Cause Marketing

Enough With the Ribbons Already How powerful is the ribbon as a visual awareness symbol? Can causes and nonprofits continue to adopt existing colored ribbons and yet still have meaning invested in all the rest? What’s the potential for confusion when two or more different charities/causes claim the same color of ribbon? When another cause adopts a colored ribbon already in use, does it undermine meaning or expand it? Could another iconic image beside a ribbon come to mean as much? Isn’t there a ‘me-to’ aspect to ribbons nowadays? Could ribbons be overused to the point where there’s a ribbon backlash? These and other questions came flooding to me when I saw this ‘thank you to our sponsors’ ad in the April 30 issue of Fortune Magazine from WalkAmerica , the fundraiser for the March of Dimes. In the bottom right corner is a blue and pink ribbon (get it?). Frankly it came as a surprise to me that March of Dimes… which works to prevent birth defects… had a ribbon and that they choose to fea...