Last Friday I wrote about some good ways to mark World AIDS Day on December 1. Well, I missed something, which The Nation‘s well-read Controller just pointed out, and it’s worth sharing since the program is on-going.
Bristol-Myers, the huge Big Pharma company, is devoting an (undoubtedly small) portion of its marketing budget to a website which raises money for the National AIDS Fund. You just need to click here and take one simple action. Then, Bristol-Myers will donate one dollar to the AIDS Fund on your behalf. You can only do this once per email address.
I’m typically very cynical about corporate ploys like this, which seem to be conceived much more as public relations tools for the company in question rather than as civic-minded efforts to combat social ills. Nonetheless, why not help Bristol-Myers burnish its image if the concrete result of the program is that a significant amount of money will be donated to a good cause? It only takes ten seconds.
