Soap Box Derby
So I went on a magazine run last week and picked up some September issues of a few food rags I enjoy (my "food porn," as Blake calls it).
It's already starting...all of the pink ribbon advertising bullshit. Just...come on. Buying a Ford Expedition or whatever so you can get the designer--and might I add hideously ugly-- scarf is NOT going to help fight breast cancer. It's just going to make Ford more money and YOU look like a complete doofus when you "tie one on" and wear it to work, especiall when well-meaning co-workers keep coming up to you and asking if your cat barfed on you that morning. Yeah, it's THAT ugly.
Same thing with those Yoplait lids. I bought some yogurt the other day and noticed that my lids were all very conspicously pink. Which is fine, because I like Yoplait and it was on sale at the store, but come ON. How many women are out there packing this stuff in by the ton (especially now, thanks to them using an erroneously designed research study touting the weight loss benefits of dairy) without realizing that you have to actually CLEAN THE LIDS AND MAIL THEM BACK TO YOPLAIT before ANY money goes anywhere? And how many women realize that the maximum donation cap for this year has been set at $1.5 million dollars and that Yoplait manufactures nearly double that number of pink-lidded yogurty goodness?
Seriously, if Yoplait were so concerned about donating money to breast cancer, why not just donate ten cents for every pink-lidded container that they sell? They don't do that because they're banking on the fact that women will forget to send in the lids. Yoplait can then get off looking like the good guy by saying, "Well, we overproduce our pink-lidded yogurt containers because we know that people will forget, so this way we ensure that we've got a steady stream of lids coming in to meet our goal." In reality they overproduce because they know that pink ribbons sell, and that they can pocket every dime from the sales of the items after they meet their publicly stated goal.
Plus the whole thing is just really wasteful. It costs $.37 cents to mail in a lid. This is a deterrent for the occasional yogurt eater, who would need to eat at least four containers of yogurt in order for the donation-per-lid amount to be equal to that of the postage. The occasional yogurt eater who buys one little container and doesn't mail in the lid is exactly what Yoplait banks on.
And furthermore, the whole fucking idea is stupid anyways. No one wants to save smelly yogurt lids. But what's a poor dairy producer to do when they want to get on the craptastic Komen breast cancer bandwagon? I mean, in order to properly capitalize on breast cancer, you have to give the greedy consumer SOMETHING, right? What possible tangible item can you extract out of yogurt? Aha! I know! We can give them the lids!
It's a sad state when everyone in society views philanthropy this way, that everytime they give their money to a good cause they have to come away with something. It's like everyone views life as if it's one gigantic happy meal, that in exchange for purchasing a "saved life" they're entitled to a little toy trinket. People don't even care what the trinket is anymore...they're happy with a sticky, stinky, yogurt-covered piece of tin foil. We're essentially collecting garbage and loving every minute of it.
And don't give me that crap that at least they're doing something. You can "do something" and still be part of the problem, you know. All of these cause related marketing schemes justify their actions by saying that they're doing something, and they march out these women who had, like, Stage 1 breast cancer as their spokesperson to add some credibility to their claims.
I posted a link a while back on cause-related marketing, a piece that was completely fictitious and obviously written by someone in PR with an agenda of making herself feel like less of a social pariah. The beginning of the piece started out with this trite little story about how a mousy woman sat quietly during a meeting where all of the executives of a breast cancer charity pondered whether or not they should accept a donation from a tobacco company. The mousy woman, after sitting silent for several minutes, just couldn't take it anymore and blurted out, "I had breast cancer. I don't care where the money comes from. I just want to cure this damn disease."
It's the old "end justifies the means" argument, and it's a tired one. We've got all of this abstract focus on the "end" of breast cancer, on "eradicating this disease" and such. I certainly won't object to that one bit. But come on. Do any of us really know how breast cancer works? Is it even POSSIBLE that breast cancer--or any cancer-- can be cured? Don't tell me you "believe" that it can; this is not an opinion question. There is a biochemical answer to this, an answer that is so scientifically convoluted that I doubt anyone outside of the realm of molecular biology can answer it. Yet we all persist that there is this "cure" out there, even though none of us--save the serious PhD level scientist-- have any factual evidence to back it up. It's just something we "believe."
We have no idea if that end is possible, and if it is, none of us know how it could become possible. But we act as if it's not just possible but an eventual certainty. All we need to do is keep working at it, right? But truth be told, we can't factually justify our perception of the "end."
How is it, then, that we can justify the means?
I personally believe that we need to keep funding "research" (and I won't go into what research I think is worthy versus worthless in this post). We just need to redefine our means of accomplishing it. If everyone just stopped buying useless shit and stopped participating in useless "awareness" walks and instead just helped out directly, we could change the course of cause-related marketing in a very significant way, perhaps in a way that would actually raise MORE money or create more informed "awareness."
What we need is a society that rewards philanthropy instead of consumerism. And it all starts with individual choice.
It's already starting...all of the pink ribbon advertising bullshit. Just...come on. Buying a Ford Expedition or whatever so you can get the designer--and might I add hideously ugly-- scarf is NOT going to help fight breast cancer. It's just going to make Ford more money and YOU look like a complete doofus when you "tie one on" and wear it to work, especiall when well-meaning co-workers keep coming up to you and asking if your cat barfed on you that morning. Yeah, it's THAT ugly.
Same thing with those Yoplait lids. I bought some yogurt the other day and noticed that my lids were all very conspicously pink. Which is fine, because I like Yoplait and it was on sale at the store, but come ON. How many women are out there packing this stuff in by the ton (especially now, thanks to them using an erroneously designed research study touting the weight loss benefits of dairy) without realizing that you have to actually CLEAN THE LIDS AND MAIL THEM BACK TO YOPLAIT before ANY money goes anywhere? And how many women realize that the maximum donation cap for this year has been set at $1.5 million dollars and that Yoplait manufactures nearly double that number of pink-lidded yogurty goodness?
Seriously, if Yoplait were so concerned about donating money to breast cancer, why not just donate ten cents for every pink-lidded container that they sell? They don't do that because they're banking on the fact that women will forget to send in the lids. Yoplait can then get off looking like the good guy by saying, "Well, we overproduce our pink-lidded yogurt containers because we know that people will forget, so this way we ensure that we've got a steady stream of lids coming in to meet our goal." In reality they overproduce because they know that pink ribbons sell, and that they can pocket every dime from the sales of the items after they meet their publicly stated goal.
Plus the whole thing is just really wasteful. It costs $.37 cents to mail in a lid. This is a deterrent for the occasional yogurt eater, who would need to eat at least four containers of yogurt in order for the donation-per-lid amount to be equal to that of the postage. The occasional yogurt eater who buys one little container and doesn't mail in the lid is exactly what Yoplait banks on.
And furthermore, the whole fucking idea is stupid anyways. No one wants to save smelly yogurt lids. But what's a poor dairy producer to do when they want to get on the craptastic Komen breast cancer bandwagon? I mean, in order to properly capitalize on breast cancer, you have to give the greedy consumer SOMETHING, right? What possible tangible item can you extract out of yogurt? Aha! I know! We can give them the lids!
It's a sad state when everyone in society views philanthropy this way, that everytime they give their money to a good cause they have to come away with something. It's like everyone views life as if it's one gigantic happy meal, that in exchange for purchasing a "saved life" they're entitled to a little toy trinket. People don't even care what the trinket is anymore...they're happy with a sticky, stinky, yogurt-covered piece of tin foil. We're essentially collecting garbage and loving every minute of it.
And don't give me that crap that at least they're doing something. You can "do something" and still be part of the problem, you know. All of these cause related marketing schemes justify their actions by saying that they're doing something, and they march out these women who had, like, Stage 1 breast cancer as their spokesperson to add some credibility to their claims.
I posted a link a while back on cause-related marketing, a piece that was completely fictitious and obviously written by someone in PR with an agenda of making herself feel like less of a social pariah. The beginning of the piece started out with this trite little story about how a mousy woman sat quietly during a meeting where all of the executives of a breast cancer charity pondered whether or not they should accept a donation from a tobacco company. The mousy woman, after sitting silent for several minutes, just couldn't take it anymore and blurted out, "I had breast cancer. I don't care where the money comes from. I just want to cure this damn disease."
It's the old "end justifies the means" argument, and it's a tired one. We've got all of this abstract focus on the "end" of breast cancer, on "eradicating this disease" and such. I certainly won't object to that one bit. But come on. Do any of us really know how breast cancer works? Is it even POSSIBLE that breast cancer--or any cancer-- can be cured? Don't tell me you "believe" that it can; this is not an opinion question. There is a biochemical answer to this, an answer that is so scientifically convoluted that I doubt anyone outside of the realm of molecular biology can answer it. Yet we all persist that there is this "cure" out there, even though none of us--save the serious PhD level scientist-- have any factual evidence to back it up. It's just something we "believe."
We have no idea if that end is possible, and if it is, none of us know how it could become possible. But we act as if it's not just possible but an eventual certainty. All we need to do is keep working at it, right? But truth be told, we can't factually justify our perception of the "end."
How is it, then, that we can justify the means?
I personally believe that we need to keep funding "research" (and I won't go into what research I think is worthy versus worthless in this post). We just need to redefine our means of accomplishing it. If everyone just stopped buying useless shit and stopped participating in useless "awareness" walks and instead just helped out directly, we could change the course of cause-related marketing in a very significant way, perhaps in a way that would actually raise MORE money or create more informed "awareness."
What we need is a society that rewards philanthropy instead of consumerism. And it all starts with individual choice.