Sources close to Bono are hitting back at a backlash that seems to be mounting over the U2 frontman's RED venture - the thing where huge corporates sell more products by putting Bono's RED brand on them, and pledging to give 1% of the profits made on the product to RED's albeit admirable charitable fund that aims to fight AIDS in Africa. Criticism has grown after US trade mag Advertising Age claimed that companies making RED branded products had spent $100 million marketing them, but between them had only raised $18 million for charity.
A source close to the charity has slammed that report, and told the New York Daily News: "First of all, Red didn't launch products until mid-October [06]. And they raised $25 million. Before that, the fund had taken in about $5 million over a four-year period. Before that, they had one T-shirt out and a pair of sunglasses. And on marketing, Bono's RED campaign didn't spend anything. The companies they work with spent a few million each. The $100 million is a phantom number Ad Age pulled out of thin air. It's off by tens of millions of dollars".
The Bono backlash has also focused on the fact that while the U2 singer does invest large amounts of his time in charitable initiatives, his own commercial enterprises don't generally contribute to the RED campaign and, of course, U2's people have been busy reorganising the band's finances of late to make them more, erm, tax efficient. Leading to criticisms that while Bono wants countries to dedicate more tax to helping the developing world, he doesn't personally want to contribute too much to his home country's tax coffers.