Pink v. Yellow? I note from the above posts that ASDA (and my goodness, aren’t they getting some free publicity here?) have a questionable reputation on fair trade issues, in particular with regard to the banana growing communities. Would it be appropriate for them to right this situation by launching a Sunshine Yellow campaign to raise funds to help the very people they’re exploiting? But perhaps I’m being too cynical here. Maybe, just maybe, the tycoons of this empire do secretly donate some of their billions pounds profits to offset damage done in these communities. Maybe they secretly donate to our cause too, and the Tickled Pink campaign is just a tiny part of their donation, for the purpose of raising awareness amongst its customers of the disease and its problems.
Shaun, I’m sorry to go off topic here and I do appreciate the work that your instore staff do to raise awareness and funds for our cause - thank you all for that. BUT, let me explain …You have inadvertently stepped into a controversial subject that blew up on this forum last year at this time. You see, when the majority of people use the phrase TICKLED PINK it’s because they are absolutely over the moon to have received or experienced something. You can imagine, therefore, how that grates with people who are going through gruelling treatment in an attempt to give them a few extra years of life, some of them in their 20s with babies.
Oh yes, and on the topic of fundraising, in our church we have to raise many thousands of pounds a year through fundraising, just to keep the church open, not just for the regular Sunday worshippers but for the general public who expect it to be there for their funerals, baptisms, weddings etc. The idea of a huge conglomerate such as Asda scrabbling away trying to think up fundraising ideas is quite frankly laughable. (Shaun, I’m not getting at you - you have your job to do and my suggestion is an instore coffee morning with creche).
Thanks for the info in your last post Daphne, interesting read.
I too am finding it rather worrying that we (who have breast cancer) can’t discuss or debate on a forum for ‘‘Current Issues/hot topics’’ without a moderator intervening.
Yes the thread has moved on from Shaun’s first post asking for fund raising ideas but on a chat forum all threads will do this.
Please stick to the topic in this thread Dear users
To re-iterate what the moderator said eariler in this thread,
Shaun started this thread to ask for fundraising ideas. In this thread can you stick to this topic. If you wish to start a new thread discussing ASDA then of course you are quite welcome to do so.
Dear Moderator To re-iterate what members - people living with breast cancer - have said, you cannot simply divorce the fundraising campaign from the ethics of the multinational company running the campaign. People have legitimate questions; please stop treating us like children.
Adding my support I want to add my words of support for the various well-drafted words posted above by Belinda, Daphne, Louise2, Tigerlily and Kathelinor.
First, as has been pointed out, the very name TICKLED PINK grates unbearably - silly, fluffy image of being very pleased indeed about something. It’s not the pink colour in itself that I object to necessarily (I occasionally wear it myself) it’s the girly-girly soft-centred image that revolts me. Breast Cancer is a vile, destructive disease which each year in the UK robs 42,000 women (and yes, OK, some men) of their strength and happiness - and takes the lives of 15,000. THAT is why the very campaign title it is so objectionable. It is a desperately serious subject. My own situation is that having extensive metastatic disease I am going to die of breast cancer very much sooner than later.
Second, this sort of campaign is a two-edged sword, raising money for the charities concerned and promoting “positive” image for the commercial promoter in question. As for the percentages of money raised/donated this is an entirely valid issue to raise within a discussion about how - and indeed WHETHER - to participate in this particular project.
Finally, I find the patronisingly interventionist style of moderation lately adopted on this forum exasperating at least and highly objectionable at worst. “Hot topics” (note the designation “Hot”) is a place for (polite) debate. None of the previous contributions on this topic have moved from that base.
NB: I support the head-shaving idea for fund-raising. This is the only truly subject-relevant notion among those mentioned so far. I suppose it would be too much to suppose that both men and women would participate - although I would imagine that any brave woman participating would raise more than the men.
Moderator Since we are all re-iterating ourselves, perhaps then, moderator, you can assure us that if you are taking this stance here, you will take the same stance in the following types of situation that i posed earlier:…
…“If we carry on down this route, moderator, you will have to step in all the time. What about the posts where someone asks a question about, say, lyphodemia, and then someone replies to ask how the questioners op went - you’ll have to tell the person asking about the op that they must not do so as its ‘off topic’! Absurd?”…
Maybe you will now go through ALL the topics and post the same message that you have posted here about not straying from the subject - most of the threads on this web site are ‘guilty’ of that, if you take this ultra-rigid stance. The daft thing is that this thread was still within the very subject that Shaun brought up - the Tickled Pink’ campaign. “Absurd?”, i asked - yes it is. Why bother to have forums at all, why not just put up here what you want and not allow any members of the public to talk to one another at all, since you are obviously not wanting naturally flowing discusion - and thats what discusssion and debate does: discussion does flow, it does not stay in one place. I feel so angry that i am being patronised in this manner.
Adding support too I don’t have anything else to add to the very well constructed posts in this threat, but wanted to add my support to all those that have expressed their views on the Asda campaign.
I was 37 when diagnosed with grade 3 breast cancer, and have since found out I carry a faulty BRCA1 gene. After 2 years of treatment and surgery, I still have a 10% of bc recurrence and nearly that of ovarian cancer - this certainly doesn’t make me feel tickled pink.
I also find the moderators recent contributions to be extremely patronising. As Louise2 said, we’re not children. We should be able to air our views about a campaign that is so personal to us, as long as it’s done constructively, which I feel this post definitely has been.
In Chit-Chat and fun, the moderator started a thread which contains this:
"we are starting a new thread, entitled ‘your fundraising events and experiences’ and would ask that if you want to post anything about a fundraising event you post it only here.
We would also ask that no professional fundraisers post here, it is purely for people affected by breast cancer."
Couple of questions - why wasn’t this thread moved to the right part of the forum by the moderator and if “it is purely for people affected by breast cancer”, why has a representative of ASDA been allowed to post about fundraising - is he not a professional fundraiser, part of his employee duties to ASDA being to work on this on their behalf? Would a Tesco employee be allowed to post on this forum to encourage support for Cancer Research UK’s Race for Life?
Personally I don’t object to Shaun’s request for ideas being allowed on this forum, but it should have been put in the right place.
I think that before the moderators start pulling up the forum members about going “off topic”, they need to look at why they appear to be allowing their own rules about fundraising threads to be broken. If BCC wishes to change its rules to allow representatives of corporations to come on this forum to drum up support, then it has to acknowledge that some forum members will ask searching questions about the altruism and motivations of the corporation.
If BCC doesn’t want this to happen, the answer’s simple. Don’t allow representatives of corporations to post in this forum.
Also, I think the moderator should take all the feedback that this thread has generated back to the BCC and ASDA fundraising teams and see whether they want to improve the PR for this campaign and provide answers to some of the questions raised about the finances. A change of campaign name to something less controversial would be a start.
I would also like to add that I have no objection to Shaun’s request for ideas - see end of this post - and i applaud him for raising the money.
I agree with Janet that the campaign is to raise awareness. I don’t, however believe the addage that all publicity is good publicity. I think to portray it as something that is light hearted and to be ‘thrilled with’ - i.e. ‘tickled pink’ - is the wrong impression here. The name makes light of this terrible disease. Unlike ‘Race for Life’.
The campaign does raise awareness, and of course money for charity, but it also does many other things, including the following:
directly makes money for Asda
creates a ‘fun event’ to draw in customers, creates ‘good customer feeling’ and hence more custom & money for Asda
makes the working week more ‘fun’ for employees, building on teamwork, and creating employee goodwill.
All these will have been factored in by Asda when doing this, else they would just make a charity donation. If i understand correctly, Asda/Walmart aren’t actually donating any of their own profits here - they are getting their customers (and staff?) to donate while they actually make more money out of it. (is that correct, or am I being too cynical?)
IDEAS FOR SHAUN: yes, the head shave is pertinent, so a good one. If you want lots of events going on all week then i think some will not be so pertinent.
-Sponsored walk around the car park?
-How about, (since ‘other halves’ seem to be the bane of our lives sometimes when going through this) a sponsored creche - but for adult men with TV and refreshments - the men pay to go into the ‘creche’ while the wives do the shopping - or the other way round too?
This is probably off topic too… How come if we want to talk about our fundraising experiences we’re sidelined into a single thread created just for it, but if someone (new to the site) working for a large company and raising money for BCC want’s to talk to us about their fundraising they can have a thread of their own, policed by the moderators to stop us questioning the campain???
Perspectives I understand why people are not happy about “Tickled Pink” but feel that companies such as ASDA should not be shouted down when they are making donations to charties. After all they don’t have to make the donations. They are a business at the end of the day and they need to make money to survive, whatever the rights and wrongs of that are!
Perhaps if the Government of this country had got things right then we would not be debating this now! Instead of putting funds in, the Government continue their cut-backs into the NHS. In my local Trust they have continued to cut services for breast patients. If it were not for charitable dontations into cancer research and care I don’t think I would be here today, along with the friends I have made along my way through treatment so instead of complaining about how the money for research comes our way, what about shouting about what the government is doing to our Health Service and being grateful for what we get!
Sorry if this has gone off thread at all but its how I feel!
Gilly you certainly haven’t gone off-topic in expressing your opinion.
I absolutely agree with you that funding cancer research should be the responsibility of a properly-funded NHS, and it’s a scandal that instead it must rely on charitable donations.
But let’s be clear: ASDA is NOT making a donation to charity. It is profiting both financially and in terms of publicity by organising a fundraising campaign which relies on the goodwill and unselfishness of ordinary people, including ASDA employees, many of whom have very little to give. At the same time, as previous posts have shown, its ethics give cause for serious concern.
If WalMart/ASDA genuinely wants to support breast cancer charities, it could start by donating one tenth of its profits; that’d be 30 billion just for last year. No need for trivialising a deadly disease with pink nonsense then.
ASDA will still make huge profits whether or not it supports Breast Cancer Care and other charities. ASDA is only doing this to increase its profits and get some publicity - same as all the other companies that work with cancer charities. I’m sure the charities have very little control over their corporate supporters. If they upset them there are plenty of other charities jostling in the queue to take their place.
It could be argued that we, as users of Breast Cancer Care’s services are beneficiaries of the money contributed by ASDA and are biting the hand that feeds us.
I accept that ASDA’s involvement must make a huge difference to Breast Cancer Care’s finances, but that doesn’t mean that we, the beneficiaries, shouldn’t question ASDA’s ethics and the tastelessness of making money out of cancer. There has to be a better way to raise funds for cancer than this. Unfortunately it seems that it’s only people who’ve had breast cancer that are prepared to ask these awkward yet important questions.
The film that was recently made about Walmart, the parent company of ASDA, and which is very critical of their activities, can be bought on ASDA’s website and you can read a review there in which Walmart is described as a “corporate monster”
Why does ASDA sell a DVD that critcises their own parent company? Do they hope their customers are too stupid to realise that Walmart owns ASDA? - but the top left hand corner of the web page clearly says “ASDA part of the Walmart family”.
I think they are just very cynical and it’s more important to them to make money out of a film that slags off their parent company than try to defend their corporate ethics and boycott the film. I hope their customers and employees are proud of them for that.
If anyone’s interested in the controversy surrounding the amount of power and influence that multinational corporations have in the world today, there’s a very good DVD called “The Corporation” that you can buy or rent.
I think Shaun’s original post was advertising If it wasn’t seeking publicity for Asda, then the information about “opening a new LIVING store on September 15th at Crown Point Retail Park in Leeds, West Yorkshire,” was superfluous . The address and opening date for the new store was is irrelevant if he only wanted help with fundraising ideas.
The moderators should have given serious consideration to deleting it entirely or, putting it in their preferred spot with heavy editing to remove some of the unnecessary advertising for Asda.
To quote the moderators" Therefore we are starting a new thread, entitled ‘your fundraising events and experiences’ and would ask that if you want to post anything about a fundraising event you post it only here.
We would also ask that no professional fundraisers post here, it is purely for people affected by breast cancer. We will not allow direct appeals for sponsorship or links to other sites which are purely for sponsorship purposes. "
No point in having rules if we don’t stick to them. Let’s get really strict about this before the pink season gets started in earnest.
I think BCC should also refuse to get involved with any commercial organisation who is not prepared to say how much of the purchase price of the goods is going to charity. The attitude last year was that any extra money was to be welcomed regardless of strings attached, offence caused to patients or the dispropprtionate benefit to the other organisation. Supporting breast cancer charities gets an organisation kudos so they should pay appropriately for it. and behave in a sensitive manner.
BCC’s press pack for Breast Cancer Awareness month 2006 features products from ASDA’s Tickled Pink range and states that all profits from each product will go to breast cancer charities. That tells you nothing. If you buy a pair of pink wellies for £12, you have no idea what ASDA’s profit margin is on that product so you don’t know how much of that £12 goes to the charities.
Personally, I think that there should be a law that makes retailers state exactly how much of each purchase of goods sold to support charities goes to the charities. Then people can decide whether that’s a good way to support a charity or whether they want to do it differently.
I don’t think it’s realistic to expect BCC and other charities not to work with corporations like ASDA. The charities make loads of money out of it, so why would they stop? The only way to change all the pink froth and commercialism that surrounds Pink October is if enough people with breast cancer go public on what they don’t like about it. And I’m not sure that the people it offends are in the majority. I think many and, quite possibly, most breast cancer patients are quite happy with things as they are.
I was reminded recently that, earlier this year, ASDA stopped selling a pink and black, frilly, push - up bra and knicker set aimed at the 9 years old age group, after complaints from parents. Presumably it’s corporate policy to make money out of pubescent breasts as well as diseased ones.
OK, it’s not just ASDA that do this sort of stuff, but they draw particular attention to themselves because of using the term “Tickled Pink”.
going public I think Daphne is right that many (most I’m not sure though?) people with breast cancer like the pink fluff that goes with corporate advertising. So those of us who don’t do indeed need to go vocal.
So I’m going to think through a few ideas I have for doing just that…though I guess using this website for advertising them perhaps isn’t the best place! Biting the hand as Daphne says.
So I’ll just raise one heretical thought. Just because ASDA et al raise loads of money for breast cancer charities isn’t intrinsically a good thing. Its how its spent and what its spent on that matters and I must say I notice cancer charities spending money which could be better or more economically spent, or spent on different things.
Holeybones I agree with you. This thread provides a considerable advertising/marketing opportunity for Asda. On the other hand it was only through responses such as yours (and some on the other forums) that I read some views which were critical of this company.