Feed a starving child and a needy CEO
Amy at Shaping Youth asked me a while ago to examine corporations who market using philanthropy as the hook (as in Build-A-Bear’s Huggable Heroes).
Generally, I despise any campaign that appeals to altruism in order to sell more product. But secretly, I’m hoping to find something, anything, to change my mind.
Guess that’s not going to happen today. I ran across this great post, There is No Free Rice, about the United Nations’ interactive site where rice is donated to hungry countries based on how well players do in a vocabulary game. I read about it on several blogs.
Now it looks like the site was rigged so that the advertising messages that appear on the page are geared toward the player’s vocabulary — and therefore spending — levels.
What’s the harm? So what if advertisers are buying the rice? Aren’t starving people being fed here?
The harm is that the players – and many are children – are being manipulated into playing by thinking that they are contributing through by getting the anwers right. They aren’t. They are contributing through the number of times an advertiser’s message shows up while they are playing.
So kids will still walk away thinking that they are helping someone less fortunate. What they won’t know is that they are helping someone more fortunate — much more fortunate – too.
January 3rd, 2008 at 2:41 pm
The other day my 16-year old son, Sidney, hit me with the “How will my not eating this disgusting overcooked fish make any difference to some starving kid in China?” question. Which reminds me: Why China? Why not Burundi? Or the Congo? I think it’s because no one knows where Burundi is. Bad PR, is my guess. But I digress.
Anyway, I take a little issue with the “feeding starving people.” So each correct word earns 20 grains of rice?Admittedly, you take a couple thousand correct words and multiply it by 20 grains of rice and pretty soon you have a Whole Kilo of Rice!!!, which is enough to feed, oh, a family of 8 for, oh, a Whole Day or Two!!! There’s social change!!! But I digress.
Something bugs me about some American kids sitting at their computers playing a guessing game and the whole “helping someone less fortunate” by clicking on a correct word in a Fun! Game!
Seems like as long as kids think they’re solving hunger by screwing around on their parents’ laptop instead of actually being less gluttonous themselves or saving their money and sending it to aid programs that actually do any good or learning about redistribution of wealth or volunteering when they’re old enough to do some real good, mostly they’re not confronting their own contribution to poverty and starvation.
Maybe I’m wrong, just another sanctimonius know-it-all [Note to self: Good name for blog]. Maybe donating 20 grains of rice is better than nothing. I mean, I still think my kid should shut up and eat his dried out fish.
January 6th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
Well, as you know, I championed the Free Rice game on Shaping Youth, despite the fact that my daughter tried to ‘game the system’ to give more, and launched an entirely diff. ethical conundrum on the altruistic front.
I agree with Mel that kids get a tad skewed ‘meaning well’ via technology when they should look in the mirror & delve deeper in terms of their own actions, choices, and contributions on the ‘food chain’ of life so to speak, but on the flip side, awareness raising is key to mobilization and empathy on ANY core issue.
I guess I don’t have a big prob w/the ‘advertising rev gen’ model, either because a.) It seems to be one of the few formats that WORK to raise awareness on a sustainable basis to do good things and b.) I found it so NON-intrusive that I couldn’t name an advertiser on that site if you paid me.
That brings up a whole diff. issue on branding…which is…Are the advertisers receiving any bang for THEIR bucks? I asked the kids who played the game and not one of them could recall an ad…and believe me, they played a loooooooooooooooooooooooooong time.
In the industry we call this “banner blindness” and clearly, I ‘ve got a huge case of it, since I couldn’t name one either. That said, it doesn’t seem ‘rigged’ to me at all…if the donations are being made by the advertisers legitimately.
When I take issue with ‘altruistic ties to corporate cause-marketing’ it’s more about the ‘glomming on’ for specific purposes of APPEARING to do good things (e.g. the whole pink think/pinkwashing to a small entity that contributes maybe 1% here and there as opposed to big corps that really DO provide massive support by sheer volume equating to megabucks) when they really are only doing a tie-in to boost their OWN sales, and have very little intention of being a change agent of any kind.
Same with greenwashing…or ANY washing…for that matter…although many have argued the ‘at least they’re doing something’ approach…that one doesn’t fly with me…for the very reasons you stated…manipulation of media, gaming the market.
January 7th, 2008 at 11:00 am
Mel & Amy, this is a tough one, isn’t it?
Sometimes I’d just like the companies to sell stuff and the do-gooders to do good — and not mix the two up. Definately a topic I’ll need to read more about and explore.
Amy, I’m glad your kids couldn’t recall the ads — but I have to wonder, why else would the advertisers support this if they didn’t make some money from it?
January 14th, 2008 at 7:44 pm
OK my turn. I wrote about this too and have been involved in cause marketing campaigns so, I am perhaps ready to defend the site.
First a minor correction - the UN does not run the free Rice site. John Breen runs it. He simply gives the money players “earn” to the UN to distribute through their World Food program.
Second, it does say on the site that “The rice is paid for by the advertisers you see at the bottom of your vocabulary screen.” Which means..a portion of the ad dollars collected are sent to the UN based on some sort of formula that Breen has calculated.
On his website he does say that the site is run as a non-profit which means that ALL money collected after operating costs are covered is donated…however, operating costs may or may not include a salary for him.
So, unless I hear some expose saying he’s paying himself some ridiculous amount of money to run the site…I don’t have a problem with it an do think it actually is a good way to introduce children to the myriad ways that companies can do good while doing well.
I’ve done some cause marketing in my day (Amy, you probably have too) and I’m all for corporate profits going to a good cause…the alternative is that they go to the bottom line/CEO salaries or some other perk…why not do some good?
March 12th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
First of all, it says right on the FreeRice.com page, just below the ads that “these ads pay for your rice.”
Could it be more clear? Could it be less insidious?
Secondly, the ads are not calibrated to your intelligence level. Not at all. The only thing that calibrates to your intelligence level is the difficulty of the words.
You should not believe everything that you read on a blog (even though you have a blog, and I guess you believe what you write). The people that wrote that post, There Is No Free Rice, will get a letter from me too.
Seriously, you need to lighten up. Number one, people rarely remember the ads (as was pointed out when I asked my own kids, and I see a number of other bloggers/commenters have done the same). The only ad I remember is Alibris.com which is a site where you can buy used books for cheap (used books equals less waste, cheap equals not breaking the bank, books equals more learning. SOOOO bad.).
John Breen has two kids. He created the site to help them study for the SAT. He is not trying to brainwash kids, and has done an excellent job of making the banner at the bottom of the page only (less intrusive than, say, a video game magazine website which has pop-up ads), and of controlling the types of ads that appear (ie. things that will largely help you like books for cheap, not Seven for all Mankind jeans).
I think that helping kids be aware of world poverty is an admirable goal. His main reason for starting the site was to get people to go to his other site, poverty.com, WHICH HAS NO ADS and just asks people to write to their government to urge them to uphold their U.N. Millennium Development Goals (but poverty.com is depressing. Hence, not for kids.)
If you want your kids to not be influenced by ads, talk to them about it. And I sure hope they don’t watch tv or eat cereal, where God knows the types of intrusive ads on the cereal boxes will infiltrate their little heads and make them consumer robots in no time.
March 12th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Lucille, thanks for writing. I realize that the title of my post insinuates that John Breen is making money off the site, and that’s not what I intended — I was referring to the CEOs of the companies that place the ads on the site.
I never stated that anyone was trying to hide the fact that the ads paid for the rice — don’t know how you got that idea.
If you know for a fact that the ads don’t change based on how well you do on the vocabulary, then you obviously know more about the site than I do. Is that information on the site as well?
I’ll have to disagree with your statement that “people rarely remember the ads.” Why in the world would anyone advertise if no one remembered them? No company is going to invest in advertising unless it affects their bottom line. I’m sure you know that.
Of course making kids aware of world poverty is an admirable goal. And thanks for the advice on talking to my kids about advertising. Great idea. That’s kind of why I write the posts I do. And I would want my kids to know about the link between the site’s advertisers and the free rice.