"Shop and Do Good?" (Product Red) (Report‪)‬

Product Red, a new brand initiative by U2's front man Bono is being discussed in the above quote. The brand is designed to "eliminate AIDS in Africa" and its founding premise is that "Good business is more sustainable than philanthropy." (iii) Product Red is based on the idea that you can "shop and do good at the same time." (iv) The campaign has raised $100 million for the Global Fund, which is the world's leading funder of programs to fight AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. (v) This suggests that Product Red is saving lives. Should "whatever works" be the principal criterion for the global fight against HIV and AIDS, even when it requires one to draw on problematic discourses to attract consumers? The campaign employs heroic language which implies that those who support it are the "saviors" of its beneficiaries. The affective impact of this language, however, comes at the cost of recycling stereotypical images of Africa and the "Third World" and constructing northern consumers as "samaritans." Our point of departure is to consider the tactics applied by Product Red in campaigning about HIV/AIDS treatment, in comparison to the approach of the South African AIDS activist organization, the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC). TAC has successfully been campaigning for access to antiretroviral medications for people living with HIV, on a local, national, and global level. (vi) TAC employs an activist vocabulary, using words such as "community," "knowledge," and "mobilization" in their campaign "for equitable access to affordable treatment for all people living with HIV/AIDS." (vii) We wish to discuss how Product Red employs and appropriates this kind of vocabulary. Product Red works with some of the world's most iconic brands, such as: American Express[TM], Apple[TM], Armani[TM], Converse[TM], Dell[TM], GapTM, Hallmark[TM], Microsoft[TM], and Motorola[TM]. These companies produce Product Red branded (viii) products and they donate a percentage of each product to The Global Fund. In 2007, Bono was asked to edit an edition on Africa for the magazine Vanity Fair. (ix) This paper will analyze both the Product Red website and the "Africa" edition of Vanity Fair. We will examine how "Africa" is packaged for consumption by western (x) consumers. Further we will discuss some of the Red slogans and advertising strategies, considering the kinds of representations produced and reproduced in these texts and images. What representations of HIV positive African women and children are produced and reproduced?