I used to work in a job that did marketing promotions online for various media companies. Usually these were pretty benign campaigns, but from time to time the secondary sponsor would push my sense of ethics a bit. There wasn’t anything too bad (amazingly I avoided the dairy boards and big fast food during my 5 year tour of duty,) but once or twice I’d have to do something I wasn’t terribly comfortable with.
Anyway, I’m out now, and if I ever get another job I’ll be looking for something that’s safe from that kind of thing – I just didn’t like the conflict between my desire to do a good job and my desire to completely destroy what the “payer of the bills” stands for.
Still, there are times, often daily, where I see something and can’t figure out if it’s sheer marketing blunder or if there’s another vegan out there who chose route B.
Your case in point for the start of this long weekend: last month we talked a bit about a McDonald’s campaign involving super heroes. One group’s approach was to complain that the action figures were violent. Another group, apparently, either infiltrated the company or implanted subliminal messages to make Happy Meal toys like this one:
(and yes, I know Batman isn’t a Marvel hero. It’s probably another campaign. I can choose to watch what McDonald’s does every second of the day or what Batman does. Batman usually doesn’t make me throw up. OK, maybe a little.)
There are backstories to things like this that almost make me want to get a job in marketing again and deal with all the ethical crap, just so I can hear the tales. Someone had to have known what this would look like. Was it a dare? Did nobody want to speak up? Or was this actually on purpose?
None of this matters, really – McDonald’s is going to keep doing what it does, and people are going to keep eating there. A wanking Batman just doesn’t have the power to massively change consumer behaviour. It’s just funny, and if you can’t laugh at stuff once in a while, animal activism can get pretty depressing.
