MANILA, Philippines - The social media space is abuzz with the color pink this month in support of Breast Cancer Month.
This color-coding meme has been used to spread awareness for social causes in the past – red ribbons for HIV/AIDS awareness, black ribbons in protest of the Ampatuan massacre, green ribbons for many environmental campaigns, and yellow ribbons in the last local election season.
Pink is the color of October and the social Web is pretty in pink, with many websites, brands and portals trying to help raise funds to develop a cure for breast cancer. At the forefront of this massive campaign are the tech giants themselves cooking up various ways to get the pitch to go viral and get more people to support the cause.
For a start, Microsoft has created a special edition pink wireless mouse. The company says on its releases that it will donate 10 percent of the selling price of the mouse to the Susan G. Komen for the Cure, a network of survivors and activists fighting to end breast cancer.
From purple, Yahoo! has turned pink, at least temporarily. The portal has teamed up with the National Breast Cancer Foundation (NBCF) to provide free mammograms for uninsured women. “For each person who updates his/her pink ribbon status in Yahoo! Shine and Yahoo! Pulse during the month of October, Yahoo! will donate $1 to NBCF up to $50,000,” it said in its Yahoo! Messenger blog. “The pink ribbon symbolizes support for finding a cure for breast cancer.”
Online marketplace eBay, on the other hand, is asking people to sell, buy or donate through its Giving Works program, which allows buyers and sellers to support non-profit foundations by selling an item and donating a portion of the proceeds.
“In fact, for the value of every laptop sold this month through Giving Works, one uninsured patient could get a mammogram,” says Robert Chatwani, director of eBay Global Citizenship in the website. “Each person who takes part in this campaign will have an impact on the fight against breast cancer.
eBay’s catchphrase is catchy enough for the socially inclined: “Shop, sell, and donate for a good cause.” Its dangle is even catchier: for every pledge to join the fight against breast cancer, you could win a shopping spree on eBay.
There are many pink products to choose from: fuchsia bags, pink and purple scarves, vintage floral hats, pink pins, ribbons, heart chains and badges, and even a pink motorcycle, to name just a few. eBay has also identified many beneficiaries for the online fundraising – the Susan G. Komen for the Cure, American Cancer society, American Breast Cancer Foundation, and the Breast Cancer Fund, among others.
If you can shop to support the cause, you can also play games. At thebreastcancersite.com, there are ad-supported free casual games to play. Seventy percent of the advertising revenue from the free play is said to be donated to the breast cancer fund. To date, the website says the Games That Give program has already given $58,547.77 to charity. More people playing the game mean more page views which could attract more sponsors. The games are, however, available only in the United States but the site promises to roll out the functionality to other countries soon.
These fund raising initiatives have its valid reason for being. According to the Philippine Breast Cancer Network website, breast cancer “is the leading killer of women ages 35 to 54 worldwide. More than a million women develop breast cancer without knowing it and almost 500,000 die from it every year.”
“The Philippines has also the highest incidence rate of breast cancer in Asia and is today considered to have the ninth highest incidence rate in the world,” it adds. “One out of four who are diagnosed with breast cancer die within the first five years. No less than 40 percent die within ten years.”
In the United States, where the online campaign started, the Susan G. Komen for the Cure website discloses that breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths among women age 20 to 59 and about 40,000 women will die from breast cancer this year. About 2.5 million breast cancer survivors though are alive today and the number of deaths seems to be declining.
Seen as a catalyst for bringing the figures down is early detection and the rising awareness of women on the perils of the dreaded disease and how it can be stopped from spreading.
One doesn’t have to shop or play games online though to be part of the global awareness push. In the social web, one status update can trigger a flood of other status posts, reposts tags, and emails that could reach more women.
The campaign this year actually started sometime in January when women on Facebook started posting the color of the bra they were wearing on their walls before they leave home for work. A secret message was passed on to clue in every woman on the “secret.”
Posts like blue, black, fuchsia, yellow, lavender, tangerine and all imaginable colors then started appearing on Facebook and not a few men had wondered aloud what the colors were all about. It took some time for the other gender to figure out that the color meme was exclusive to women. But some have nevertheless posted their own colors: flesh, grey, black, white, flowery red. Whether they were referring to the color of their briefs or boxer shorts, the women were also clueless.
As October set in, there is a sequel to the “what-color-is-your-bra” meme that is once again adorning Facebook walls, although here in the Philippines, it wasn’t as viral as the color meme. If you have seen status updates that have sexual connotations like “I like it on the floor,” “I like it on the bed,” “I like it on top of the kitchen sink,” be clueless no more. It has something to do with the breast cancer awareness pitch.
What do women really like when they post “I like its” in their Facebook status updates? Ask your mom, sister, aunt, wife, girlfriend, mistress, and maybe your grandmother, too. They would probably know.
Your best bet though is the Web. It’s all over the place and it would help a little if you would be a little less dense.
Now that the cat is finally out of the bag, you could safely assume that most women really “like it on the floor, like it anywhere.”