Komen’s pink ribbons raise green, and questions

Title: Komen’s pink ribbons raise green, and questions

Author: Liz Szabo

Publication: USA Today

Publication Date: July 18, 2011

Supporters of Susan G. Komen for the Cure are used to seeing the group’s founder, Nancy Brinker, at fundraisers such as Race for the Cure.

But some breast cancer survivors said they were surprised to see Brinker recently on the Home Shopping Network selling perfume. The new fragrance, called Promise Me, comes in a rose-colored bottle with Komen’s trademarked pink ribbon, and its manufacturer has pledged to donate at least $1 million to the charity. The perfume is the latest in a long line of products bearing Komen’s pink ribbon, from kitchen mixers to gardening gloves, that have helped the group raise $1.9 billion for breast cancer causes.

And though some of Komen’s marketing partners have become the butt of jokes (KFC’s pink “Buckets for the Cure” was even satirized on The Colbert Report last year), none of these pink-ribboned products has angered as many breast cancer survivors as the new fragrance.

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Hold Your Noses: Pink Has A Smell

Title: Hold Your Noses: Pink Has A Smell

Author: Gayle Sulik

Publication: Pink Ribbon Blues blog

Publication Date: June 17, 2011

Susan G. Komen for the Cure®’s new fragrance Promise Me has more than a few people up in arms about the lengths this nonprofit organization (or perhaps more appropriately termed, nonprofit corporation), will go to guarantee its position in the breast cancer marketplace. The organization technically is in the business of ending breast cancer not hawking pink ribbon product lines. If it worked as it should, achieving its mission would render the organization and its increasing number of branded products obsolete.

This irony is not lost on a growing number of individuals and organizations taking aim at what they believe to be seriously misdirected activities. Komen’s corporate partnership last October with consumer products investor and operator, TPR Holdings, only invigorated discontent. TPR’s targeted investments include “scalable mass and prestige opportunities in health, beauty and  wellness categories.” Together, Komen and TPR envisioned “a union of beauty and charity” that took the form of a scalable, mass-produced, prestige item specifically designed for Susan G. Komen for the Cure®, a fragrance called Promise Me. The perfume was released in April, given as a complimentary sample to prospective beauty bloggers and reviewers, and is slated to remain on the market for six months “with new editions launching each year.”

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Komen’s Wild Ride

Title: Komen’s Wild Ride

Author: Alicia C. Staley

Publication: wegoHealth blog

Publication Date: June 10, 2011

Dear Susan G. Komen for the Cure:

Stop. Just stop. I’ve reached the point where I’m embarrassed by you and all your branding efforts for the cure. I see tons of pink ribbons, plastered on everything from shampoo to lawn mowers and cat litter.  I’m beyond aware.  I’m frustrated.  I can no longer justify your breast cancer awareness campaigns to my friends that want to know why there’s no cure.  I’ve received more emails in the past week over at Awesome Cancer Survivor expressing exasperation at the breast cancer community than I care to count.  As a breast cancer survivor, I shouldn’t have to justify your behaviors.

When you launched your partnership with Kentucky Fried Chicken  (aka “Buckets for the Cure”), I excused your lapse of judgment.  I assumed it was a temporary slip, and you’d eventually focus your energies back on partnerships and alliances that aligned more closely with your stated goal of “For the Cure.”  You trumpeted the partnership, declaring KFC would make the largest one time donation of an estimated $8 million to Komen. The ultimate goal of the $8 million donation never materialized.  According to your own reports, you only took in $4.2 million.  Not pocket change by any stretch of the imagination, but only about half of what you were looking to grab. You are the self-proclaimed leader of the breast cancer community.  Where is your leadership?

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Susan G. Komen for the Cure Isn’t Curing Anything

Title: Susan G. Komen for the Cure Isn’t Curing Anything

Author: Amy

Publication: Just West of Crunchy blog

Publication Date: June 3, 2011

Susan G. Komen for the Cure isn’t curing anything. This is an organization I used to really support. I have a history of breast cancer in my family and the two naturally met. But the more I’ve learned about Komen, the more upset I’ve become at the way their organization works.

This isn’t going to be an exhaustive list of everything I find to be wrong with Susan G. Komen for the Cure [Komen, herein]. I’m going to touch on a few of the more egregious points and some of the things I’ve learned most recently. A lot of people have rosy Pink glasses on when it comes to Komen; today, I’m asking you to suspend whatever you believe about this nonprofit and think critically about them.  If you walk away still liking them, that’s fine. But I hope people will at least be open to the idea that this organization isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

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It’s Just A Little Bottle of Perfume, Or Is It?

Title: It’s Just A Little Bottle of Perfume, Or Is It?

Author: Nancy Stordahl

Publication: Nancy’s Point blog

Publication Date: June 2, 2011

Sometimes those of us in the breast cancer blogosphere are accused of taking things too seriously and maybe we do at times; with our permanently altered viewpoint from cancer world, it’s hard sometimes not to. How can you possibly be upset about a tiny bottle of perfume you might wonder?

Last week when I heard about the latest “round of discontent,” I thought, really? It’s just a little bottle of perfume isn’t it? Is it really that big a deal? Well no, in and of itself, it isn’t such a big deal. It is just a little bottle of perfume and purchasing this particular fragrance and dabbing on a little won’t really matter. Or will it?

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Promise me you’ll read the ingredients on this pink perfume!

Title: Promise me you’ll read the ingredients on this pink perfume!

Author: Kim Irish

Publication: Think Before You Pink blog / Breast Cancer Action

Publication Date: June 1, 2011

Susan G. Komen for the Cure has partnered with TPR Holdings, LLC, a New York City-based investor and operator in the consumer products industry, to create a perfume called Promise Me.  According to the fragrance’s website, the pink-tinted Promise Me is “The Scent of Inspiration.”  Its neatly packaged bottles and gift sets, with the all-too-familiar Komen ribbon emblazoned on the side, remind us that it’s not just inspiration Komen and TPR Holdings wants – they want us to shop our way to a cure.

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Komen Has Crossed The Line

Title: Komen Has Crossed The Line

Author: Chemobabe

Publication: Chemobabe blog

Publication Date: May 28, 2011

While I have had fun making fun of all the pink crap that purports to support breast cancer patients, I have avoided direct criticism of the Susan Komen Foundation. Until now.

It’s not just because they are one of the top two most trusted nonprofit brands and I want to stay in my readers’ good graces. I respect you too much to pander like that.

I have hesitated because of people like this:

I don’t know these women. I got their picture off Flickr.

They are completely fabulous though.

I know women who have felt transformed by the Three Day Walks, Komen’s signature event. I cannot overstate their symbolic power.  They provide community. They make a natural place for a comeback from treatment or even grief. They are a way of giving cancer the middle finger. The feeling of unity and purpose at these events humbles me.

How can you criticize an organization that makes these experiences possible?

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Ko-Mart.Org

Title: Ko-Mart.Org

Author:  Kathi Kolb

Publication:  The Accidental Amazon blog

Publication Date: May 26, 2011

“Support the Cure — Start Shopping”
So says the banner on a snazzy new website for “Promise Me” Perfume, the latest offspring of a corporate sponsorship between Susan G. Komen, the breast cancer fundraiser, and TPR Holdings LLC, a New York-based “operator in the consumer products industry[…investing in] scalable mass and prestige opportunities in health, beauty and wellness categories…and providing transition services for large consumer products companies including Shiseido Cosmetics and Procter & Gamble. TPR principals have founded and developed such international brands as ZIRH Men’s Skincare, John Varvatos Fragrances and French Connection Beauty.”  And now, TPR has latched onto that most marketable of brands, breast cancer.

Sometimes, I swear, these posts practically write themselves.  If there is actually anyone left on the planet, or at least in the United States, who is not aware that breast cancer is no longer merely a pernicious and incurable disease, but has in fact become a ubiquitous brand and a profitable marketing opportunity for manufacturers, then let me enlighten you.

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