Welcome to UBC Blogs. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

This is the Original Ford Breast Cancer Awareness Advertisement

This advertisement reveals Ford Motor Company’s affiliation with and corporate sponsorship of the breast cancer pink ribbon campaign of the largest breast cancer organization, the Susan G. Komen Foundation. The advertisement is from Ford’s website and actually functions as a link to a page with 20 rather banal examples of what a person can do to make the day better for a breast cancer patient with suggestions including baking the person cookies, or taking the cancer patient on a secret outing. On the surface, this particular advertisement, which clearly established Ford as caring about breast cancer, and the concomitant 20 simple ways to give more good days to breast cancer patients, appears to establish Ford as an ethical company which has joined the pink ribbon campaign to fight breast cancer. The company has even come up with its own breast cancer fighting slogan, “Warriors in Pink: Powered by Ford.” I apologize that the small text “Powered by Ford” is hard to read. This is just one of the myriad of technical problems I have encountered trying to this assignment. There is, however, one glaring hypocritical element to Ford’s being a corporate sponsor to the Susan G. Komen Foundation’s pink ribbon campaign. This hypocritical element is that Ford produces a product that spews carcinogenic chemicals into the air, and therefore, contributes to cancer, including breast cancer. Ford, therefore, is one of many companies that exploit  breast cancer through sponsorship, and in the process enhance their perceived corporate responsibility without actually changing their practice. This is known as pink washing. In fact, Ford has recently moved away from the production of smaller automobiles and electric vehicles to focus solely on the production of gas-using SUVs and trucks, which furthers the company’s commitment to causing cancer, while vastly reducing its commitment to decrease its output of carcinogens (Jaggar 2018). It is this hypocrisy that my jammed advertisement will focus on.

Jammed Ford Breast Cancer Awareness Advertisement

According to Jaggar, pink washing is when a corporation exploits cancer awareness month through sponsorship, even though that company produces products and carries out business practices that are associated with causing cancer. The theme of my culture jam is the pink washing carried out by Ford, which is why the phrase ‘pink washing’ appears three times on my jam, including being placed right over the Ford logo at the bottom of the advertisement. In addition, at the bottom of the advertisement, I changed the original text of ‘Warriors in Pink’ to “Cancer Causer Masked in Pink.’ In order to establish that Ford is a pink washing organization, this jammed advertisement reveals that car exhaust produces a number of carcinogens, including benzene, 1,3-butadiene, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). It also reveals that benzene is a mammary carcinogen, which means that it specifically targets breasts. In fact, benzene is such a strong mammary carcinogen that it causes breast cancer in both men and women (Jaggar). To highlight the contribution automobiles make to cancer, I included the following statistic at the bottom of the advertisement: ‘30% of pollution cancer caused by automobiles.’ To highlight Ford’s contribution to cancer, I included the tire track graphic, which says, ‘Chemicals in exhaust’ right above the Ford logo in the bottom-left corner. Below the logo,  I added the words ‘More Cancer’ so the text reads, “Ford: Go Further, More Cancer.’

The main text focus of the original advertisement reads, ’20 simple ways to give more good days to breast cancer patients.’ However, I changed this text by adding the text headed by ‘Auto Exhaust’ over the ’20.’ I then changed the remaining text to read, ‘simple ways to give more breast cancer to breast cancer patients.’ I think that this text change is powerful and revealing as it exposes Ford as being a cause of breast cancer as opposed to being a champion of breast cancer. One of the reoccurring themes of GRSJ 300 has been the power that hegemony has to control discourse. In the case of the pink washing by Ford and other corporations, this manifests in the creation a very distorted view of these companies’ relationships with cancer.

References

Jaggar, K. (October 18, 2018). Breast Cancer Action Tells Ford Motor Company to Stop Pinkwashing!. Sierra Club  https://www.sierraclub.org/articles/2018/10/breast-cancer-action-tells-ford-motor-company-stop-pinkwashing