Author: Drew Neisser

I was in a hurry yesterday afternoon so when a sad looking women with her young child in tow asked “can you help us?” I just kept walking. As I rounded the corner I stopped and considered her question. What kind of help did she need? Was she just looking for a handout that I probably could have given her? I considered for a moment that she might not even be what she seemed but realized that was a weak rationalization for not stopping. I thought back to the days of Mayor Koch when he told New Yorkers not to give handouts on the street but rather to give money to charities who were set up to help the homeless. Mayor Koch’s message has stuck with me for the last twenty years. So, after my brief hesitation, I just kept walking so I wouldn’t be late.
Earlier that day I spent two hours with my son at Martin Luther King, Jr. High School in NYC at a public service event set up by the Children for Children Foundation focused on youth volunteering and giving. The event featured 12 hands-on service projects including making fleece scarves for the elderly, creating “Adopt Me” dog bandanas for the ASPCA, assembling care kits for homeless shelters, etc. My son illustrated a few birthday cards for the elderly while I went around taking photos we could use for their website. This was the fifth or six year my kids and I had attended this event which initially involved a few hundred kids and has grown to at least two thousand this year. (Citigroup was the primary underwriter of the event this year and kudoos to them for their strong participation.) In the interest of full disclosure, I’m on the board of Children for Children and Renegade has done all of their web work and helped produce the first two MLK Youth Volunteer event days. As such, I take a lot of pride in the continued success of this event and it warms the heart to watch so many kids of all ages and races work together to help others. (It is also easy for me to envision that MLK, Jr. Day could become a national day of volunteerism which would be really amazing and appropriate.) After the event, my son and I had a great chat on the bus ride across town and continued the conversation over a huge lunch at EJ’s Lunchoenette. All in all, it was a wonderful morning. We had given a little and got a whole lot in return.

This event was also on my mind when the lady on the street asked “can you help us?” After all, hadn’t my son and I helped make life a little better already? Did I really need to do more on that day? I got to wondering how much is enough? Sainthood really isn’t an option here so I tried to cut myself some slack. Yet after my vigorous paddle tennis game (yes, that was the all important event that propelled me past the lady and her child), I went back to the same corner to seek them out. Perhaps I could buy them some food or at least I could find out what kind of help they needed. When I rounded the corner full of new found good will, they were not there. Life is not a Disney movie. I could not help them. At least not that day.

Are you walking by a charitable organization that could use your support? Is there are Marketing for Good opportunity staring you in the face? Can you help us?

Last night I saw a young smoker throw her butt on the street. Rather than ignore this everyday occurance, I asked the girl why she didn’t just wait until she came to the trash can down the block. She had no response and looked at me like I was out of my mind. (I’m not. Besides the basic ugliness of littering, cigarette butts feed rats.) From her perspective, there was no real incentive for her to not throw her butt on the street. After all, all smokers do it. It’s part of the “rebel” factor that goes with being a smoker.
I’ve never been a smoker so I can’t really sympathize with the challenges of cigarette disposal. Seems to me, a responsible person could find some place other than the nearest street to can their butt and in doing so make life a little better for everyone. That said, I was amused to learn about LitterButt.com which empowers litter watchers to bust litterers. The idea is that if you see someone tossing a butt out of a car, you can post the license plate of the offender on the website. If the risk of being exposed as a butt litterer becomes big enough, I suspect the result will be fewer butts on the street and that would indeed make life a little bit better for all of us (even smokers who will benefit from cleaner streets, fewer rats and a clear conscience.)

I love my toys as much as the next guy. But lugging around my Palm, my iPod Video, my MacBook Pro and often my digital still cameras (one for snap shots, one for “art” photos) can be a bit much. Enter the iPhone. Here are a couple paragraphs about it from today’s New York Times:

As Mr. Jobs pointed out in his keynote presentation, the iPhone is at least three products merged into one: a phone, a wide-screen iPod and a wireless, touch-screen internet communicator. That helps to explain its price: $499 or $599 (with four or eight gigabytes of storage).

As you’d expect of Apple, the iPhone is gorgeous. Its face is shiny and black, rimmed by mirror-finish stainless steel. The black is textured aluminum, interrupted only by the lense of a two-megapixel camera and a mirrored Apple logo. the phone is slightly taller and wider than a Palm Treo, but much thinner (4.5 by 2.4 by 0.46 inches).

That said, you won’t see my name on the pre-order list. Here’s why:

• Mac’s last phone was a flop and while this one sounds great, inevitably there will be bugs that will need to be fixed.
• iPhone is only available with Cingular which just isn’t as good as Verizon, especially in New York City. I had Cingular and switched because of too many dropped calls (I once had 11 in a 2 mile stretch).
• iPhone is really expensive (see prices above).
• iPods are fragile. My family has 4 active iPod users and in the last year, we’ve had to replace three iPods for various reasons (hard drive died, battery failed, who knows?). I would be a little concerned about relying on an iPod product for my must-have phone.

Marketing for Good generally embraces product enhancements like the new iPhone as a means of gaining competitive advantage. Marketing a product like iPhone would be pure joy as there are at least 600,000 ealry adopters out there who will gladly cough up the extra dough to show off their “latest and greatest” gadget. That said, for the iPhone to become as popular as the iPod, the price will need to drop and Apple will need to address their reliability issues with a combination of better warranties and more durable manufacturing. When Apple does this, they will be making life a little better, at least for electronic toy lovers like me.