I remember Oakley burying a huge amount of counterfeit clothing last year too, and a PR man from said company gloating about this seizure of fake merchandise on eTV - wearing a pair of Oakley sunglasses to boot: a great bit of free advertising if ever I saw it. I remember thinking at the time how much more I would have been impressed with his 'civic service' had this counterfeit clothing been dropped off at an orphanage or a Salvation Army shelter.
Last week I could only imagine how gleeful Aids orphans would have been had a truckload of fake 'Dragonball Z' lollipops arrived at their doorstep. Instead, our earth is made the refuse pit for countless counterfeit items that do nothing for some large company's profit margin and so ought to be destroyed. I am in the advertising industry and so understand completely what branding is all about and what counterfeit goods do to the bottomline. It’s the solution to the seizure of these goods that drives me mad. How can we honestly condone the destruction of otherwise desperately needed merchandise? Imagine what the public response would be to Oakley delivering fake clothing to an underpriveledged school or orphanage. In fact – let’s forget what the public response would be (and how this response might translate into loyalty to the Oakley Brand) and consider only the response of an orphan wearing a nice, new, clean (fake) Oakley T-shirt. Thousands of lollipops buried in the ground? One little boy, interviewed on eTV, summed up nicely – when asked how he’d feel about buying a fake ‘Dragonball Z’ lollipop, he said it really didn’t matter – that a sweet is a sweet. I’m sure plenty of orphans feel the same way.
