How Komen Flushed Their Brand in 24 Hours
There have been some good pieces written analyzing what has happened with the Susan G. Komen Foundation's huge mistake to cut off funding to Planned Parenthood for cancer screenings. One worth reading is Kivi's post, the Accidental Rebranding of Komen for the Cure.
My personal thoughts on this are no secret, but I'd like to dissect how Komen for the Cure completely destroyed a brand 3 decades in the making and how they're now a different organization with a different future (if they even have one), whether they like it or not. My goal here is to help people understand this so you don't make the same mistakes.
A lot of people have been writing that Komen didn't have a communications strategy and that was their problem. Well that was one problem. Others include a complete lack of understanding of the Internet, how news spreads during a news cycle, and the temperature of progressive activists after a lot of backsliding on this issue specifically, and more generally with things learned from the ACORN fight. But the biggest issue is they completely changed their mission without even realizing it.
The mission departure
There has been plenty of controversy from Komen to date ranging from accusations they are denying links to cancer because of donations they receive to suing smaller organizations for using "for the cure" in their marketing. But they've weathered it because they've remained focused on what is and should be a completely non-partisan cause -- preventing, treating and curing breast cancer. They've attracted women and men of all political stripes and backgrounds to their cause. It was a safe place for corporations to support the cause. Komen's board thought they were simply cutting off a grant, for what many believe to be ideological reasons driven by Karen Handel, but what they were really doing is changing their entire mission. By taking a side in the abortion debate they essentially decided: we only want to work with men and women on the anti-abortion side of the debate, cutting off at least 50% if not more of their support.
http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/02/03/how-komen-flushed-their-brand-in-24-hours
This is an excellent examination the Komen mess. Chances are, no matter what happens, the Komen brand is toast.
= new reply since forum marked as read
probably accuse you of it. The ad was actually concieved by a Canadian woman who has apparently never had to be thankful that a masectomy saved a loved one or herself. It's an incredible slap in the face to any woman who is now alive but living without her all important breasts.
Too bad this isn't an example of that. 
This one was produced by "savetheboobs.webs.com" which might be the most eye-gougingly unreadable website in geocities history, and this boobtuber even managed to misspell the word "last" ("Lasy year over 40,000 women..."
Btw, the Canadian referenced upthread was responsible for a different ad (by the same name) on behalf of "Rethink Breast Cancer", although the other ad also suffers from a certain titillation factor.
