Not long ago I ran across a blurb in a magazine explaining “Pink Washing”. Having come from the world of “green washing” where “it’s easy being green” slogans pepper advertising campaigns all over the country, I had never heard of trouble in the land of pink and how organizations are associating themselves with breast cancer fundraisers. In order to make themselves look good, companies are claiming to be raising money for breast cancer or placing the pink ribbon in their literature and on their websites.
I completely forgot about this information byte until I received a solicitation in the mail from the National Breast Cancer Research Center on a pink duplicate form, complete with a pink ribbon window sticker. I did a little web research on the company because something didn’t seem quite right. The very first entry I found on Google was in www.scam.com with no legitimate website. Well that sure sends red flags! The company also associates themselves with the Walker Institute which has a non-informative website, and not professionally designed – which only made me ask more questions.
Lessons learned? It’s critical to find out how you or your company appears in search engines. What if a competitor or customer has a negative campaign with your brand name being smeared? Do you have a plan to combat this? It’s not only important to monitor your brand online, but to have a legitimate website associated with a fundraising campaign, or ANY business for that matter. Make a strategic plan to appear in a positive light in search engines while climbing your way to the top.
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