RED(iculous) responds!

simply because my humble blog mentioned bono and his deceptive advertising campaign as bloated and inefficient, i got this carefully written response/advertisement/propaganda from their PR department:

I saw your post and wanted to correct a comment you made about (RED).

In just three years, (RED) has generated more than $135 million for the Global Fund to fight AIDS in Africa. 100% of this money is put to work in Global Fund-financed AIDS grants in Africa — no overhead is taken out. This is actually the opposite of ‘bloated and inefficient’. (RED) is the largest private sector contributor to the Global Fund and ranks above many countries in annual contributions to this organization.

While you may not agree with the idea of ‘social entrepreneurship’, the fact is that this initiative works and has already helped fund programs that have reached more than 4 million people affected by HIV/AIDS in Ghana, Rwanda, Swaziland and Lesotho.

For more information on the real results of this effort, visit www.joinred.com

Julie
(RED)

FOUR REASONS WHY (RED) IS RIDICULOUS FOR ISSUING THIS RESPONSE:

!1. nobody reads this blog. even if you type the title of this blog into yahoo, i don't make the top 80 listings (i stopped looking after that- for all i know i'm not in the top 1,000). i've had 65 hits this month, and that is probably the same 3 readers (thanks mom) refreshing the page. god only knows how many pages Julie had to sift through to find my post. it probably took her all day. thanks for the confidence booster, but yr wasting yr time.

!2. the fact that Julie spent all day sifting through blogs that refrence pesky facts about (RED) is more than enought proof that the company is bloated and inefficient when it comes to raising money for AIDS or to fight poverty. considering the readership number, this is obviously ineffiencent PR, and now I'm just judging the company by business standards, not against the agent for social change (RED) poses as.

!3. only a business that spends an absurd 100 million dollars in marketing for every 15 million dollars given in aide could dream of having enough wasted overhead to target a blog with 3 readers.

!4. it seems beside the point now, but i don't like being told that i'm corrected when Julie hasn't even answered to my critique. i'm not disputing that (RED) donates lots of money to AIDS and poverty. i was suggesting that it is bloated and inefficient to spice up crap white tee-shirts with the illusion that you are solving the world's problems. ("Buy RED, Save Lives" reads their website. A Gap billboard advertising (RED) asked "can a tank top change the world?") Bono could just send his money directly to the Global Fund if he wanted to be helpful, but then he wouldn't get to hire worthless PR representatives to litter my blog with advertisements. Bill Gates gave 650 million dollars straight to the Global Fund. he didn't waste hundreds of millions on billboards and models and packs of PR reps to patrol the blogosphere. he's so much cooler than Bono.