We’ll be the Bad Guys – We hate Pink OctoberOctober 22, 2010
by: Aaron Stern
It’s Sunday afternoon, and your favorite NFL team just scored the go-ahead touchdown late in the fourth quarter. You turn to your friends and fellow fans at the bar and slap hands, hug people you barely know, shouting at the top of your lungs. Then you look back to the television and your enthusiasm sobers up a bit – why the hell is everyone celebrating on the field wearing so much hot pink, you wonder? Hot pink arm bands, hot pink chin straps, hot pink cleats – it’s on the players and coaches, painted on the fields and emblazoned on the television screen. It’s more than distracting. It is, you think – and you don’t say this out loud because that would be insensitive and unevolved – a bit feminine for a sport played by supplement-fueled men who can bench press 500 pounds and who gleefully gouge the eyes and try to rip off the testicles of their opponents.
One recent commenter on the Baltimore Sun’s website sums up what the average fan might feel at that moment when he wrote this:
“I know that I probably will, or at least should, burn in hell for thinking, much less saying it, but isn’t the NFL’s “pink” campaign to raise awareness of breast cancer becoming a bit tiresome? The sentiment is admirable, but haven’t they gone a little over the top?”
This is what the NFL calls A Crucial Catch: the league’s second annual participation in Breast Cancer Awareness Month, a collaboration with the American Cancer Society. The NFL hopes to raise awareness for its campaign because, according to its website “[t]his is an issue that has directly touched the lives of so many in the NFL family, and we are committed to helping make a difference in breast-cancer prevention.”
A noble cause, without question. Who would begrudge anyone for trying to raise money to fight a devastating disease that steals lives and cripples families?
Well, Rush Limbaugh, for one. Limbaugh devoted some time to the subject earlier this month, chalking it up to monetary motivation:
“[T]his is a marketing thing the league’s into here. It’s an outreach to women, trying to broaden the overall base of the audience of the NFL,” he told listeners.
But before you dismiss that viewpoint as just another purposefully inflammatory statement by the Master of Incitement, take a trip through the blogosphere and you’ll see that he’s not alone in thinking this – in fact, he’s got some unlikely allies.
Some see a particular hypocrisy: While the NFL has been covered in pink during Breast Cancer Awareness Month during the last two Octobers, they haven’t offered much guidance to men in recent Septembers – during Prostate Cancer Awareness Month. That despite the fact that, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, prostate cancer infects more men than breast cancer does women (though breast cancer victims have a higher mortality rate), and two-thirds of the league’s viewers are men.
So if the NFL’s benevolence isn’t helping the greatest possible number of people, do its efforts to arm the overwhelming minority of its fan base with life saving information – seemingly at the expense of the vast majority – indicate a money-hungry push to increase viewership and merchandise sales? Especially when the league has made it clear it is actively courting women?
“I think that part of the underlying motivation is probably getting women into the league,” says Rohit Bhargava, a Washington, D.C.-based marketing expert and professor at Georgetown University.
But Joel Whalen, a professor at the College of Commerce of DePaul University in Chicago, says that is an overly simplistic and excessively cynical take. Instead, he says, credit should be given to the savvy marketing team behind the pink push, which extends far beyond just the NFL and has been highly visible in recent years. “Their marketing campaign has been superb,” says Whalen. “These folks are really good. ”He also suggests that those in the prostate cancer camp might want to steal a page out of the breast cancer playbook to promote their cause.
“It’s a brilliant campaign for a number of reasons,” Whalen says of bringing pink into the NFL. For one, there’s the boldness of promoting an issue that primarily impacts women in an arena that is largely male. That impact is made even greater because football viewers are watching with rapt attention, making them more susceptible to any marketing during such a state of heightened awareness.
There is also the clever disease-combating side of it: Women are typically the ones who oversee family health; putting pink on the gridiron flips the script by engaging men and potentially prompting husbands to ask their wives about their health, says Bhargava.
Sure, you can debate the validity and the efficacy of the specific medical recommendations the league is promoting to women, and some will complain of how all of this pink affects the product on the field (though aren’t kickers and quarterbacks always complaining about slick balls?). But those who find the pink hysteria to be hypocritical or an affront to the eyes will likely just have to get used to it. The NFL, after all, has become a master at branding and making itself socially relevant.
“They’ve been really, really good at maximizing the impact of American football,” Whalen says.
And whatever else its detractors might think, it appears the league is just as good at promoting social consciousness. So while this weekend will be the last time you see prima donna receivers and cannibalistic linebackers alike wearing pink in 2010, it’s a good bet that you’ll see it all again this time next year.
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