I Gave At The Office
Now, I'm all for giving blood. Especially in sanctioned and
socially-acceptable ways, for instance, the office blood drive. I
especially love getting to make the same jokes every year.
phil_etchell: i'd be happy to donate, they're just a little particular about where i've lived
jason_looney: and all those man lovers you've had since 1978
It is to laugh!
This year the blood people have gone a bit crazy, plastering our
office with posters, including, even, the walls above each
urinal. While I appreciate the reading material (and the chance
to yell, "Can you people back off?? I'm already giving urine!"),
I don't appreciate the fact that, this year, the posters lie.
The premise of the posters is that only four percent of Coloradoans
donate blood and that this is a bad thing. I'm willing to grant
the blood people this point, even though I've never seen any data on
the percentage of Coloradoans currently having gaping wounds.
But look at how they've chosen to illustrate their point:
First, notice that instead of showing four peas next to 96 peas,
they are actually showing four peas next to 132,450 peas. So the
marketing weasel who created this poster was either hoping we wouldn't
notice (an understandable assumption considering he/she probably can't
count past six), or was purposely trying to hide what four percent
really looks like.
But the thing that truly pisses me off is the peas themselves.
Why the heck are Coloradoans being depicted as peas? I mean, peas??? I don't want to be depicted as a pea. As I said, I'm already giving urine.
So they've taken a weak selling point (four percent is bad, you
should do your part to get us to the some mysterious and acceptable
percentage), used nasty little vegetables to illustrate it, then
misrepresented the percentage in their illustration. It makes no
sense. How hard is it to sell a blood drive? Couldn't you
just replace the peas on the poster with a giant cookie and say:
- Eat all the cookies you want
- Take a two hour nap at work
- Maybe save a life or something
- Re-live your near-misses with man lovers by telling a 80 year-old woman about each and every one
With a poster like that, I'd be the first guy in line. (After I washed my hands, of course.)