Reflections on Buckets for the Cure
by Margo K. Lucero
Director, Global Corporate Relations
Susan G. Komen for the Cure

After the cause marketing blogosphere lit up with criticism of Susan G. Komen for the Cure's 2010 partnership with Kentucky Fried Chicken, the Cause Marketing Forum reached out to Komen for insights into why it had decided to forge what it knew would be a controversial relationship.

Margo K. Lucero, the organization's director of global corporate relations, penned this response:

If Susan G. Komen for the Cure® has learned nothing else in 28 years leading the global breast cancer movement, it’s the power of reaching people where they live.

We’ve spent three decades building touch points with millions of women and men who support us through the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure® series, through our 125 local Affiliates and through cause marketing programs involving thousands of products that people see every day.

These touch points are powerful motivators to action.  We know that many women who see a pink ribbon or product do something as a result: they schedule a screening, talk to a family member, log on to a website, or otherwise engage with the breast cancer movement. This proactivity is fundamental to our mission to end breast cancer forever. It is also the basis for our decision to partner with KFC. 

For those who haven’t followed the story, KFC’s 5,300 restaurants are selling pink buckets of chicken between April 12 and May 23, with 50 cents of every bucket ordered going to Susan G. Komen for the Cure.  The lids of these pink buckets direct customers to KFC’s bucketsforthecure.com website for breast health information.  Visitors to the site are encouraged to upload a photo and personal story about breast cancer, or make a donation.

As we expected, the promotion has generated significant response. In the first two weeks,  some 200,000 people visited the bucketsforthecure.comwebsite. Another 170,000 ‘liked’ it on Facebook, many posting comments to thank KFC and Komen. Helped by a national ad campaign and collateral in KFC restaurants, the partnership is touching millions, many in areas not directly served by a Komen for the Cure Affiliate.

Of course, as we also expected, there’s been negative reaction as well, primarily on natural health, nutrition and cause marketing websites. Most are questioning why a woman’s health organization would partner with a fast-food chain when the links between nutrition and good health are becoming more clear. 

We asked the same questions, of course, as we began our due diligence with our Board of Directors, senior leaders, internal and external medical and scientific experts, and our brand and communications professionals.  We discussed the potential for criticism about fried foods and obesity, and weighed the potential for criticism against the partnership’s potential to help us achieve a fundamental objective.

Ultimately, of course, we chose the partnership, and we’re glad that we did.

This need to keep educating women is more critical today than most people realize. Despite three decades of outreach, including Komen-funded outreach to 4 million women last year, we work in areas where women still believe that underwire bras or promiscuity cause breast cancer.  We work with women who don’t know that their mother’s breast cancer puts their health at risk. We still talk to women who are terrified to get mammograms.

Compounding this lack of education is a lack of real help for the 200,000 American women and men who will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year.  We know this because we work with these women, funding breast screenings for almost 500,000 people last year and providing financial help and other support for another 100,000 women who needed it.

Beyond the community, our $500 million in research funding has led to better treatments that are in part responsible for significant declines in breast cancer mortality since the 1990s.

We were mindful of the link between fried foods and obesity and worked closely with KFC to ensure that the promotion highlighted KFC’s grilled chicken and vegetables, and that the bucketsforthecure.com website contained educational and engagement messaging we consider so vital. Ultimately, however, we believe that a decision about what to eat is the consumer’s to make.

For our part, despite a vocal minority, we see this and all partnerships through the lens of our fundamental mission to reach large numbers of people, raise the funds needed to help them and, one day, end this disease. 

We knew that there would be critics, but we have faced critics before, including those who suggested 28 years ago that breast cancer was too personal and too embarrassing to talk about in public. The potential for criticism is a constant in this business, but it cannot be the determining factor in forging ahead toward our vision of a world without breast cancer.

To get there, as I said at the outset, you have to reach people where they live, work, play and eat. In the real world, many of those people are at fast-food restaurants.