Religion and your brand: A lethal combination?

religion and your brand

So, as my Twitter feed fills up with endless tweets about the vapidity that is Pinterest, I can’t help noticing that marketing types aren’t talking a whole lot about this week’s debacle involving the Susan G. Komen foundation and their funding of Planned Parenthood.

For those of you who haven’t been following the story, here it is in a nutshell:  Susan G. Komen For the Cure, the organization which brought you the ubiquitous ‘pink ribbons’, raises something like $400 million annually for cancer-fighting-related causes.  This year, they were slated to give $700k of that to Planned Parenthood, an organization which works to “…improve women’s health and safety, prevent unintended pregnancies, and advance the right and abilities of individuals to make informed and responsible choices.”  Pro-lifers in the US interpret this to mean that Planned Parenthood ‘promotes’ abortion; pro-choicers see Planned Parenthood as a vital resource for disadvantaged women who are most in need of assistance.

Last week, Komen announced it would pull their grant to Planned Parenthood.  The religious right was thrilled, because they saw it as a victory for their agenda.  But the left-wing internet blew up, and Komen not only reversed its stance but parted ways with Senior VP Karen Handel (a former gubernatorial candidate who was outspoken in her desire to defund Planned Parenthood), who was widely believed to be the architect of Komen’s initial move to withdraw their Planned Parenthood grant.

This is really all about politics and religion

Most of the mainstream media is carefully skirting the issue, but let’s be honest here:  The whole furor about Komen, Planned Parenthood and Handel is all to do with politics and religion.  And these days, especially in the US, politics and religion are inextricably intertwined.  

And here’s where Komen has just done itself a huge amount of damage.  In a matter of days, they’ve gone from a fairly neutral, non-profit, friendly-pink-everything organization to one which has managed to antagonize both the left-leaning, less religious camp (by withdrawing their support for Planned Parenthood) and the right-wing, conservative Christian camp (by reversing their decision and getting rid of Handel).

Komen has now become both political and religious, and it’s already causing huge problems for the brand.

They’ve made it okay to boycott pink ribbons

I don’t know about you, but when I saw pink KFC buckets of chicken and pink M&Ms, I had to wonder if the whole pink ribbon campaign had gone too far – should we really be eating more fried foods while telling ourselves that we’re helping women’s health?  And I had heard rumours about how the Komen foundation was more interested in selling pink stuff than they were in actually finding a cure for cancer.

But I wasn’t about to stand up and start criticizing pink stuff, because I’d look like a misanthropic luddite who didn’t appreciate awareness or research or, even worse, was somehow ‘against’ supporting women with breast cancer.

It turns out I wasn’t alone, however, and the events of the last few days have opened the floodgates.  The blogosphere is abuzz with commentary – from the leftthe right, and the alternative-living types – all of whom are not only angry with Komen’s moves this week, but who are also getting more vocal with their criticisms of Komen’s practices around inflated salaries, questionable product endorsements, and relationships with pharmaceutical companies.

 

A brand misstep of New Coke proportions.  Or at least Netflix.

Two weeks ago, I would have said that Komen was one of the most successful non-profit brands in the world, and in fact could compete with for-profit brands in terms of top-of-mind awareness and loyalty – they’ve raised something more than $1 billion in less than 10 years.

Today…I don’t think Komen is going to collapse overnight.  There are too many people with too much emotionally invested – and too many brands with too many runs and events and products invested – in Komen-related programs for the whole organization to implode in the next five minutes.  But if their bottom line hasn’t been cut in half in the next 18 months, I’ll be greatly surprised.  I only hope that that money finds its way to other cancer-fighting causes.