I Don’t Care About Starving Children in China
By Guest Blogger, Mary Schmidt, Marketing Troubleshooter
From the “tell me a GOOD story!” marketing file
…before you get out the rope and torches…actually I do. But in the “not losing a lot of sleep over it” abstract, not the personal. There are simply too many other things about which I can and do obsess about, including children right here in Albuquerque who don’t get enough to eat. And, I’ve seen the “save the children” commercials with the smiling bearded guy (who comes across just a tad creepy to me) so many times the impact has been blunted.
I caught about 30 seconds of one of those (I hope) short-lived “embarrass yourself in the hopes of winning some money that will mostly go to taxes” reality shows a while back. Truth or Dare? (Was that it?) The woman was asked “Do you care about the starving children in China?” By the pole-axed look on her face you could tell she was between the proverbial rock and hard place. If she told the truth, “No” she’d come off as a heartless idiot. If she said yes, she’d be – well – lying (I think she was hooked up to a detector gizmo.)
This is why they always have ONE dog in a disaster movies (“Run, boy, Run! Get in the shelter!” before the alien fireball destroys the millions of poor human slobs also running through the streets.) I can’t relate to a faceless mob; I can (and do) get emotionally invested in one cute dog.
And, we can all relate to love and loss. So, that’s why the end-of-the-world is often reduced to a slight variation of the age-old romance plot line… boy meets girl; boy saves girl from blood poisoning/zombies/vampires/the asteroid; boy wins girl” happy smiling faces ending (never mind they’re driving by/flying over billions of dead decomposing/burnt to a crisp/buried under tons of rock/trapped in ice…)
So, what story can you tell me?
Related posts: