A cold Thursday in Clapham, 1:30am.
Ryan: Nice, innit?
Me: Mm! If you like cigarette holders, I guess.
Ryan: Press that button on the side, right? And the lid flips open.
Me: Wow! That is pretty nice.
Ryan: Got it from a charity shop...
Me: Good man. I wonder if they've seen an increase in the trade in the, uh-
Ryan: In the present climate, yeah mate. Well I stole it.
Me: You stole from a charity shop? Isn't that a bit, well, cannibalistic?
Ryan: I only stole it for a joke, like. But I was in there an' I saw this TV and DVD combi, right? Combi. And it was yellow, which is my favourite colour.
Me: Bargain if you have somewhere to put it. Like a house.
Ryan: Well I thought it was £25 cause that's what the label said, but then the woman said that it was the other TV was 25, a grey thing.
Me: Bastards. A bait-and-switch.
Ryan: ...so I bought that one, and sprayed it yellow. Looks proper professional!
Me: Hey, nice one man. I mean that.
Ryan:...so anyway, you sure you haven't got any change?
Me: Sorry buddy. Oyster only tonight. Good luck with that though. Take care of yourself.
Showing posts with label charity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label charity. Show all posts
27.2.09
9.2.09
I care?
There's a rather heartwarming story over at Breitenbach Und Brown about a German single mother suffering from cancer. She doesn't believe anyone cares. Truly tragic. She has slipped through the cracks of society.
Marcus' response was to ask the community to say that Yes, We Do Care Actually. The responses were diverse, but overwhelmingly positive in nature... and yet, how many of the respondents walked past a homeless person that week? Most of them, I'd wager. Her conceptual problem was actually worth more than the 'real' (physical) problems around us.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not here to spoil everyone's fun. A community bonding around the concept of care can only be a good thing, and might in time lead to better places. What I'd like to investigate is the mechanics behind this ordering of priorities. Just what is going on here?
Engagement at its best - the 'activation' of a community, you might say. The spuriously attributed "One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic" has been put to work. This woman's plight got the same narrative treatment that the 11/9 families got, that the tsunami victims got. That thousands of homeless people, wage-slaves (proper wage slaves, not you lot), and trafficked sex workers have been denied. Caring about them does not allow you to take part in writing the plot twist of someone's life. It's more like throwing a handful of detergent in a swamp and watching for some result.
Not only watching, but watching alone. Or at least anonymously. Giving to most charity goes unheeded by one's community - the charity will thank you, but your peers will not know. And it's just not polite to bring it up in society, since bizarrely it's given the same conspicuous consumption status as a big TV. 'I care' made the responses public, and consequently people wanted in.
But the offering is not just to be in on a community. It's a chance to stand out from it too, as witnessed by the wonderful creativity of the 'entries', which read like a charitable postsecret. People have unconsciously sensed the chance to make an impact, no matter how small, and at the same time to stand out. Many people have hosted their gestures of caring on their own blogs, to maintain an 'ownership'.
It's an advertising tour de force. Low involvement cost, community payback, individual fame, an emotional narrative to feed into... it's everything people are looking for, and the fact that it captured the attention of some very busy people is testament to the power of the movement. Let us hope that movement can be harnessed. Wonderful things may happen.
It's handraising at its best.
(Thanks Angus)
Is dissecting an honest movement with noble intentions shameful? It might be. But if it makes charities and social marketing ideas take flight... who cares?
Marcus' response was to ask the community to say that Yes, We Do Care Actually. The responses were diverse, but overwhelmingly positive in nature... and yet, how many of the respondents walked past a homeless person that week? Most of them, I'd wager. Her conceptual problem was actually worth more than the 'real' (physical) problems around us.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not here to spoil everyone's fun. A community bonding around the concept of care can only be a good thing, and might in time lead to better places. What I'd like to investigate is the mechanics behind this ordering of priorities. Just what is going on here?
Engagement at its best - the 'activation' of a community, you might say. The spuriously attributed "One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic" has been put to work. This woman's plight got the same narrative treatment that the 11/9 families got, that the tsunami victims got. That thousands of homeless people, wage-slaves (proper wage slaves, not you lot), and trafficked sex workers have been denied. Caring about them does not allow you to take part in writing the plot twist of someone's life. It's more like throwing a handful of detergent in a swamp and watching for some result.
Not only watching, but watching alone. Or at least anonymously. Giving to most charity goes unheeded by one's community - the charity will thank you, but your peers will not know. And it's just not polite to bring it up in society, since bizarrely it's given the same conspicuous consumption status as a big TV. 'I care' made the responses public, and consequently people wanted in.
But the offering is not just to be in on a community. It's a chance to stand out from it too, as witnessed by the wonderful creativity of the 'entries', which read like a charitable postsecret. People have unconsciously sensed the chance to make an impact, no matter how small, and at the same time to stand out. Many people have hosted their gestures of caring on their own blogs, to maintain an 'ownership'.
It's an advertising tour de force. Low involvement cost, community payback, individual fame, an emotional narrative to feed into... it's everything people are looking for, and the fact that it captured the attention of some very busy people is testament to the power of the movement. Let us hope that movement can be harnessed. Wonderful things may happen.
It's handraising at its best.
(Thanks Angus)
Is dissecting an honest movement with noble intentions shameful? It might be. But if it makes charities and social marketing ideas take flight... who cares?
28.11.08
Conscience Clea(red)
On the 25th November, Starbucks unveiled its new campaign for the US and Canada. Really nice in connection with Christmas, right? Not so nice in connection with World Aids Day, which is what it's actually about. Ouch! I wonder if the copywriter's gonna be a little (red) faced over this? A whiff of client writing, I reckon...(red) is something of a success story right now, between catching the wave of philanthro-branding (alongside Fairtrade), and being very careful in its associations (phones, The Gap, the right sort of celebs). This campaign, unfortunate strapline aside, will almost certainly be a moderate success: the facebook event for this 1st December promotion currently has 531,000 attendees.
Looking closer, some of those have only joined to use the group as a forum for their grievances:
"...maybe I'd reconsider if they didn't support authoritarian regimes, if their coffee was fair trade certified, or if they didn't practice semi-legal union-busting techniques"
Quite, Stacy. Whatever Starbucks' practices may or may not be (and I'm certainly not qualified to know), lots of people still have an anti-capitalist attitude towards them - and against that, what this promotion amounts to is a 5 cents donation towards AIDS charities, for each cup of coffee.
Isn't that about... 3p? Thruppence on a £2 coffee? And beyond that, there's the nature of (red) to consider. From joinred.com:
"(RED) is not a charity. It's a business model designed to create awareness and a sustainable flow of money from the private sector into the Global Fund, to help eliminate AIDS in Africa. Consumers buy (PRODUCT) RED, and at no cost to them, money is sent directly to the Global Fund."
(red) isn't a charity. But neither is Starbucks! And the people that buy this won't, in a personal sense, be 'giving' much to charity. What they will be doing is expressing a notional support for the idea, like we all do with badges, or T-shirts - and incidentally, you can bet that the cups this coffee comes in are branded to bits.
So perhaps Starbucks are doing the right thing here? They're a business. They've partnered with a business. Both are experts on branding, image and aspiration. Your purchase will perform the function of showing you in a certain light, without too much of the markup associated with a significant charity donation. If people actually want to give any real money I guess they'll just go and do it.
Right?
thanks, http://forums.somethingawful.com people. I love you.
Append: Stacy writes back to say that 'anti-capitalist' is something of a slur and certainly, I can understand it might touch a nerve in America! Lets pretend I'm a better writer and that I actually put 'responsible-consumerist' instead :)
Append: Stacy writes back to say that 'anti-capitalist' is something of a slur and certainly, I can understand it might touch a nerve in America! Lets pretend I'm a better writer and that I actually put 'responsible-consumerist' instead :)
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