In support of International Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the NFL players are wearing pink shoes, gloves, caps, and sweatbands. Besides, many brands are using pink in their ads to embrace the idea and show supports. Pink is everywhere this October.
No one can argue the Pink campaign has not been successful in raising awareness of breast cancer, but it seems the campaign had already began to show signs of overexposure and a potential for losing its authenticity due to a sort of “pink overload” that may happen as more and more companies joined the campaign.
Some voices from people:
- Genuiness Problem: it’s only about pink. People were wearing pink during the game, but there were no promo, or commercial during the game that gives any information about the cause;
- A backlash of consumer cynicism from people who just want to watch their football without the pink towels and buy their products without constant pink reminders;
- “What about other cancers or other preventable deadly diseases?” Awareness around breast cancer is well beyond that of most comparable illnesses;
- Instead of investing so much time and effort into somewhat meaningless symbolism, the campaign would be better off trying to capitalize on the ubiquity. Breast cancer groups may be better served to focus on a couple times of year where people are most likely to support the campaign monetarily and drive research.
I am not sure how much money so far has been invested in the campaign or how much fund they have raised from it, but it is always good to consider from time to time the benefits we derive from the branding strategy and the cost accociated to it, namely, the brand equity.
Another thing we’ve learned from the text book is that companies shoud be vigilant in protecting their brand names, because if they are used so generically, over time, the brand itself can lose its trademark status. As for the pink campaign, overexposure may cause a loss of authenticity or even provoke consumer cynicism.
However, the question was and remains, where is the imaginary line between adequateexposure and overexposure???
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