

My initial research was to simply look into what most companies call their “social responsibility.” Being the mild cynic I am I went into this assignment thinking I was going to uproot the evil of these massive corporations. Thankfully I seem to be wrong. There are a lot of big corporations involved in saving lives all over the world.

Wikipedia states that social responsibility is, “A doctrine that claims that an entity whether it is state, government, corporation, organization or individual has a responsibility to society.” It seems that as of late more and more companies want us to know just how responsible they are. From Gap Inc. to MTV to Converse, we are seeing marketing that says, “Hey, buy our products because we’re responsible.” When consumers buy responsible they too get the satisfaction of feeling like they’ve made a difference.

At first I thought that this article was going to show me what a crock all of these companies were, but it seems maybe my bad attitude was wrong. Though I still stand by my argument that the Gap’s Project Red clothes are pretty ugly I have a new respect for what they are trying to do for Africa. Their clothes are over priced and the quality is terrible, but if people are going to buy the clothes anyway why not save some lives in the process? And the questions begin…

As I try and pin down a focus for my main argument I’m constantly torn between whether I should try and prove these new campaigns are really helping or just a gimmick. For every positive article on the topic there seems to be an equally negative one in its midst.

From celebrities adopting less fortunate children, to Cameron Diaz promoting the new Al Gore (green) music festival what will come of it all in ten years? Is this just another fad or is the world beginning to realize serious change needs to be made? If companies sell Red products but make the price higher are they ripping us off or asking us to have a heart? And if we do have a heart, is all this advertising just a way to make us feel guilty for not doing enough? From each question I ask more and more appear, leading me farther from my lede. Maybe I should just make my whole piece a series of questions. It’ll be just like a day of researching for me.

The topic is so broad and there are so many great causes that it seems an impossible task to sum into one sentence.

There is always more reading to be done, more campaigns to acknowledge and more questions to ask. For now I’ll be surfing the internet in search of some answers.