Monday, January 29, 2007
When darkness comes
After returning from a trip to Ikea, we noticed our neighborhood was looking "a little dark." It took our combined powers of deduction (which apparently, even when combined, didn't add up to much) a few minutes to figure out that our neighborhood was in the midst of its second power outage in six months.
Both our phones and both our laptops were totally out of juice... It was as if the heavens were insisting (if not forcing) us to spend at least part of our weekend totally unplugged. And well, it was entirely enjoyable. Jess made music, I trudged through Easterly's "White Man's Burden (all hail us searchers!!!) which requires a bit of trudging if you're not an economics major, and we had a relatively early night.
Sunday, we went to Blood Diamond which I had intended on skipping. I didn't want to suffer through a sensationalized drama of events that I'm way too emotionally connected to (I can watch CNN for that). But with the story of the film's director angrily that I had blogged about earlier in the week, I decided to give the movie a try.
For those of you have seen it, email me personally. I have an idea that is nothing short of revolutionary that each of us can do easily, if you were affected by the movie as I was.
I hope that should Blood Diamond be recognized by the Academy on Oscar Night, that whomever accepts the award(s), uses it as a platform to challenge all of the assembled celebrity audience to stop their gratuitous promotion of the Diamond Industry. Because it's not just blood diamonds (where blood has spilt caused by civil war and arms trade financed by "conflict diamonds") but equally damning is "dirt diamonds" which is the "legitimate" exploration of diamonds using slave labor and inflicting the most hazardous, hellish conditions on the poorest of people in African countries. Your diamond might be "clean" from blood but it is often not clean from the dirt and misery inflicted upon the people forced to labor for our vanity. Worse yet, this industry exists only because of our own vanity. Are we really that unimaginative or gullible that diamonds should still be a credible, genuine expression of our love for another?
I've got a simple way to fix this, to clean it all up. Seriously. It's the simplest thing I'm proposing, something we all can easily do but I'm not going to talk about it publicly until at least a few of you first contact me privately. So email me if you agree with me in the slightest.
Labels: africa, blooddiamond, celebrity, csr, diamonds, oscars, sierraleone
Thursday, January 25, 2007
A word to the wise
I'm still trying to figure out which was worse: Jennifer Garner's new movie "Catch & Release" or the smell of the middle-aged woman sitting next to me who kept burping the most horrid smell. Combined, it was a lethal combination. Even though it was a free screening, I feel like I should be reimbursed for my time.
Speaking of movies, the Beeb posted this article on an Oscar-night celebrity promotional campaign being organized by the US Diamond industry.
According to the article, the campaign called Raise Your Right Hand Ring for Africa campaign will donate "$10,000 (£5,000) to African charities for each star raising a hand with a ring at events including the Oscars."
The article quotes the director of the recent movie Blood Diamond as pointing out the cruel irony "that the raising of one's hand and the using of one's hand to vote was the prompt for the Revolutionary United Front to chop off hands in Sierra Leone (where the movie chronicles the use of diamonds to fuel the bloody civil war that killed tens of thousands of people and displaced over a third of the country's entire population).
The spokesperson for the Diamond Information Center (the group organizing this promotional campaign) said in response to Blood Diamond's director: ""It's sort of strange that someone who is apparently so concerned about the needs of Africans is making public statements to stop jewellers from making large amounts of money available to African charities. It's unfortunate because it may be that people hear this and hear this very unfortunate connection that has been constructed, and decide not to do it."
The spokesperson goes on to say "The people who would be hurt by that are the beneficiaries of the charities."
Now that's quite literally a bloody cheek. Diamond Exporting from Africa is a hundred billion dollar business. If the Diamond Industry really was concerned about "beneficiaries," they'd concern themselves with the disgusting wages and working conditions of the diamond miners.
This is another example of "social responsibility done wrong." Listen, TMZ.com is the first site I read in the morning, I buy Us everytime I'm on a plane. So this campaign is geared at people like me, people who are influenced by celebrity culture. And I just hope that my fellow Us readers and TMZ surfers see this campaign for what it is. An ironic, insincere, and crude attempt at buying a little good PR.
From a cause-marketing perspective, the lesson here is that "poorly executed cause-marketing" does more to hurt your brand than help it. The idiots who conceived of this campaign are of the same ilk that thought-up Dove's failed attempt at stimulating viral but ended being mocked and angrily criticized by the YouTube community.
Speaking of movies, the Beeb posted this article on an Oscar-night celebrity promotional campaign being organized by the US Diamond industry.
According to the article, the campaign called Raise Your Right Hand Ring for Africa campaign will donate "$10,000 (£5,000) to African charities for each star raising a hand with a ring at events including the Oscars."
The article quotes the director of the recent movie Blood Diamond as pointing out the cruel irony "that the raising of one's hand and the using of one's hand to vote was the prompt for the Revolutionary United Front to chop off hands in Sierra Leone (where the movie chronicles the use of diamonds to fuel the bloody civil war that killed tens of thousands of people and displaced over a third of the country's entire population).
The spokesperson for the Diamond Information Center (the group organizing this promotional campaign) said in response to Blood Diamond's director: ""It's sort of strange that someone who is apparently so concerned about the needs of Africans is making public statements to stop jewellers from making large amounts of money available to African charities. It's unfortunate because it may be that people hear this and hear this very unfortunate connection that has been constructed, and decide not to do it."
The spokesperson goes on to say "The people who would be hurt by that are the beneficiaries of the charities."
Now that's quite literally a bloody cheek. Diamond Exporting from Africa is a hundred billion dollar business. If the Diamond Industry really was concerned about "beneficiaries," they'd concern themselves with the disgusting wages and working conditions of the diamond miners.
This is another example of "social responsibility done wrong." Listen, TMZ.com is the first site I read in the morning, I buy Us everytime I'm on a plane. So this campaign is geared at people like me, people who are influenced by celebrity culture. And I just hope that my fellow Us readers and TMZ surfers see this campaign for what it is. An ironic, insincere, and crude attempt at buying a little good PR.
From a cause-marketing perspective, the lesson here is that "poorly executed cause-marketing" does more to hurt your brand than help it. The idiots who conceived of this campaign are of the same ilk that thought-up Dove's failed attempt at stimulating viral but ended being mocked and angrily criticized by the YouTube community.
Labels: africa, blooddiamond, causemarketing, diamonds, entertainment, marketing, online, oscars
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