The day a medical diagnosis shook me to my core was also the day it made me reevaluate my perspective on life, work, and the impact of advertising. What are the best practices? Where can you go? I’ll tell you.
My Personal Experience
Before I knew I had a breast nodule, let’s just say I felt immortal. When I saw this foreign body being measured on the screen, I embraced a brutally honest understanding of my own mortality. The 'little ball,' as I call it, turned out to be a 1.5 cm nodule that was initially deemed benign. But I only learned this a couple of weeks later. This gave me plenty of days to reflect and question everything. So we ask ourselves, does health and wellness marketing help or trivialize critical issues?
Beyond the palpable fear that I could die—which I usually put first, thinking of the worst-case scenario—it spurred me into action. I asked myself tough questions about my life, purpose, and current state. How could I leave this world knowing I haven't contributed to making it a better place? This led me to question the efficacy of 'pink' breast cancer marketing campaigns, nonexistent preventative healthcare, bureaucracy over understanding, and a lack of empathy. I could continue with a long list of issues you face in solitude when your health is compromised. That's when I felt the negative effects of marketing, corporate ethics, and being reduced to a statistic.
Pinkwashing and its impact
How to describe it? It’s when organizations put on a 'pink face,' adding ribbons, turning on pink lights, changing backgrounds or images, and other reductionist practices linked to products and marketing campaigns positioned against breast cancer, but in a fraudulent way. It’s false, usually with economic motives and no real commitment.
It's clear that campaigns like these increase visibility, but they also trivialize the issue by only adding pink ribbons. This distracts resources and attention from what's important: research, treatment, and psychological support for patients and their families.
Corporate and brand responsability
Here’s where I feel I play a crucial role. As marketing professionals and entrepreneurs, we have an ethical responsibility and social commitment per se. We need to go beyond 'washing' in all possible colors, such as:
* Greenwashing for ecology
* Purplewashing for feminism
* Brownwashing for ethnic activism
* Rainbow washing for the LGBTIQ+ community
To name a few.
We urgently need to focus our efforts and actions on reducing the leading cause of death for women. This is achieved through scientific outreach, research, and investment in science and, of course, access to early medical treatments, prevention, and quick recognition.
Best practices
If you’re like me, wondering, 'What can I do to contribute to the fight against cancer?' Here are five best practices to begin with, summarized as support, inspire, raise awareness:
1. Corporate Education: Instead of changing your company logo to pink for a month, invest in training employees and clients on how they can support the cause and spread the message.
2. Volunteering: Collaborate with your time or human resources to official organizations, contributing to providing free services for patients and their families.
3. Facilitate Access to Early Health: Demand and promote serious and transparent campaigns about the importance of early detection, medical training so symptoms are not minimized, and guides that teach quick action in case of suspicion.
4. Prevention: Beyond diagnosis, talk about healthy lifestyles or learn to recognize bad practices that help prevent breast cancer.
5. Donate to Development: Fundraising and resources that contribute to scientific research and outreach.
Where to go?
I leave you with a list of entities working for this cause from different fronts:
The Vencer el Cáncer Foundation (VEC)
A national foundation whose mission is to support, inspire and raise awareness of cancer research in Spain.
Asociación Española Conta el Cáncer (AECC)
A non-profit organization formed by patients, family members, volunteers, collaborators and professionals to help cancer patients and fight the disease on all fronts.
La Liga colombiana contra el cáncer
A national organization, that seeks to prevent and transform the cancer experience in Colombia, committed to patient, family, and community care.
La Sociedad Española de OncologÃa Médica (SEOM)
A leading scientific society in cancer with the mission to improve the prevention, diagnosis, treatment and follow-up of cancer.
Susan G. Komen is an organization that addresses breast cancer on multiple fronts, including research, community health, global outreach and public policy initiatives, in order to make the greatest impact against this disease.
Less fear of dying, more quality of life.
If fear is going to mobilize us, let it be for improvement. Fewer 'PINK' campaigns and more corporate education, more contributions to research, containment, and access to treatment. Let our collective action speak louder than words.
