In a gambit to promote its charitable work — and maybe polish its image, which has suffered since the financial collapse in 2008 — JPMorgan Chase is financing and sponsoring the “American Giving Awards,” which will be televised by NBC on Saturday night. The two-hour show, with Bob Costas as host, will profile recipients of Chase donations, will be book-ended by Chase commercials and will regularly remind viewers that the whole event is “presented by Chase.”
I'm sorry, but this just does not sit well with me. This is supposed to be a "feel-good" holiday special sponsored by JPMorgan Chase, beamed into the homes of millions of Americans suffering through the worst Economic crisis since the Great Depression, one caused in large part by the reckless and possibly criminal behavior of financial conglomerates like JPMorgan Chase.
And now their crack marketing team, probably the highest paid marketing team in the world, has come up with this piece of propaganda to assure Americans that the banks, and Chase in particular, are really swell citizens. Really, how could you possibly argue with a "contest" that contains such luminary charitable organizations as the Matthew Shepard Foundation?
But to others, the show has another bottom line. It’s a “‘greed-washing’ campaign to score P.R. points,” countered Lisa Graves, whose publication “PR Watch” investigates company public relations campaigns. The $2 million in donations that will be featured on Saturday “are a drop in the bucket compared to its ultra-lush benefits for bankers who profited richly from the swaps that undermined our nation’s financial security,” she said.
Two million in tax-deductible donations? Call me cynical, but that's probably the equivalent of the bonus Jamie Dimon pays to his secretary.
The “American Giving Awards” are part of a broader business world trend. Not content to have the news media cover its good works, many companies are creating their own media, often cloaked as entertainment.
And the American TeeVee audience it's aimed to apparently just laps it up. If you Google this "event" you'll find a tremendous amount of advanced press releases, uniformly glowing and positive. It's a carefully contrived, meticulously planned piece of corporate propaganda.
I'll be honest, I'm not a big fan of shows like Extreme Home Makeover, in which corporate-sponsored celebrities descend like Glinda the Good Witch to dispense their largesse on some poor family suffering through a health care calamity or some other carefully pre-screened and vetted external reason for their tragic destitution. I view these shows as a giant emotional Con job, akin the to the fake promises of the lottery. I realize an individual family benefits, but the marketing of these shows as a cathartic form of entertaiment I find deeply disquieting. Even more disquieting is the fact that the charities selected for this particular bank's largesse must compete for its favors:
Five charities that received money from Chase in the past were selected to compete in public for a new $1 million grant, with voting happening via Facebook. The winner will be revealed on the telecast Saturday; the other four will receive smaller grants.
The goal, Ms. Franke said, was not to burnish the Chase brand per se, but to raise awareness of the community giving program. “It is an opportunity for these charities to become better known and for them to show what they can do with these grants from Chase,” she said.
Other red flags raise the question of how much "charity" is really involved here. Ubiquitous corporate entertainment fixtures such as Miley Cyrus and Will I Am round out the list of luminaries beckoning you to watch. Chase has purchased no less than eight commericals to air during the program.
Like other awards shows, it will rely on celebrities to rope viewers in; it will feature performances by Will.i.am and Rodney Atkins and appearances by Colin Farrell and Miley Cyrus, among others.
A bank giving away money on prime-time TV might be a turn-off to some viewers, but to date only a few seem to have spoken up about it. One of those few wrote on Chase’s Facebook wall on Wednesday, “It’s humorous how easily you can convince people you are doing something good.”
It's not really humorous, though. It's really kind of sad.