Jotting #24 - Gap's Red Campaign

Jotting #24 - Prompt: In light of the readings, comment on Gap’s RED campaign. Have you ever purchased a product because it made you feel countercultural?

My Response: Gap’s RED campaign has all the hype of being a wonderful thing. When looking at the face of the campaign there is little I could personally argue with. However, it is not enough to simply look at the face of the campaign. When looking at what RED signifies to Americans as consumers it becomes a bit more disheartening. It does not cause consumers to change anything but merely shift their practices. It resonates with the words of Kilbourne stating that people are not concerned with changing their behavior but simply doing something to fix the problem, after the fact. Kilbourne uses several examples to illustrate this such as “If you drink so much you wake up with a hangover . . . take an Alka-Seltzer, don’t worry about your drinking”. In sense this is what is going on with the RED campaign. Their campaign could be summarized as “If you over consume and ignore the depravity of others . . . buy our product feel good about your purchase, don’t worry about the injustice of those foreign diseases.”

However, the utilitarian comes out in me when I look at the situation from a view of its overall utility. The Gap Corporation is in fact channeling money to help bring about social justice. This is better than doing something such as increasing the paycheck of the CEO. By sending money to those infected by AIDS they are helping preserve life and improve the quality of that life. The effects of the campaign can be positive and beneficial to the state of those who are adversely affected by AIDS in Africa.

As far as purchasing products in order to feel countercultural I must admit that I have done this. My counterculture stand has come, not in the form of different shoes, but in different types of food. I have intentionally bought more expensive drinks because I knew I was supporting a smaller business. I find that I feel better about purchasing and consuming a drink such as that then someone else.