Pink Ribbons, Pro-Choice, and Pinterest
Earlier this week, Susan G. Komen for the Cure announced that it will no longer fund $700,000 annually to Planned Parenthood. This funding gap translates into 170,000 mammograms for low-income women– nothing to sneeze at– so donors stepped up to fill the void (Thank you, Mayor Bloomberg, for your $250,000 matching gift!), and other organizations released statements sharing their points of view. As Kivi Leroux Miller, aptly puts it in her blog on the topic, “Komen for the Cure, it seems, is no longer a breast cancer charity, but a pro-life breast cancer charity.” According to Mother Jones, Kivi might be right.
This decision became a massive multi-media story overnight, and everyone’s fingers are in this messy communications pie. While Nancy Brinker’s video makes the case for their decision, she fails to address the political undercurrent that many people feel is implicit in this decision. By not tackling head-on the issue on most people’s minds, she’s missing the point of the protests and arguably making matters worse for her organization.
Perhaps the most innovative form of protesting I’ve seen this week is happening on Pinterest, the new social media darling of the nonprofit sector. Beth Kanter started a “Komen Can Kiss My Mammogram” group board, an aggregate of images related to this protest with comments by the 650+ contributors adding to it daily. It’s grassroots activism in pictures; Beth calls it “PinActivism”. Good stuff.
From a positioning point of view, I’m interested to see how this debacle will impact perceptions of the pink ribbon as the icon for the breast cancer movement? Komen has played a key role in making the pink ribbon (originally created by Evelyn Lauder) popular. If the ribbon can transcend politics it should weather the storm. If not, many organizations in the breast cancer movement may have some work to do.
Comments (7)
This whole thing is so interesting to observe -- it seems poised to go down as a 'what not to do' case study.
You mention Komen CEO Nancy Brinker's video, and as the founder of Komen, this is certainly a strong example of a nonprofit executive director whose personal brand is so clearly connected to the organization's brand. I've been watching her Facebook page and pretty surprised to see the lack of response she's had to comments and posts on her wall. In a moment like this, she probably needs to be checking and responding on an hourly basis. Her silence is likely to do a lot more damage than good.5
The link to her Facebook page is:
https://www.facebook.com/NancyGBrinker
Oh and it seems Komen may be restoring its funding to Planned Parenthood now...
http://blog.komen.org/
A close friend from college once said that if you see someone wearing a ribbon or some other small symbol on their person or car then you can usually assume that's the extent of their involvement in the issue--he wasn't referring to Komen ribbons at the time ( I think it was yellow ribbons for Iragi War deaths)--but it was a great point and one that's more often true than not. Easy to wear a ribbon harder to take real action (write a letter or a check).
yes- here's the NY Times article announcing the change in policy:
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2012/02/03/us/politics/03reuters-usa-heal...
Sarah: Netroots reports that Evelyn Lauder's role in the pink ribbon creation mythos is challenged by the "Pink Ribbons" documentary that by incredibly good timing is opening today.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QPZfcYTUaA
This WOULD be a fantastic case study for the storify Gods
Great post as always ,Thanks for sharing information .....
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