I could say I am posting this because tomorrow is going to be a bittersweet day for me [more on that, unsurprisingly, tomorrow] but the reality is I’m posting it because it’s beautiful and moving and incredibly powerful.
First a bit of background.
A teacher in a school in New Zealand recently died.
To honour him, around 1700 kids from Palmerston North Boys High School performed the traditional dance – the haka – as his hearse rolled into the school on the way to his funeral.
It is one of the most powerful and meaningful ways I’ve ever seen someone be told, “goodbye, we will miss you”.
Their teacher would be proud.
I was.
Filed under: Human Goodness
A few weeks ago, I was contacted by a mate who I haven’t spoken to in a long, long time.
He asked if I could call him when I had some time as he had something he needed to tell me.
My initial thought was that either he was ill or a mutual friend of ours – and Andy’s old creative partner – was ill.
I was wrong on both counts.
He told me about a situation he and his family were going through that was one of the worst things any family could endure.
I literally couldn’t believe my ears and I only realised my brain had registered the news when I felt the tears pouring from my eyes.
And why did he want to tell me this when we had not spoken for so long?
Because it was going to make the national newspapers and he didn’t want me to be shocked when I read them.
I literally cannot work out how a friend of mine can be so generously thoughtful when, quite frankly, he is going through the worst moment of his life. While I don’t know anyone else who has gone through this situation, I do know that many who do, tend to understandably hide and weep and the fact he thought about others at a time when it should absolutely be about him and his family highlights what a special person he is.
Some say society is on its knees. I prefer to think people are amazing. Him most of all.
I am thinking of you all my friend and I am so sorry. So, so sorry.
Filed under: Brilliant Marketing Ideas In History, Comment, Human Goodness, IKEA
So I recently saw a campaign that IKEA did to help a local dog shelter.
Basically they put life sized cutouts of the shelters dogs around their store – on beds, on the sofa, sitting around the dining tables – so that as people walked around, they could see the pooches in a home environment and maybe get tempted to adopt one.
Better still, IKEA ensured that there was a code placed around the collar of each cardboard cutout pooch so that interested parties could get more information and organise an appointment to see them directly at the shelter.
Such a sweet, simple, lovely idea.
Of course, you could argue they should have done it with cats given they were the star of one of my favourite ever ads … but given they were once my public enemy #1, this is a lovely gesture that lets me forgive their past sins.
OK, so I have no idea how many homeless dogs have been adopted which means you could throw the whole ‘awareness counts for nothing’ argument I continually use, back in my face … however there’s a massive difference with this and the clearly defined, commercially-focused, business goal that many companies try and justify.
But all that aside, I think it will have had some sort of positive effect.
You see a long time back, a friend of mine – who runs an animal charity called Halo – asked for help to try and encourage people who were interested in getting a pet to go to him rather than a commercial business.
Sadly I didn’t think of the IKEA idea, but what I did say was that he could take ‘cute’ photos of the animals he had in his shelter and put them on instagram with a #tag.
Given animals are one of the most popular categories of instagram [along with, semi-ironically, food] people picked up on it rather quickly and before he knew it, he was getting comments, interest and offers from all over the World.
Of course, having someone in Australia contacting you when you’re in America is of little use … but he was able to use them to help drive even more awareness and over a period of 3 months, he re-homed 28 animals and raised a significant amount of donations for his charity … all for a cost of a few instagram photos and some emails.
With that in mind, I’m sure/hopeful the cardboard cutout dogs also had a positive affect on finding homes for those homeless pooches, just like I am sure/hopeful it had a positive effect on the perception of IKEA … because when people see a company doing something good for no other reason than they believe it’s the right thing to do [especially for the helpless], it makes society feel more positive and loyal towards them than any amount of contrived, bland ‘we care’ advertising they care to churn out.
With all the horribleness that the World media revels in shouting at the World, it’s easy to forget that every single day, good trumps bad.
Whether it’s a person offering their seat to someone in need, a stranger smiling at a stranger or just the simple act of giving a hug to someone you love, we are surrounded by good things and that’s something worth remembering.
Of course there are times when there’s a more generous act … a more obvious demonstration of goodness … and those are wonderful too, because they have the power to make us sit up and take notice and remember that while the press likes to present the streets as full of darkness and danger, they’re actually full of people that are bursting with kindness, generosity and decency.
This is one of those moments.