Makeup Company Raises $100-Million for HIV/AIDS

Over the past 14 years, MAC, a cosmetics company, has given away more than $100-million to HIV-related causes through its Viva Glam line of makeup, in an example of cause marketing that has become central to the brand’s image, reports the Financial Times.

MAC, created by a makeup artist and a hairdresser and acquired by Estee Lauder in 1998, donates 100 percent of the sales of Viva Glam products to the MAC Aids Fund. The campaign is unusual in its size and prominence — celebrity models are its spokespeople and MAC spends millions of dollars promoting the effort — and the fact that it supports some potentially controversial causes, such as groups that help drug users and gay men. But the company says that Viva Glam has increased sales instead of turning off customers.

“It’s love us or leave us,” says John Demsey, MAC’s global president. “You can’t operate with the people we do and expect it not to garner controversy. And Viva Glam definitely has image benefits for the overall company.”

Also: Read the opinion piece by the executive director of the MAC AIDS Fund in The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

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