Outback Steakhouse has concluded its month-long “Thanks for Giving” promotion, in which customers could supposedly “help” the restaurant donate $1 million to Operation Homefront, a military charity that supports service members and their families, by ordering off a special menu. They’ve been pushing the promotion in their TV commercials:
The TV spot, which features black-and-white patriotic imagery juxtaposed against full-color shots of steaks, says that Outback Steakhouse has “proudly supported our troops” for 20 years. Now, the spot says, Outback is inviting its customers to “join” them in supporting the troops by “com[ing] into Outback” and “order[ing] off” their “limited time Red, White, and Bloomin’ menu”; doing so will “help” them make the donation.
Sounds great, right? A worthy charity gets some extra cash, Outback Steakhouse gets some positive attention, and more Bloomin’ Onions for everybody—good stuff!
Well, not so much, for two reasons.
Troopvertising
In general, I don’t have too much of a problem with companies making large charitable donations as a tactic in a marketing campaign. Sure, it may be mostly self-serving, but it’s advertising that actually does some good, even if it’s not motivated by the purest of reasons. Besides, better the money goes to a charity than to, say, Clear Channel for more ugly billboards cluttering up the public space.
But I’m always wary of companies that engage in “troopvertising”—exploiting patriotic sentiments toward members of the military to push product. Walmart, for instance, did it back in December with this TV commercial, in which the son of a soldier asks Santa for snow in Iraq so his dad can have some Christmas cheer while he’s deployed.
Boeing does a particularly egregious example of this. Twice a year—on Veterans Day and Memorial Day—the defense contractor runs ads in which service members reflect upon their time in the military. They’re sharp spots, well-executed and moving—right up until the Boeing logo appears.
In particular, it’s jarring and more than a little unseemly to hear Boeing thank members of the military for their service considering Boeing is in an industry that directly profits from war. The cynic in me questions whether Boeing is thanking the veterans for their service, or for the stock prices that their service indirectly, inadvertently may have helped bolster.
Both Walmart and Boeing have made charitable contributions to military causes; in particular, Boeing even donated a quarter-million dollars to a pretty awesome-sounding National Endowment of the Arts program that allowed returning service members and their families to participate in creative writing workshops to share their stories. So their advertising isn’t straight exploitation or anything.
However, it raises the question: Do we really want companies to be able to “purchase” the right to use our emotions about the military and war in advertising?
War is serious: For members of the military, it can be a terrifying prospect—not just out of a fear of dying in combat, but of the emotional and psychological toll war takes on their loved ones. For service members’ families, the heartbreak of not having a loved one there for a child’s first words or a best friend’s wedding is only exceeded by the heartbreak of not having them there ever again. And, despite what appears to be a convenient tendency to downplay or ignore it in the media, millions of civilians—many of whom are children—are killed, permanently injured, or displaced as a result of war coming to their country; families are torn apart and lives are shattered in wartime.
Make no mistake: Warm fuzzies, charitable donations, and patriotism aside, when a company makes reference to the troops in its advertising, it is using lives that have been touched and hurt and destroyed by war—and the feelings we have for them—for the purpose of pushing product and bolstering brand image.
We would deem it abhorrent, and rightfully so, if a company released an ad that said, “Oh man, it sucks that people die in war! Now how about you buy our toothpaste?” or “You should buy our soda, because we love our troops, and buying our soda means you love them too.” But if we’re being real, these ads are just a stone’s throw (and a focus group) away from that. Are we really giving these types of ads a pass just because they’re tactful? Or because a company paid the necessary “fee” to make it okay?
No good can come out of being so cavalier about war in this way. By treating war and those involved with it with such nonchalance that it can be a part of a company’s marketing program, it normalizes war and desensitizes us to the human tragedy of it. How serious can it be if it’s being used to shill fried onions, after all?
Yoploitation
Yoplait has gotten a lot of attention for its “Save Lids to Save Lives” promotion. The premise is that, for every specially-marked pink yogurt lid customers send to Yoplait, the company will donate a dime to the Susan G. Komen for the Cure, a breast cancer research foundation. For the most recent iteration of the promotion, Yoplait promised that they’d donate up to $1.5 million—or, in other words, they’d accept the first 15 million lids they receive.
Yoplait had to have known they’d hit the 15 million lid mark; why not just do a straight donation? The answer, of course, is obvious: By doing it this way, Yoplait can make its customers think there’s a charitable imperative to buying Yoplait, and their customers can feel good about pretending they’ve done something charitable when, in reality, they’ve just eaten yogurt.
And consider how much more money could’ve been donated to charity if all the money spent on postage to send the lids was instead directly donated to the charity. (Smarter plan? Codes printed on the bottom of each lid that customers can punch into the Yoplait Web site. I find it hard to imagine nobody at Yoplait’s marketing department thought of that—unless they thought their customers wouldn’t get the same do-gooder high by typing in codes than they would by physically mailing lids in.)
Of course, there are some cases where a “send your proof of purchase” component makes more sense than a straight donation: If Yoplait didn’t put a predetermined cap on its donation, the whole idea of sending in lids would make more sense—and a little bit gutsier, for that matter. And programs like General Mills’ Box Tops for Education require the component, since individual schools—not one single charity—benefit from the donation, and each box top is essentially a “vote” as to where the donation should go.
Which brings us to the Outback promotion, which is a flagrant form of Yoploitation: Outback says that ordering off their special, limited-time menu “helps” them make their donation to Operation Homefront, but they don’t say how. Does a portion of the profits go to the charity? Will Outback not make a complete donation if not enough orders off the special menu come in?
Or does ordering off the menu not actually have anything to do with the donation, and this special menu is just a way for Outback customers to get an undeserved feeling of being charitable as they shove baby back ribs down their throats? (Full disclosure: I love baby back ribs.)
Besides, it’s pretty galling for a restaurant chain owned by a multibillion-dollar company to ask for “help” in making a $1 million donation—either you’re going to donate, Outback, or you’re not. Don’t hassle your customers into making a donation for which you’re attempting to take credit.
And it’s a little suspicious that only the items on a very short menu—composed of seven entrees, three types of drinks, one appetizer, and one dessert—“count” toward the donation. If Outback were serious about getting help from its customers, why wouldn’t they open up the entire menu to the donation? Or is it not about the donation, and these are the menu items that are just especially profitable that corporate wants to push?
In the broadest sense, Yoploitation is just bad for our culture, because we’re already kind of a nation of slacktivists. We like the feeling of doing something without actually doing anything, so we sign online petitions, join Facebook groups, and slap magnetic ribbons onto our cars and think to ourselves, “Job well done.” That’s awful enough without businesses not just enabling this, but encouraging it.
If Outback were doling out free Bloomin’ Onions for every troop care package sent, every UNICEF donation made, or every letter to a congressional representative sent calling for more body armor or a smarter humanitarian response, then maybe Outback might be justified in saying we’re helping. Otherwise, it’s just a gimmick.
Last thoughts
Dave Ellis, Outback’s Vice President of Research and Development, appeared on Fox News’ Fox & Friends on March 3 to promote the “Thanks for Giving” promotion:
During the interview, Ellis says that Outback is “here to support the troops,” and “that is why” they’re “doing this initiative.” But c’mon—it may be a nice little byproduct of the promotion, but that’s not why they’re doing it.
Again, I think it’s entirely reasonable for companies to try to earn goodwill and exposure through charitable donations; of the ways to spend marketing dollars, it’s probably among the best. But companies should treat us like grown-ups when they do it: They shouldn’t try to convince us it’s anything but a marketing tactic, and they shouldn’t try to make it seem like we’re “doing our part” by participating in it. It’s not, and we aren’t. And is it so much to ask to keep certain things—like war—off-limits when shilling products?
Outback failed on all accounts on this one. I’m happy Operation Homefront is a million dollars richer after this promotion; I’m just not happy how it happened.
