Avon Breast Cancer Crusade

Claim:   The Avon cosmetics company will donate 10¢ to breast cancer research every time you interact with an animated bear.

Status:   Was true, but the promotion is now over.

Example:  

[Collected on the Internet, 2004] Avon will give 10 cents toward breast cancer research every time someone "pulls on the rope" — please take a minute and do it!!! https://avonweb.ca/ebear/main.html [Collected on the Internet, 2002] Subject: HUGS to You for Breast Cancer https://www.roz.org/flash/bear.swf Every time this is forwarded and opened to a new person Avon donates 10 cents to breast cancer! It is really cute! This one is worth forwarding to all your friends.

Origins:   Every year since 1993, Avon Canada has raised money for breast

cancer research through its annual Avon Flame Crusade Against Breast Cancer. Contributions to this cause come primarily from the efforts of Avon Canada's sales dealers, who every year sell a different inexpensive Flame product (e.g., pens, mugs, keychains, candles) and donate the proceeds of those sales to a fund managed by the Avon Flame Foundation, the largest corporate contributor to Canadian Breast Cancer Research.

The Flame product for the 2001-2002 fundraising campaign was the Avon Flame Teddy Bear, sales of which raised $1.5 million for breast cancer research (the most Avon has ever collected in a single year). In conjunction with the campaign, Avon Canada created the "Give A Hug" animated 'bear hug' as a fundraising strategy. Web users who viewed a cute Flash animation of a stuffed bear offering a hug could click on a link displayed at the end of the animated sequence to "send a hug" to others, with the inducement that Avon Canada would donate 10¢ to breast cancer research for every hug sent. The "Give a Hug" campaign has ended, however, and the link to the animated bear no longer appears on Avon's web site:

But the hug lived on, because someone put Avon's "Give A Hug" Flash animation up on a web site unrelated to Avon. Viewing this link didn't result in any contributions to breast cancer research, but many Internet users who were directed to (or stumbled across) this site mistakenly believed it did, thus the e-mailed exhortation to others to visit the link.

The maintainer of that site later replaced Avon's bear animation with an explanation of what it had been doing there in the first place:

In 2004, Avon came up with another 'clickable for 10¢ to be donated to the fight against breast cancer' animation of cute stuffed bears. Visitors to the 'Let's pull together to beat breast cancer' link were entreated to 'grab the rope' (by clicking on it with their mouse). Said action caused three bears to win a tug-of-war with an unseen opponent. Clickers were then beseeched to "send an e-bear," an act that prompted Avon to donate 10¢ to breast cancer research. However, there was only so much e-bearing to be done because Avon had capped its 2004 beneficence at $10,000, which meant once 100,000 e-bears were sent, the promotion was over. Which (in late November 2004) became the case: according to the notice posted on Avon's site (which visitors will see only if they click on the "send an e-Bear" entreaty that follows the animation of the bears and their tug-of war):

The full "Grab the Rope" animation is still viewable on Avon's site.

Last updated:   11 February 2005