You’re hurting when you need to brag about how great you are

Have you seen this advertisement?

I’ve been in different locations when this ad came on the display.

I heard “Why are they bragging?” and “There’s a problem when a company has to tell you what good they are doing” — this from two different people, two different locations. Of course, I did not hear anything positive — why would I?

“Oh, Amazon is so wonderful. Aren’t they the best company in the world?”

Yeah, I don’t think I will ever hear that. The largest, richest company in the world, who has grown astronomically off the back of the Chinese Virus, is not to me a wonderful or the best company in the world.

Also, to say (just a couple of the statements made in the ad): …that they donated “over 7.1 million items for Covid-19 relief”. Let me put that in perspective. There are 300,000 doctors and nurses in the USA (there are a lot more, but, for this example, I’m going with the simplest so you understand). If each one of those doctors changed their gloves, just FOUR (4) times a day (and if they are in surgery, or the ICU, etc., they are changing way more than that), in less than a week they will have gone through the 7.1 million items.

They also say that they have “…given over 5.4 million items to victims of natural disasters”. A bottle of water costs less than $.03 per bottle (that’s with water), so, they gave a little over $160,000 in water over a one year period (I’m assuming that the advertisement covers the past year, and NOT the past 10 years).

BTW — I’m NOT saying that they gave water, but, what if they did?

People like me can easily jump to that conclusion — imagine, instead of water, it was a screw to hold up a piece of wood, which cost less than 1/10 of a cent.

I get it. The public are becoming dumber and dumber over time and are more interested in what the Kardashians are doing than what is happening in the real world. They believe whatever the government and the media tells them is the truth. And, because of this, they also believe that companies that are unbelievably rich also tell them the truth. (See above — let’s say the truth is what I laid out, that they gave $160,000 for natural disasters — does that make you feel better? About them? That a trillion dollar company ($1,000,000,000,000) gave .0000001%?).

So, here’s where I’m going with all of this. Is it worth a company, who spends at least a million dollars on advertising, telling everyone how great they are? If the public is stupid, than, yes. If the public is halfway educated, than, probably not.

And that’s the line we are walking today in America. Fewer and fewer kids of this nation are getting the same education that we did (60’s, 70’s, 80's). It is more about teaching to the lowest common denominator than pushing kids to become the best and achieving more (don’t even get me started on how many schools have removed the Honor Society because it made kids feel dumb. (I was NOT a member, but my sister was. Yes, I felt dumb, but I also realized that I would need to work harder to achieve what I wanted because it would NOT be handed to me).)

Amazon is telling us how great they are. They are spending millions of dollars telling us how great they are. (Would love to know how much they “gave away” in their greatness vs. how much the ad spend was.)

Was it worth it? Is it swaying the culture of America? Were they on the verge of being cancelled and this was the only way that they could fight it? Is there anger about them putting so many businesses out of business over the past year and this is going to put them back in our good graces?

I don’t know.

But, I do know this. I do not like companies that have to brag and tell the public how great they are. The best marketing any company can do is not tell, but show.

Here’s a great example. I have such pride in my country when I see pallets of rice being delivered to people somewhere that has USAid printed on the side. Imagine if that was Amazon. Imagine after a hurricane came through, like, Sandy, and there, in the news, we saw planes delivering pallets of bottled water that had Amazon on the wrapping.

THAT is what marketing is. THAT is what charity is. Marketing and charity is NOT bragging about what you do for the unfortunate. Charity is NOT taking credit for it, but doing it.

I wish Amazon would have done this; because we are now going to see a lot more companies start doing the same and bragging about how great they are and how they are there to help. And unfortunately, most of them will be talking a lot but doing very little; and the people will believe that they are doing a lot, when in fact they will be doing very little (like I believe Amazon is doing).