ThreadingWater

At the beginning of the month, I joined Breast Cancer Action’s “Think Before You Pink” campaign.  An email message was sent on my behalf to each of the following corporate sponsors of pink ribbon merchandise

• 3M (Pink Ribbon Post-it Notes)
• BMW (Ultimate Drive and Accessories)
• Cartier (Roadster Watch)
• Dole Fresh Flowers (Cause for Hope Awareness Bouquets)
• Essie (Pink Ribbon Limited Edition Nail Polish)
• Ford (Pink Ribbon Silk Scarf)
• Hansen’s Natural Soda (Help Find a Cure Campaign)
• Karen Neuberger (Signature Pink Ribbon Collection)
• KitchenAid (Cook for the Cure Campaign)
• Kodak (Pink Ribbon Products)
• La Mer (Crème de la Mer)
• Lee Denim (National Denim Day)
• Meredith Books (Limited Edition Better Homes & Gardens Cook Book)
• M&Ms (Special Edition Pink & White M&Ms)
• Origins (A Perfect World White Tea Skin Guardian)
• Georgia Pacific (Quilted Northern Ultra)
• Ralph Lauren (Pink Pony Products)
• Sutter Home Winery (Capsules for the Cure)
• Tommy Hilfiger (Tommy True Star Eau de Toilette Spray)
• Tweezerman (Breast Cancer Awareness Tweezers)
• Waterford Crystal (Pink Ribbons and Heart Bowl)
• Wilson (Wilson HOPE Golf Balls)
• Yoplait (Save Lids to Save Lives Campaign)

asking for answers to the following set of questions:

How much money from each product sold actually goes toward breast cancer?

What percentage of the purchase price does this represent?

What is the maximum amount you will donate?

How much did you spend marketing the products?

To what breast cancer organization does the money go, and what types of programs does it support?

What is your company doing to assure that its products are not contributing to the breast cancer epidemic?

Six questions, of which I would have been happy receiving answers to, oh, I don’t know, three?  And, wouldn’t you think in this day and age of “the Google,” that a corporation might figure out a way to send an automated response after receiving the first hundred or so of these emails?  Hell, after a dozen automated emails containing the same message from the same organization, I’d have cobbled together some sort of response to zap right back to the sender  -  click! and be done with it.

Apparently, even that would be too much effort for twenty out of the twenty-three companies in the above list.  Guess they’re too busy (raking in the dough from this month’s pink shopping spree) to respond at all.

But three, yes, THREE companies did respond – BMW, Tweezerman and Yoplait.  Prepare to be underwhelmed. 

This is what BMW will contribute if you test drive one of their vehicles – $1 per test drive mile.  So, the more you drive, the more they give and the more the environment is polluted with suspected breast cancer carcinogens.  [Pause here to admire the symbiosis of BMW's contribution to the "cure."]

Tweezerman?  Not bad, actually.  Spend $20 on a tweezer and they’ll donate $1 to a variety of cancer organizations.  (unlike BMW and Yoplait which donate all proceeds to the Komen Foundation alone)  Not that I’m going to spend twenty smackers on a pair of tweezers, but the company did respond to every single question in my email.

As for Yoplait?  They get their very own blog entry tomorrow.