Yellow

What started as a simple creative charitable idea by the famous U.S. cyclist and record-setting Tour de France winner, Lance Armstrong, has not only raised millions of dollars and heightened awareness with its inspiring message, but the legendary yellow wristbands have become the must-have accessory.

The yellow band that started out as a simple fund raising tool has taken on a life of its own. This seems to be the ultimate example of how a well-known athlete used his name power and his public battle with cancer to create one of the most powerful foundations and charitable campaigns ever. What’s most inspiring about Lance Armstrong’s story is not just his battle with cancer, but his subsequent determination and inhuman-like dedication to overcome that battle and turn it into unprecedented athletic success.

As a tribute to Armstrong's fight against cancer, the Lance Armstrong Foundation began selling yellow wristbands engraved with his mantra, "Live Strong" in an effort to raise $5 million to help people living with cancer. The fundraising effort began in May 2004 and far surpassed the original goal, having sold “over 25 million wristbands” that year. The Foundation partnered with Nike and sold over 100 million over the course of the last 5 years, but the band has become “as much a fashion statement or status symbol as it is an icon of the Lance Armstrong Foundation's fundraising program”.

The promotion was so successful that the Foundation partnered with Nike stores across the country to sell the bands to help satisfy the overwhelming consumer demand rather than exclusively selling them on the foundation's web site. Eventually, we all started seeing those yellow bands on various websites, including e-Bay, selling the LiveSTRONG wristbands at inflated prices. Perhaps, at that time, the campaign lost sight of its initial goals of just supporting the age-old fight against cancer, and became bigger than just a nice token to support a charitable cause. I guess there was not much the foundation could do about that and they were not benefiting from the profits these third-party companies/websites were collecting from the resale, but they certainly became way more of a fashion statement and a trend than a symbol of social responsibility.

One of the reasons the yellow wristband program was unique and so successful was that the donation was only one dollar. But for a small donation, the wearer was able to identify himself with a world-class athlete who has reached global celebrity status.

The Lance Armstrong Foundation's Livestrong fundraising program started a mass production of copycat products. How many of us are guilty of wearing some sort of colored wristband at some point in the past 5 years? We all took part is this crazy trend in one way or another. If you did not buy a wristband of some sort for your favorite sports team or to support a random event or a cause you did not even know you were supporting but you liked the color of the wristband, you are probably part of the minority! It is a sad, but very telling truth. Sometimes there is no rhyme or reason to the success of a new fashion trend but, in this case, it drove the success of a very serious and powerful campaign. One will never know if Lance Armstrong’s amazing success in the Tour de France translated into supporters and fans wanting the wristbands or if the wristbands just became such a hot item that they really had nothing to do with that name-power of the athlete or the business sense of the foundations’ founders. At the end of the day, however, the campaign was extremely successful; everyone knows that. You don’t need to research the numbers or study the top celebrity foundations to know that Lance Armstrong’s Livestrong Foundation is probably at the way top of the charts. This is one successful story that may never be matched in terms of its undisputed success!

Posted by Stephanie Cantor

So Dangerous

Handsome, chiseled, skilled in hand-to-hand combat, and looks good in a cape. He’s everything your looking for in a man, but the behavior of this heartthrob has been on the fritz lately. With last years hit The Dark Night and Terminator Salvation’s anticipated release, Christian Bale has been having his share of professional success, but personally it’s be another story.

Christian Bale has been a fairly private star, not often seen in tabloids or celebrity news. His ability to keep this privacy has changed since his recent explosion (audio clip – explicit) on the set of Terminator was leaked to the public. Apparently the Director of Photography accidentally walked on to the set, ruining a scene, which triggered Bale’s harassment. If you listen to the clip you can tell there is no way the poor guy deserved that kind of verbal attack. After its occurrence Bale promptly released a formal apology citing the incident as “inexcusable.” This incident brought back memories of last years fight with his mom and sister, after they asked him for money. When questioned about the alleged assault, Christian Bale dismissed it as a family matter, and after some time it was forgotten.

So what’s his deal? Looks like somebody need anger management classes. Maybe all his success is making him suffer from an inflated ego, or maybe he is just a mean person. I have to respect him for his wish to remain private, and that he uses his talent, and not the media to gain fame. But if his behavior continues his personal issues will start to affect his professional ones. Studios won’t want to hire an unstable actor and audiences will be disappointed that they can’t stare at his beauty. Maybe we should know more about what’s going out with Christian, because chances are he isn’t just hurting himself.

Posted by Julia Cooch

Jump: NBA Cares

If you watch sports on television, whether you are a die-hard sports fan or not, you have probably seen at least some promos for each league hyping their involvement, as a league, in giving back to the community. It is easiest to examine the NBA’s community involvement because, believe it or not, when surfing the web for each professional sports league’s publicized charitable involvement, the National Basketball Association has the most information and resources out there. I found that surprising because, as a moderate sports fan, I know that I see more ads about the NFL and United Way than I think I’ve ever seen about “NBA Cares” or anything at all, for that matter, for either the NHL or Major League Baseball’s league commitment to the community.

It seems fitting that the NBA has the most available information because, due to their “bad rap” in the community with various fights, players with a history of legal trouble, and overall negative images, the league executives are continuously trying to create a more positive image as a whole. The NBA is, in fact, desperate for its fans to know how much it does for the community (and they should be!).

In 2005, in an effort to restore a sense of dignity to his league, commissioner David Stern issued a dress code that required “business casual clothing while players were engaged in team or league activities off the court”, and forbade many items “including t-shirts, hats, chains, or anything else that one might associate with a rap star.” The following season, the NBA instituted its NBA Cares community program.

Now, some could argue that the timing of the NBA’s launch of “NBA Cares” was self-serving (because it was right after the infamous fight in Detroit between the Indian Pacers and the Detroit Pistons which caused a media uproar about violence in the NBA), but that does not necessarily mean that the NBA isn’t ‘doing good’ in the community. In fact, the NBA has created some compelling programs with sufficient data and evidence of success to support them!
According to its website (and an article written after the NBA Cares announcement in 2005 ), the NBA, its teams, and its players “committed to donating $100 million to charity, providing a million hours of hands on service to the community and creating 250 places where kids and families can live, learn or play.” For the most part, the NBA seems to be making steady progress toward its goal. According to the website, players, teams, employees, etc. have already raised $62 million and have donated over 450,000 hours of their time. The league has partnered up with 38 leading charities (click for full list) including the American Red Cross, the Make a Wish Foundation, Habitat for Humanity, and KaBOOM. Say what you want about the players lack of respect in the community, but these numbers and partner organizations are rather impressive.

Since the launch of NBA Cares, the updated numbers (as of this week) show that the league, players and teams have raised “more than $105 million for charity, donated more than 950,000 hours of hands-on volunteer service to communities worldwide, and built more than 415 places where kids and families can live, learn or play.”
Here is what they say is the mission of NBA Cares: “The NBA is dedicated to demonstrating leadership in social responsibility, using the popularity and visibility of its teams, players and the league to effect positive change around the world. NBA teams and players understand the responsibility they have to giving back to the communities that support them, and they do so through a diverse array of outreach programs and events. The larger NBA Family (including current and former players and coaches, parents, wives, referees, and league and team employees) is committed to giving back, motivated by the unique opportunity to make a profound difference.”

Some programs they support and discuss in the report include the league’s award-winning Read to Achieve program, which encourages young people to develop a lifelong love of reading; The Jr. NBA/Jr. WNBA program that helps young people develop the fundamentals of the game with a focus on sportsmanship and teamwork; and Basketball without Borders, an initiative designed to bring international communities together through grassroots basketball and community building efforts. Through NBA CARES, the league also works with internationally-recognized youth-serving programs that support education, youth and family development, and health-related causes. The NBA sends out monthly newsletters to its fans and/or anyone who expresses an interest, with updated information about the NBA Cares initiatives and what they’re doing each month. They really do have all angles and various levels of community outreach and support covered in this all-encompassing program, don’t they?

I am open to your opinions, thoughts, and/or findings beyond what I have been able to find about the other leagues. I would like to start an open discussion about the other leagues’ community involvement, in hopes of compiling data to compare the NBA’s, the NFL’s, Major League Baseball’s, and the NHL’s community platforms.

For now, however, this information is extremely impressive, no matter which way you cut it. Even though it seems to me that this entire campaign started out of desperation--in hopes of cleaning up the image of the NBA as a whole--it definitely DOES serve some good to the community in many, many ways. I have a hard time believing any of the other professional sports leagues have done as much or can show such measurable results as the NBA Cares program has in the past 4-5 years.

Posted by Stephanie Cantor

Party Like a Rockstar: Celebrities Use the Superbowl to Raise Money and PARTY

As with the popularity and the name power of celebrities, sporting events are a great way to draw attention and exposure to any given fundraising initiative. The most popular event, because it typically draws the largest crowds, I would think, is the Super Bowl. Other similar events which tend to host an array of charity events include; (but this list is, by no means, official or extensive as it is just off the top of my head), NBA, NHL and MLB All-Star weekends, the three major horse races (Preakness, Kentucky Derby, and Belmont), and others. I just know that we always read about the long lists of celebrities who attend the Super Bowl and its corresponding events, both for and not for profit.

Celebrities are using the Super Bowl to raise money too. According to the blog, Look to the Stars: The World of Celebrity Giving, actor Ashton Kutcher hosted a party in Tampa, FL to raise money for the Giving Back Fund during this past year’s Super Bowl weekend. Upon digging further into the whereabouts of this event, The Giving Back Fund’s website was able to provide all details. American Idol winner, Jordin Sparks, hosted two events during Super Bowl week in Tampa as part of her 2nd Annual Jordin Sparks Experience Charity Event. The New York Times article, Is Star Power Enough to Sell Beer in Hard Times? Two Brewers Hope So, reports that Conan O’Brien donated his fees from his appearances in an Anheuser-Busch Super Bowl commercial to The Fresh Air Fund.

Corporations jump on the Super Bowl bandwagon with their marketing as well: Pittsburgh-based FedEx Ground and the Pittsburgh Steelers created the Towels for Troops campaign in conjunction with Military Connections. "FedEx shipped thousands of Terrible Towels to Steelers fans who were serving in the military overseas." FedEx is a Pittsburgh Steelers corporate partner but it seems they build much of their campaign, both the charitable component and promotional, around the Super Bowl each year…especially when the Steelers are playing in the Super Bowl, as they did this year!

According to NFL.com’s Sponsor section, before the Super Bowl, Campbell's Chunky soups ran a “Click for Cans” Campaign. Fans were asked to "click" their team to victory on the Campbell's site. Campbell's Chunky soup and the NFL “donated 18,000 cans of soup to the winning team's local Feeding America food bank.” The Green Bay Packers won the contest but the NFL and Campbell’s reported that they far exceeded their expectations with the success of that campaign.

There was a publicized website available prior to the Super Bowl this year, which posted a schedule of all Super Bowl events, parties, etc. Included in that list, was a celebrity charity golf tournament wherein the celebrities could play for the charity of their choice, (wow, now they can play golf and then choose where to donate the money but they were forced to donate it!), a “Band Together” hosted by former NFL star Jerry Wunsch benefiting the Wunsch Family Foundation (yet, interestingly enough, just as with most of these events, I had a VERY difficult time finding information about the Wunsch Foundation and what, if anything specific, it benefited), and then you will read on and on to find that all “galas,” “bashes,” parties, extravaganzas, etc. associated with Super Bowl weekend all had SOME tie to charity. I guess this was a sneaky way for the foundations to attract the masses to their events and, more so, to draw sponsors for the event in order to defray some of the enormous budgets on which they inevitably operate. For a complete list from this past Super Bowl, click on this link.

My point is that, just as with many of the issues we tackle in these discussions about celebrities’ involvement in the community and in ‘giving back’ it is, yet again, clearly apparent that there is reason to question their motivation. Many use the excuse of the Super Bowl to host extravagant parties and then create some charitable component to justify the obnoxious price tag of the tickets for these events. In some cases, as it seems from various reports on Ashton Kutcher’s party, the celebrities really DO have a sincere tie to the cause and work hard, year-round, to support and promote that cause. In this case, they just use the Super Bowl as a way to tap into the masses and have MUCH better turnouts for the events. There was even an article about how celebrities were going “head to head” to fight for the audiences when charity events during Super Bowl Weekend took place at the same time. This is a good problem to have, right?! So many fans and potential donors flock together in one city every year for Super Bowl Weekend. They all want to attend the ‘hottest’ events. When a celebrity like Kevin Costner hosts a charity event at the exact same time as Ashton Kutcher (where, by association, you KNOW you are also paying to go see Demi Moore!), IF you can afford to pay the whopping $1,000 ticket prices, how do you decide which celebrity event to attend?

It seems there is an abundance of celebrity charity events surrounding Super Bowl Weekend and All-Star Weekends each year. It is up to the public to choose which events they wish to attend, which they can afford to attend and, hopefully, which charitable cause is most appealing. The only remaining question, on that note, is whether or not event-hoppers choose which events to attend based on the charitable cause to which it is associated or based on the celebrity hosts and attendees. This would be a very interesting study to conduct but the only way to do so is to attend next year’s Super Bowl myself, and poll the fans attending each event! Stay tuned…in February, 2010!

Posted by Stephanie Cantor

Clothes 'Em Up

Kim Kardashian is one of those celebrities that is famous for being an “it” girl. The curvaceous daughter of the defense lawyer for the renowned OJ Simpson case has filled the tabloids lately. However it has not always been this way. In fact, this celebutant essentially languished in obscurity until 2001 when the sex tape she made with her ex boyfriend and famous rapper Ray J. surfaced. As a result she is viewed as a salacious “bad girl.” It should be no surprise that she has recently begun to publicize her acts of charity.

She told tabloids "I do an eBay auction once every three months, and my whole family gets involved. If we’re photographed wearing something, we don’t typically like to wear it again, so we do these auctions, and I give the proceeds to the Dream Foundation, which is kind of like Make-A-Wish, but it grants wishes to terminally ill adults." However, what she didn’t make clear in her statement is that she is only donating 10% of the profits to the Dream Foundation, according to her auction site. Certainly this is better than nothing at all, but it seems that giving such a meager percentage is hardly worth all of the praise she initially got for these good acts in the tabloids.

Are those that purchase any of the treasured items from this icon’s closet really helping out the charity foundation? Or are the bidders mostly allowing Kim to continue to keep up her streak of never being caught in the same outfit twice? Is this really charitable or is it a “nicer” way for the celeb to preserve her status as a fashion icon? Is Kim emptying her closet to grant the wishes of terminally ill adults or is Kim freeing up some much needed space while picking up a bit of positive publicity in an attempt to tack on some respect to her name?

Kim did also tell reporters "This way, you get to do something good... and look good doing it.” Hopefully she truly is more concerned about the “good” itself that she could do with her fame rather than how she “looks” while doing it.

Posted by Stephanie Cantor

"Nobody's Perfect" But Miley Certaintly Comes Close

Miley Cyrus: so young, so famous, so charitable. Miley Cyrus, or more commonly known as Hannah Montana, is a pop singer sensation, acclaimed actress, charity founder, and only sixteen years old. Most teenagers are worrying about driver’s licenses and school dances at the age of sixteen, but Miley Cyrus is driving around the nation touring and dancing in concerts. Named the richest kid in the world by People magazine, Cyrus focuses on maintaining her number one spot on Billboard’s Top 200 albums, the rumors created by tabloids, her singer/actress career, and what to do with all of her money. At the age of sixteen, Cyrus does it all.

Cyrus uses her musical talent in order to help children who suffer from illnesses. Through the organization Musicians on Call Cyrus performs for children in hospitals at their bedside in order to bring them happiness, hope, and some entertainment. Furthermore, Cyrus performed in a benefit concert in which proceeds were given to this organization. Another organization that Cyrus devotes her musical talent to is City of Hope. This is an institution that is dedicated to cancer prevention, cure and treatment research. Back in 2008, Cyrus performed at a concert with The Jonas Brothers that benefited City of Hope. In addition, for every Hannah Montana concert ticket that was sold, Cyrus donated one dollar to the organization.

Beyond donating to and performing for organizations, Cyrus recently created a family organization of her own: The Pappy Cyrus Foundation. Pappy, Cyrus’ grandfather, passed away a few years ago due to lung cancer. The foundation uses its funds to support various charities in the United States that provides children with health care, education, and community support. Cyrus has taken an active stance in raising money for the foundation by auctioning off an evening with her as well as items from Cyrus’ wardrobe, autographed head shots, and autographed movie posters. And, of course, all proceeds go to the foundation.

At the age of sixteen, many may wonder how does she do all this? How is this teenager able to manage a million-dollar career, school work, a social life, paparazzi and still have time to devote to charity? If anyone has the answer, please let me know so I can be the next super teen. But, more importantly, the question that runs through my head is why? Why does Miley Cyrus devote her time and money to charity? While we may also never know the answer to this question, it is something worth pondering. As a teenager, we all know that peer pressure exists: peer pressure to wear the “cool” clothes, do drugs, and break rules. Is it possible that Miley Cyrus is experiencing peer pressure in the form of what other celebrities are doing? Why Cyrus does her charity work can be attributed to the fact that other celebrities are doing it, and thus she must keep up with them, no matter how busy her schedule is. Conversely, the answer to this question, why, can be out of mere generosity. It could be that Cyrus genuinely enjoys helping others, raising money for charity, and using her talent for the better. Whatever Cyrus’ motives, helping others is always a good thing to do with your time. And hey, “Nobody’s perfect!”

Posted by Stephanie Cantor

Sorry Ms. Jackson

Remember when there was a slight wardrobe malfunction at the 2004 super bowl? In their halftime performance Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson caused quite the stir when too much of Ms. Jackson was displayed. You probably had forgotten all about this, and for good reason, because it was five years ago. Unfortunately the irresponsibility of these pop stars had caused major problems for CBS and wasted plenty of taxpayers’ money through dragged out court cases.

 After the incident occurred back in January of 2004 the Federal Communications Commission fined CBS $550,000. By July 2006 CBS had taken the FCC to federal court to try and appeal the fine and in July 2008 it was finally appealed. Today the Los Angeles Times reported that the Supreme Court mandated that the case should be looked at again and was sent to the Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia, so CBS may end up having to pay the fine.

Is it the government itself that is wasting money and time pursuing this case? Maybe they are just doing their job. As much as we might feel that the “wardrobe malfunction” doesn’t matter that much, when it occurred the FCC had to do something. If they had not issued a fine there would have been even more complaints then the ones that we have today over why this is still continuing. It is unfortunate that the court system is long and arduous, but our appeals system allows more fairness and fewer mistakes. It is easy to want the government to just drop the whole thing and stop being wasteful, but they are just trying to be responsible.

Maybe instead we should be annoyed those who were being irresponsible – JT and Janet. Maybe CBS or MTV’s (they produced the show) told them to do it, the fact is that Jackson and Timberlake made a decision and it was the wrong one. Why weren’t Timberlake and Jackson held accountable for their actions? They offended the American public and caused an uproar that forced the government to act, which in turn used up the public’s time and money within the legal system. Today they seem unaffected as they continue to tour and put out new cds, but as the court cases continue their action continues to affect us.