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2005 crashed into the calendar in a wave of ethical dilemmas. Britain took the
presidency of the G8, Tony Blair pondered if he should encourage Mr Brown to jump
or just give him a gentle push? Meanwhile, whilst Cheri Blair battled over whether
the family should repay the public who financed the Blair’s Xmas break, the electorate
realised just how small a world it was after all and what great opportunities
existed for travel around the planet.
At the start of the year,
EasyJet TV commercials informed the great British
public, who were emotionally distraught with
images from the tsunami, that thanks to cheap
flights, they could get away from it all by
taking off at a moment’s notice.
One lady told me of a low-cost
airline offer of a £1 return ticket to Berlin.
She took up the proposal, not because she had
a burning desire to see the Brandenburg Gate
but because, at that price…”what the heck.”
On hearing her story, I wondered what the airline
marketing boys and girls would decide if the
Prime Minister opted to give the planet’s environment
a hand by withdrawing national air-fuel subsidies
worth around £16bn and charge VAT on purchasing
aircraft as well as tickets, so forcing lackadaisical
passengers to pay a surcharge for inane travel?
Such an initiative from the
Prime Minister would call more than a re-evaluation
of his ethical beliefs, but also a re-think
of his strategic marketing direction.
Would he invest his PR resources in showing
that Britain leads the world in protecting our
fragile planet, which with each passing year
is slowly getting darker because of Global Dimming?
(Recent research proves the planet is now 22%
darker than just fifty years ago. The
effects have already been partly responsible
for disasters such as famines and an increase
of deadly viral carrying mosquitoes in Africa).
Or perhaps Tony should maintain his ‘steady
as she goes’ campaign such as championing gigantic
Euro designed new airborne gas guzzlers which
offer jobs to Britain today and nitrous fumes
in our upper atmosphere tomorrow.
In Africa, 150,000
people die every 10 days from hunger and disease
attributable to global warming and global dimming.
Yet we choose to ignore it provided we can get
cheap tickets for a Valentine’s weekend in Paris.
A tax cut rather than increase
would endear most voters, to their beloved politicians.
After all society has always been more concerned
with current small gains rather than getting
heads around planning about the future or even
remembering yesterday. (Remember the dead
from the US Hurricanes of 2004? Or the
2004 terrorist bombings in Madrid, or the 160
deaths from the train crash in North Korea?
Or the scores of thousands of deaths in Darfur,
Sudan? Or the beheading of Ken Bigley, the murder
of aid worker Margaret Hassan, the 2004 floods
in Bangladesh, the 2004 slaughter of 1,000 children
in Beslan, or the displacement of 1.6 million
people in Northern Uganda? Or the anniversary
of the Second World War in which millions died).
As Prince Harry struts about with his chums dressed in a Nazi
uniform at a fancy dress party to remember the British Empire’s tyranny over
the third world, a woefully diminishing percentage of the British and American
public even realise the significance of places like Auschwitz and Treblinka).
NY Times, January
2005: “ Africa needs to work on its visuals.
They need more blue skies, beautiful beaches
and giant waves with white children in trouble
if they are going to compete.”
Yet, probably by the time
you read this, the Prince Harry story will be
a distant memory and tsunami charity fatigue
would have set in, making it more difficult
than ever for charities to keep donors motivated.
This said, at the height of
the public’s awareness thanks to appeals such
as UK Radio Aid, the tsunami calamity encouraged
a huge swathe of people to dig deep into their
pockets. Ethically, this was heartening,
especially when within only two weeks of the
disaster which touched people of all faiths,
our traditional defenders of taste and decency;
the BBC, felt it was ethically defensible to
broadcast an opera featuring a gay Jesus in
nappies and a Virgin Mary happy to hurl the
F-word and C-word at anyone who cared to listen.
Yet, perhaps even more disturbing
than listening to a Soprano with an attitude,
were the commercial websites sardonically plastering
appeals for the tsunami disaster on their front
pages, so linking a message of caring with a
discount price on wares for the Christmas season.
(Many messages disappeared after the New Year
sales).
One website – www.tatad.com
took the ethically challenged marketplace to
even darker depths: The site urged people, to
get a sponsored brand logo permanently tattooed
on their torsos. The man behind the idea
felt his idea had ‘great potential as a viral
marketing campaign’.
Studying the site pictures
of tattooed volunteers, I questioned if the
new practice meant branding campaigns had become
so sick that marketers would settle for nothing
less than turning people into walking logos?
As with exploiting mass stupidity,
when it comes to disasters, some crook somewhere
will always try and turn a crisis into a cash
cow. Take the guy who marketed bottles
of tsunami water for £14 a shot on Ebay?
Or the group of entreporneurs who ‘saved’ orphans
from tidal waves to ‘restock’ Pataya beach’s
sex industry? Or the Internet plea for
aid in Asia, which turned out to be a ploy to
spread a virus to anyone who opened up the email.
At what point will all this
commercially inspired madness stop? How
about when so many children contract asthma
that none can breath because of pollution? Or
when governments, who promise aid to poorer
countries, actually deliver in full, rather
than settle for their initial down payment?
Or when magazines encourage youth to use their
minds to inspire peers rather than their tongues
as pincushions?
‘Walk humbly’ – Book
of Micah chapter V1 verse eight
Newspapers and celebrities
seem to have assumed the roll of the pulpit;
constantly warning that morality is on the wane.
Hollywood television marathons featuring ‘moral’
guides such as Drew Barrymore are chosen to
encourage Middle America to dig deep in their
pockets for disaster victims. Marketers
know there is no other way, on both sides of
the Atlantic. Traditional approaches from religions
have lost public appeal. Horoscope and
gossip magazines are more pertinent to 21st
century style and culture than the bible.
The biggest UK religion of
all is no longer Christianity, but ‘universal
indifference’ across all faiths, with its followers
saying to their churches or temples, “don’t
call us, we’ll call you”.
It’s a nihilistic attitude
that increasingly pervades throughout society
and so the market, which marketer’s court.
Its time for us to
have a conversation with the rest of the world;
not just a monologue. US Secretary
of State, Condoleezza Rice
Perhaps the time has come to follow a different ideal than
those promised on 30-second ad-breaks offering cheap tickets or instant body make-overs.
Maybe it’s time to take the lead from those who really wear their ethics on their
sleeves, as opposed to a tattooed logo on their arms. For example, sincere
followers of Judaism, Islam, Christianity and more who refuse to follow fads but
remain faithful to indelible traditions such as wearing Tzit-Tzit, Habits, Hijabs,
Kufis, Turbans, or Smaghs.
Or perhaps we are resigned
to turning a blind eye to the decline of ethics,
choosing instead to fly in 400 hundred ton sardine
cans, through puffy clouds of corporate promises,
bursting at the seams with tear drops of shallow
brand ideals whose fundamental motives will
always be to make a profit, rather than a real
difference to lives?
Maybe your on-going resolution
this year should be to take heed of what Winston
Churchill once said: “We make a living by what
we get, but we make a life by what we give”.
The official
website for the tsunami appeal is http://www.dec.org.uk.
This article is written in
the memory of Lincoln Abraham aged 34, who died
in the tsunami and Jennifer Solomons aged 46
who remains missing.
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