2007.03.01: March 1, 2007: Headlines: Directors - Shriver: NGO's: Business: AIDS: Bloomberg Markets: Bobby Shriver was responsible really for the creation of RED as a business
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2006.10.13: October 13, 2006: Headlines: AIDS: Service: MSNBC: Bono and Bobby Shriver have teamed to launch Product Red as a way of making it easy for U.S. shoppers to get AIDS drugs to Africans who can't afford them :
2007.03.01: March 1, 2007: Headlines: Directors - Shriver: NGO's: Business: AIDS: Bloomberg Markets: Bobby Shriver was responsible really for the creation of RED as a business
Bobby Shriver was responsible really for the creation of RED as a business
Bono’s involvement in RED is intermittent, says RED CEO Bobby Shriver, who’s a nephew of the late U.S. President John F. Kennedy. “I’m not trying to toot my own horn, but I was responsible really for the creation of it as a business, to get it to go and make all these things actually happen in the real world,” says Shriver, 52, who’s based in Santa Monica, California. He says that Bono’s role was to raise the group’s public profile and help persuade corporate partners to participate. “When he was available, I dragged his sorry little ass along, but he was on tour, so he wasn’t always available,” Shriver says.
Bobby Shriver was responsible really for the creation of RED as a business
Bono Inc.
[Excerpt]
Caption: U2 front man Bono and Bobby Shriver (R) appear as guests on FOX News Live with Jane Skinner (C) on the Fox News Channel in New York October 13, 2006, to promote a new line of clothing, accessories and gadgets, including a special-edition iPod, that will help raise money to fight AIDS in Africa. MANDATORY CREDIT REUTERS/Michael Simon/FOX News/Handout (UNITED STATES)
Bono introduced RED in the U.S. last October by appearing on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Bono and Oprah appeared on-air shopping for RED products in Chicago stores, including a Gap, where model Christy Turlington and actress Penélope Cruz modeled various Gap RED items.
Bono’s involvement in RED is intermittent, says RED CEO Bobby Shriver, who’s a nephew of the late U.S. President John F. Kennedy. “I’m not trying to toot my own horn, but I was responsible really for the creation of it as a business, to get it to go and make all these things actually happen in the real world,” says Shriver, 52, who’s based in Santa Monica, California.
He says that Bono’s role was to raise the group’s public profile and help persuade corporate partners to participate. “When he was available, I dragged his sorry little ass along, but he was on tour, so he wasn’t always available,” Shriver says.
Shriver and Bono first met in 1987, when U2 performed on A Very Special Christmas, an album that raised money for Special Olympics, a U.S.-based charity supported by the Shriver family that organizes athletic events for people with intellectual disabilities. Shriver says he and Bono developed the idea for RED during several meetings held in the past few years. “It was over probably several glasses of wine, over one or two nights, that Bono and I talked about this,” Shriver says. “And neither of us can remember who had this idea.”
RED products include a red Apple iPod Nano music player. Apple also sells a Special Edition U2 iPod, whose profits are not donated to the charity, says Steve Dowling, Apple’s director of corporate public relations. Dowling declined to disclose how many of the iPods—of either type—Apple has sold.
Richard Feachem, executive director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis & Malaria, says RED has transformed the charity’s prospects of getting money from the private sector. In 2006, the RED program had raised $11.3 million for the fund, says spokeswoman for the Global Fund Rosie Vanek.
About $6.25 million was given to Rwanda’s Ministry of Health and $5.05 million to the Swaziland government’s National Emergency Response Council on HIV/AIDS. “I’ve no doubt that within three or four years we could be at an income of several hundred million dollars a year,” Feachem says. “Without Bono, there would be no RED.”
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Headlines: March, 2007; Sargent Shriver (Director 1961 - 1966); NGO's; Business; AIDS
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This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; Directors - Shriver; NGO's; Business; AIDS
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