As the Green Bay Packers were walloping the Minnesota Vikings on Thursday Night Football last night, the NFL’s “A Crucial Catch Day” campaign for breast cancer – which “is focused on the importance of annual screenings, especially for women who are 40 and older” – was on display at the stadium. Banners similar to this one appeared in the stadium. Some players wore pink gloves or other pink paraphernalia. It was the first game of October, the first of many more pink pigskin promotions to come throughout this month.
But the Breast Cancer Action group, well known for its “Think Before You Pink” campaign, calls the NFL campaign “a distraction.” The group names the NFL as part of “a six-point take-down of pink ribbon cause marketing and the broader culture of “pink” which expands BCAction’s long-standing commitment to addressing exploitation, corporate profiteering and hypocrisy in breast cancer fundraising. The six points, according to Breast Cancer Action, are:
There’s more in an article on Jezebel.com, “How the NFL’s breast cancer awareness campaign lies to women.”
If this kind of Pinktober pushback is new to you, be aware that there is a strong groundswell of opposition from many breast cancer advocates.
Always one of the most thoughtful is Gayle Sulik,PhD, who wrote on her PinkRibbonBlues.org blog, “Rethinking Pink: How This Work Started And Why It Continues.”
Another is Jody Schoger, who blogged about “True October,” explaining that the truth she sees in October is “the ground swell to bring metastatic breast cancer issues to light is here.”
Another, Elaine Schattner, wrote,”For This October: A New Kind of Awareness,” with specific suggestions about how the awareness focus might adjust to some of the realities of 2014.
National Breast Cancer Coalition president Fran Visco writes that “It is time for a different strategy. The annual explosion of ‘brightly colored consumer goods’ is not cutting it.”
Some things to think about as you watch NFL games or as you are pummeled with pink marketing anywhere you go this month.
———————-
Follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/garyschwitzer
Opinions on other issues in news, journals, PR, advertising, marketing
Monday at #ADA2021, an infectious disease epidemiologist, a journalist, and a researcher shared perspectives on communication of risk in the era of COVID-19: http://ow.ly/ROfR30rMeE7 @AstleyCM @garyschwitzer @berthahidalgo @ADA_DiabetesPro
Shoutouts to @susan_bewley @drkevinknopf @MichaelBaum11 in this call for more than fawning coverage from press releases for these kinds of stories.
Also, linked history inside goes back 5 years just on Grail apparently trying to become Holy Grail. https://twitter.com/garyschwitzer/status/1408849696416841731
Comments (6)
Please note, comments are no longer published through this website. All previously made comments are still archived and available for viewing through select posts.
Laurence Alter
October 7, 2014 at 4:43 amGary,
You’re a professor. You know academic sources. You have high-level tastes.
Why not promote the level of information? NOT: some silly low-level crass commercialized National Football League promotion OF WHATEVER? Why not elevate people rather than lower yourself and give credibility to such lower-common-denominator sources like the N.F.L. They’re qualified for professional football; but what else??
Respectfully,
Laurence
Tazia K. Stagg
October 7, 2014 at 2:47 pmMy understanding is that “The blog addresses not only health care news but also advertising, marketing, public relations, medical journals – media messages that may impact the public dialogue about health care.”
It looks like you’re recommending conformity–suggesting that we ought to turn a blind eye to this kind of thing because it’s beneath us. It’s beneath precisely everyone who knows better, right? Yuck.
Why address this? Because it affects people.
Our Comments Policy
But before leaving a comment, please review these notes about our policy.
You are responsible for any comments you leave on this site.
This site is primarily a forum for discussion about the quality (or lack thereof) in journalism or other media messages (advertising, marketing, public relations, medical journals, etc.) It is not intended to be a forum for definitive discussions about medicine or science.
We will delete comments that include personal attacks, unfounded allegations, unverified claims, product pitches, profanity or any from anyone who does not list a full name and a functioning email address. We will also end any thread of repetitive comments. We don”t give medical advice so we won”t respond to questions asking for it.
We don”t have sufficient staffing to contact each commenter who left such a message. If you have a question about why your comment was edited or removed, you can email us at feedback@healthnewsreview.org.
There has been a recent burst of attention to troubles with many comments left on science and science news/communication websites. Read “Online science comments: trolls, trash and treasure.”
The authors of the Retraction Watch comments policy urge commenters:
We”re also concerned about anonymous comments. We ask that all commenters leave their full name and provide an actual email address in case we feel we need to contact them. We may delete any comment left by someone who does not leave their name and a legitimate email address.
And, as noted, product pitches of any sort – pushing treatments, tests, products, procedures, physicians, medical centers, books, websites – are likely to be deleted. We don”t accept advertising on this site and are not going to give it away free.
The ability to leave comments expires after a certain period of time. So you may find that you’re unable to leave a comment on an article that is more than a few months old.
You might also like