Charitable marketing

I thought NE did a pretty bang-up job of introducing Jen. So I will spare everyone the time of having to sit through more words by me, and instead tell a story involving the young lady in question.

I have played two kickball games in my adult life. I have won both of them. Neither time was this any fault of my own. I firmly stand upon the shoulders of others and from there, shout to the other team about how good victory tastes. In the second game, I had the opportunity to draft a team. And wouldn't you know it, I sewed the whole game up with my second pick: Jen.

Not many in that crowd knew who she was, since there were lots of friends of friends and the like. I think she left an impression with her dominance. For my part, I simply made outs and dropped popped ups while my squad, led by Jen, soared to glory.

I love movies (they don’t need to be ‘films’ for me to love them). I admit it, I watch the Oscars every year. Yes, I’ve had fantasies of being a seat-filler. Yes, I’ve thought of what dress I might wear from my closet or scrounged from a friend’s. I’ve indulged and I’ve repented for my transgressions. But there is one thing about the awards shows that goes on the list of things that make me want to kick someone in the shins. The gift bags for presenters and winners.

Bags full of ridiculous free stuff for people who could afford these things anyways. Yes, I get it as a marketing gimmick of the companies. If the stars use these products, so will everyone else! It was estimated that there were 125 Oscar gift bags last year. The estimated value: $110,000 a piece. Yup, that's more than $13 million.

My idea is for a company to come out before the beginning of ‘awards season’ and announce that they will no longer be placing products in the gift bags and will instead be donating the monetary equivalent of what would have been in the basket. The company does a press release, does a tiny bit of marketing to show the world how good they are (if they couldn’t tell everyone what they were doing there is no chance a company would even consider this idea). They set up a website, the public gets to vote from a half-dozen pre-selected charities, after Oscar night they do another press release announcing the winner. Yay! Yes, I know this isn’t perfect. There are so many things that I would rather have happen for the world to be a better place, but we gotta take anything we can get sometimes.

I would be far more likely to purchase a product from a company that I knew did this. But, that doesn’t really matter since I can’t afford anything in the gift baskets anyways.