Pinkwashing

Pinkwashing

So in my marketing class we are talking about cause marketing which is marketing a product by tying it to a cause, RED by Bono is a prime example of this. Companies that sell RED get the publicity of helping out the charity and RED gets cash to carry out their work. On the surface both sides appear to be benefiting, and in many cases both sides do benefit and treat each other fairly. Being a cynic I tend to think of these product and “cause tie-ins” are simply PR stunts by the company which, to its credit, does help the cause that it is related to even if it is only because of the publicity that the company gives it. One of the articles that we had to read for the class mentions that if a company has a cause product (e.g. a RED shirt) then it can raise prices for that product, which makes since because  they are giving cash to the cause. The article then mentions that if a company has a cause marketing product it can raise prices on non-cause related products and not upset their customers. The study didn’t mention why this works but their findings showed that companies with cause marketing products were able to raise the price on other products and still get customers rather than the customers leaving to go to a non-cause marked company’s product. Basically because they do the cause related “good deed” they are able to jack up prices and make even more cash. While this is bad there is something happening that is even worse a trend known as Pinkwashing. 

Pinkwashing is a combination of the Pink product line, which supports breast cancer research, and white washing which was when one would cover a dirty surface with a cheap white paint to give it the appearance of cleanliness. Basically what a company that Pinkwashes does is try to get a hold of people that want to help breast cancer research by buying pink products while not actually helping pink. The product may be colored pink or have the word pink on it but is in no way related to the charity cause. Pinkwashing is not just limited to the Pink label but other cause marketing initiatives, taking this concept and applying it to fit other markets (e.g. the fake livestrong bracelets). These Pinkwashing companies exploit the good intentions of buyers to make a cheap buck and are decent at doing it. So beware of them.

One side note. Remember back with the BP oil spill how Dawn had the soaps that said it donated money for every one of them that you bought up to $500,000? Well evidently for it to donate from the purchase you needed to go to a website and submit a few things before the money would be donated. While Dawn did get enough people to read this fine print to donate over $500,000 (since it was quite popular) the fact that there was the fine print on a cause marketed product is something to keep in mind if you’re buying something because of a cause that it supports. Like many things in life the fine print can hamper what you are trying to do.

Age of Empires II

           A few weeks ago I picked up and started playing a computer game that I bought many years ago, Age of Empires II. I had gone in to this game thinking that the experience would be far from good since most games don’t age well, either because of graphics, story or some other characteristic that has been long since abandoned by the industry. Yet, to my surprise the game experience was not that bad and maybe even good. Before I go into the game itself there are a few background things that I should address for the non-gamers out there.
 

Over a decade ago a game was released to the computer gaming community know as Age of Empires II, the sequel to the popular real time strategy (RTS) game call Age of Empires. In Age of Empires II, like in nearly every RTS, you control units in real time; you build your army, build your base and fight your enemy as it happens on screen. This is opposed to turn based strategy games (TBS) where each player has a turn to build and attack which is followed by other players turns (like the board games RISK or Axis and Allies). Like most strategy games of the time each culture (or race in some games) has its own special unit and different branching technology trees (for upgrades to units). Yet, the core of every culture was the same, so you could play as the Chinese and have units that were identical to the Franks except for there “unique unit” (and perhaps a few other units that the particular culture has access to) and in appearance.  Few RTS games of the day had every unit of each race be unique (heck this trait is still far between even in modern RTS games), hence why they are races rather than cultures, and while two different races may have units that are comparable to one another the units are not identical (this is true for games like StarCraft, WarCraft and Halo Wars).  The goal of all of these games is the same, to win. Most RTS and TBS games have multiple ways to win and all have the method of winning where you kill all of your enemies. Some allow things like cultural victories, or assassination victories, or even a mode where if you collect all of an item and hold it for a certain period of time you win.  These multiple methods of victory spice up the game since now you not only have to worry about an invading army but also an enemy winning by building a wonder. Age of Empires II is one of the games where you can win through various methods. Most games also have something called a campaign mode, which is a set of missions interlinking with one another. So you would have one culture or race do differing missions that led to other missions in that story arc. Many games even had multiple campaigns so that you could play as different races, all of which were qusi interdependent yet also partly related to one another, depending on the game that is.

Now that there is a general understanding of what the game is like mechanically I will go into my look at the game thirteen years after its release and say if it has held up over time. First off, as with any game over a decade old there is the issue of graphics. There have been numerous graphic engine changes over the years and it shows. In order to run the game without the grass and water being a clump of primary and secondary colors I had to turn off my computers explorer. This made the game look as it did all those years ago when it was first released (I don’t know why turning off the explore did this but hey whatever works). With the explore off the game didn’t look horrendous, but you can tell at first glance that it is dated visually, no three dimensional rendering, basic shading and a still kinda blocky feel.

The music and voiceovers aged well, they still sound as good as they did when it was released so the developers did a good job there. The story is as good as it was back then, the story, which is in the campaign mode, follows various historical figures; the tutorial follows William Wallace of Scotland, the first campaign follows Joan of Arc of France, the third follows Saladin of the Saracens, the fourth follows Genghis Khan of the Mongolians and the fifth follows Fredrick Barbarossa of The Holy Roman Empire. These stories are both compelling and informative, and while not being entirely historically accurate they do give the player enough to have a basic understanding of these figures. Heck the game did this so well that in high school I got an A on a quiz based solely on the information I had learned in the game on Fredrick Barbarossa. The game is a great example of tangential learning since it gives you some information on the surface that makes you want to learn more outside the game. Heck the game even has “in game” civilipedias which give brief histories on each of the civilizations in the game.

Age of Empires II tries hard to emerge the player in the experience, from having the various civilizations look visually different to having the units of said civilization having accents and using phrases of the native culture that they represent. They also have some units unique to each civilizations region in the world, for example those civilizations in the Africa and Middle East region have access to camels where the civilizations in Europe do not. I would say the emersion was as good as any RTS can be.

            Overall I would say that Age of Empires II holds up to this day and while there may be some graphical issues they can be overlooked. If you have a chance to get the new release (which came out a few years ago) go for it.

Lower Bartonsville Covered Bridge Washed Aware

A week after Irene hit the DC area and things are pretty much back to normal. Clean up went well, those who lost power have it back (for the most part) and while there are some trees that need to be ground up they are not on the roads or paths any more. Overall the greater DC area didn’t get too damaged during Irene, but the same cannot be said about Vermont. Listening to the news, talking to family and reading articles has revealed that Irene hit the state of Vermont much harder than the DC area and even most of New England (which is ironic since Vermont is the only landlocked state in New England).  The storm caused millions of dollars of damage to the state and it has forced the relocation of numerous residents. The story really hit home when I was told that the covered bridge near my grandparent’s house had been washed away.  Whenever I would visit them when I was little my grandmother and I would walk down to the bridge and go under it to look at the fish in the river bellow. Every time that I would go up to their house I had to drive over the bridge it brought me quite the sense of awe when I was a child and it was a fun experience to drive after I had gotten my license. 

Before Irene.

During Irene.

After Irene.

 

 

 Here is the bridge floating away.

The bridge itself was built in 1870 and has survived numerous nor’easters, hurricanes and other extreme weather conditions. The most damage it had taken before last week was a dump truck falling through it in the either the 1960’s or 1970’s. For those of you who are not familiar with covered bridges and in particular covered bridges in New England they are typically wooden, one lane and as the name implies they are covered. These bridges are typically considered land marks of the area that they are in. In New England they are looked upon with pride, so much so that the states of Vermont and New Hampshire have the most covered bridges per mile in the world. Heck, even my home town opted to rebuild our covered bridge when it was getting torn down instead of building a regular bridge. This could be because my home town has the only covered bridge in Massachusetts that is open to vehicular traffic or it could also be because of the love of the bridge, heck this is the second time that the bridge has been replaced with a covered bridge. Anyway, back to the covered bridge that stood near my grandparents, while the storm may have taken it away I have hopes that it will one day be rebuilt. If I am not mistaken there is already a fund being developed for just that purpose. I hope to be able to go back to the site of the bridge sometime this fall and get a firsthand account of it myself. If I am lucky I may even get to be there when they construct and open a new covered bridge where this one stood all those years. Maybe it will last over a hundred and forty years too.