Quite a shake

I have been glued to the media coverage on the devastating quake that hit the already desperate island of Haiti. Sadness ensued for all of my family is from the islands. In any case my post is not about the media coverage of this disaster, or the fact that it takes a disaster to draw attention to countries already in need. My post is about the commercials that sneak in between said coverage.

On every channel that is relaying the story, the commercials are "Come visit the Islands", "Take a royal Cruise [to X, Y, and Z]... you get the picture. And I am telling you my precious readers this is happening on every channel. I can't decide how I feel about it, is it taking advantage of the situation and it's popularity? Or are we as advertisers doing that trick "when things are bad, don't dwell on the bad, remind them whats good...". Or is it that other ace we have in our pocket, the theory that if the economy is down, or if your product is down, increase increase increase the amount of ads you show for the product, in this case Haiti being the product/client.

What do you think? Even after Obama's speech, the commercial that followed was for a Vacation package to the Islands. 

in any case,  you may visit the following sites to donate:
redcross.org
yele.org
*but because everyone in the world has their eye focused on this situation, you may find the traffic too high to even get on the site.

BUT again, our media obsesed culture always has another solution
you can text 501501 with the message YELE to donate $5 to the relief fund
or you can text HAITI to 90999 (red cross) to donate $10 to the relief fund

Here lies another problem. I interned with Obopay when it was just getting started. This is a program where you can essentially pay for items, or pay money to friends from your phone. Yes, simply text McDonalds and your No.1 Big Mac with large fries and a Dr. Pepper is paid for in seconds. It works, but the problem we encountered is that people have not caught up with the technology, and do not believe it is possible, and if it is possible then it definitely can't be safe. (remember your parents telling you that the internet was a fad and would never take off, or that it would be terribly dangerous and we will never take part in it...) But this is an amazing program that has so much potential, and is helpful, simple solution for making quick donations between lunches, picking up the kids, and juggling meetings.

I asked my 18 year old sister to deliver the message to all of her friends who each have a cell phone glued to their hand, texting most of the time. She texted me from school saying that no one understands, or believes that this is possible, that you can send money from your phone. Who is it going to? How do we know it is getting there? Why should we believe you?

How do we reach people who are not glued to the latest technological advancements and tell them "hey, this is coming, this is how you use it, just embrace it". The answer is that we may just let it ride. It will catch up to them eventually. (Facebook is just now in the past few years catching up to HS students, twitter is trailing behind, most HS students don't find the need for it, or know of why to use it) HS students have a long way to go—for heaven's sake most of them barely check their email! They have little reason to....yet.

fin

*editors note: why does my spell check keep telling me "texting/texted" is not a word?!!