Hmmmm. An interesting article on the blurring of yet another boundary: private and public speech. It questions whether Gore and Bono are pushing the limits of the public sphere by making social causes corporate affairs. My feeling? The more the merrier. But… I also do not like the paternalistic approach of either that focuses on individuals as saviors.
Turning to corporate America to save the world — baltimoresun.com:
Politics and social causes are the stuff of society’s public sphere, but the public sphere is being overwhelmed by the corporate logic of cause-related marketing.
The privatizing of Bono’s AIDS-prevention message offers a window on how this phenomenon is transforming political speech. Sponsors of the Red Campaign take Bono’s message, produce surreal versions of it, infuse it into products and then market it back to consumers. Consider a current Gap Red Campaign advertisement: “Can a T-shirt save the world? This one can! … 20,000. The number of women and children in Africa who can receive AIDS treatment for a year thanks to the contributions from your purchases of Gap Product Red.”
Is this ad commercial or political? Does it propose a commercial transaction? Is it misleading?
Advertising in the 21st century is less about proposing a transaction and more about constructing identities around corporate brands. But constructing personal and social identity fits more closely with political than commercial speech.
The First Amendment protects the sort of political dialogue Mr. Gore and Bono are promoting and prevents the government from regulating such dialogue without some extremely good reason. But the government is allowed to protect consumers from misleading product information by regulating commercial speech.
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