Better (Red)™ Than Dead? Celebrities, Consumption and International Aid

Bono’s launch of Product (RED)TM at Davos in 2006 opens a new frontier for development aid. Product RED is ‘a brand created to raise awareness and money for The Global Fund by teaming up with iconic brands to produce RED-branded products’.1 Consumption, trade, and aid wed dying Africans with designer goods. With the engagement of American Express, Apple, Converse, Gap, Emporio Armani, Motorola, and now Hallmark, Dell, and Microsoft, consumers can help HIV/AIDS patients in Africa. They can do so simply by shopping, as a percentage of profits from Product RED lines goes to support The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Aid celebrities – Bono, Jeffrey Sachs, and Paul Farmer – guarantee the ‘cool quotient’, the management and the target of this new modality of aid. Linked to commerce, not philanthropy, Product RED reconfigures international development around aid celebrities and consumer-citizens united to do good by dressing well.