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.

We’ve managed to stay away from Club Libby Lu because we avoid malls at all costs.

Which is not always easy. Remember, I live in Minneapolis, home of the MOST HUGEST AND COOLEST MALL IN THE UNIVERSE.

This hysterical post at Daddy Types (which I found via a scraper site, of all things) was written as a rebuttal to a comment from a Libby Lu employee on a previous post.

Daddy Types successfully counters the commenter’s argument that Club Libby Lu is really a saint-like retailer:

. . . Club libby Lu donated an insane amount to St. Jude’s cancer research hospital . . . [and] we have been supporting Girl scouts of America for years now.

This is a perfect example of the conundrum people face when a company touts their “good works” as a reason to continue buying their product.

After all, don’t we want to support companies that do good work?

Another example is Unilever:

Too many girls develop low self-esteem from hang-ups about looks. Consequently, many fail to reach their full potential later in life. The Dove Self-Esteem Fund is an agent of change to educate and inspire girls on a wider definition of beauty.

On the surface, bravo! However, a closer look reveals that Unilever still makes a profit from women who believe that their skin isn’t the right color and from men who believe that their sexual desires should be reserved for naughty supermodels. Neither of which seems to be inspiring our daughters with a “wider definition of beauty.”

And McDonald’s is asking kids to Bee Good to the Planet by making an “eco-pledge” for the environment. But doesn’t that Happy Meal still come with a useless piece of plastic that will most likely live forever in a landfill?

Responsible marketing is more that just another sales strategy. But these superficial campaigns work. Corporations count on the fact that no one will take the time to peek behind their curtain.

Next time a company brags about its social responsibility? Take a closer look.

Action: Support the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood’s initiative to Tell Unilever: It’s Time to Ax their Exploitative Marketing