Another Book for my Must-Read List

Driving home from a breakfast meeting in the city, I listened to a great interview on Brian Lehrer's show on WNYC. His guest, Mara Einstein, is an associate professor of media studies at Queens College, and has just published a new book, Compassion, Inc.: How Corporate America Blurs the Line between What We Buy, Who We Are, and Those We Help, which has just gone onto my must-read list.

A critique of cause-related marketing, her book analyzes how companies manipulate us into supporting the companies' bottom lines, rather than the complex social issues they purport to help.

I was particularly impressed by her concern that we are increasingly defined as "consumers" -- as though using things was our most important attribute -- and by the brands we use and wear rather than by who we are.

The good feelings that we get from "supporting" a cause by buying a product are usually just that: good feelings. All too often we don't know how much money a corporation is actually providing to that cause. And usually a direct gift is far more effective. As she said, instead of buying $80 shoes so that the company will give a second pair of shoes to a shoeless child in the developing world, buy yourself a pair of $40 shoes and find a charity that will give multiple pairs of shoes for the other $40.

Full disclosure: It turns out that Prof. Einstein and I are both graduates of Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management ... but I didn't know that when I started writing this post!