Category — Thoughts

The other day, I was making a solution of baking soda and salt to clean my silver jewelry when I noticed that the Arm & Hammer box said it’ll donate $50,000 to feed hungry children with the help of my purchase. This sounds charitable at first, but then it really bothered me.

What’s $50,000 to Arm & Hammer anyway? Why can’t they say they’ve already donated the money to help the children? Did they really need my purchase to help them reach their $50,000 goal? If they are feeling charitable, then they should just give away the money. Their charitable givings should not be dependent on whether I purchase their product. Is it supposed to make me feel better about purchasing their baking soda? Did I help feed the hungry children? No, not really.

If it’s a marketing ploy so that I’d buy their brand, then it failed. I don’t read the back of the box when I grab the box off of the shelf. There was no campaign about their project. I knew nothing about it until I actually used the product. They could have just said, “We have donated money to feed hungry children,” rather than making me feel like their charity is dependent on whether I buy their product or not.

I want to write them a letter about this.