I'd rather be playing scrabble...

Missmarketcrash is in the midst of a four day birthday celebration so would like to advise you that the quality of posts may be a bit...off.  Last night, the London Scrabble team kicked off the festivities and brought Missmarketcrash a cake decorated with gold chocolate coin money.  It was heaped on like a pirate's bounty and Team Scrabble looked on with careful anticipation - was Missmarketcrash going to laugh, or, burst into tears?  A trademark giggle from Missmarketcrash calmed the anxious air.  Continuing on the money theme, Missmarketcrash was presented with a series of Lottery tickets.  Now....Missmarketcrash is not the lottery ticket buying sort, but, gosh, her head started spinning.  Missmarketcrash's father once proclaimed (and he was probably parrot pontificating) - he once proclaimed that Lottery tickets were a sneaky tax on the poor.  So then (according to the parrot pontificator), they are useful to the government, inspire happiness, and create a bit of poverty where poverty is not needed.  Hmmm.  That is the current form.  Now...suppose we reverse that.  If there were something that created a bit of a hole for the government, made people sad, and created a bit of wealth where wealth is not needed....

We would then have arrived at the public sentiment regarding the current crisis.

But - I digress.  Back to the Lottery concept.  If ordinary citizens could buy a ticket with the names of companies that one could bail out during the current crisis in different forms - let's say you've got Citigroup, Chrysler, Motorola, UBS, Sun, and Ebay on your card.  There would be a good mix of companies from all over the world represented, and, no two cards would be alike.  If your ticket was randomly selected to be the winning ticket, those companies would be given a golden heart and a cash infusion and the ticket holder would be given a good number of shares (held through a third party) which may or may not be valuable at the current moment.   Deja-vu?  

A Lottery is the oddest kind of game.  It has no reliance on skill and the element of chance is both appealing and repellent (or at least for a control freak such as moi).  It is almost a "something for nothing" exchange as the rewards offered are often a million times greater than the cost.  There are "odds and probabilities", but, they seem almost hypothetical when one gets to the odds on the best prizes.  

Metaphorically and non, I'd rather be playing scrabble...

From Fairtrade to Sharetrade...

I was avoiding the topic of the American car companies as, well, it all seemed just too daft to me.  However, an article in a Canadian newspaper, The Windsor Star, has snagged Missmarketplace into the conversation.  A Ford dealership up in Canada has run a promotion giving away 100 shares of Ford with every Ford car.  The dealership admitted getting the idea from a Texas GM dealer who ran a similar promotion.  Now...this Consumer Marxism is one of those absurdities my dear father would have loved.  You buy it, you own it, and some.  Well, Missmarketplace has not ever worked for Apple, but, has worked on an Apple Mac and, indeed, has owned some Apple stocks in the past.  However, Jack, my financial advisor scolded me for wearing my heart on my sleeve and advised me that one should be cold and disconnected from one's investments...

I think Consumer Marxism would prove very popular to the youthful and optimistic people still roaming the world, sheltered from the turmoil in universities or perhaps those still living in the family home -- people without worries and disposable income.  I think this is an idea that ought to be fast snapped up by marketeers and rendered useless, but, holistic. "Keep our company and values alive"...(and, in the spirit of the Citicorp bailout, why not just make up a share value which is ideologically-based rather than market value based?)

But really.  How could one attract a following to one of the car companies via the values marketing angle?  Come join us for everything good and American, hugely wasteful on all fronts monetarily and environmentally, full of tradition and immune to change? That is certainly not a winner, and, it will be good for America to come to terms with it all shortly.

In the past, selling a product by offering a charitable spin has been successful in the past - pre-Fairtrade, there was plain old corporate charity --  Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream & Paul Newman products were the predecessors of Fairtrade, but, Fairtrade somehow seems like, well, less like marketing somehow.  Or maybe I am just gullible.

Now, could we possibly morph from Fairtrade to Sharetrade?  Not with those cars, but, perhaps with something else...