Dominos Pizza's Cynical Ad

Just a quick thought on cynicism... and Domino's Pizza.

I believe the real national crisis we face today is cynicism. The age of cynicism actually started in the 1950's (I've discussed that before). That led to the destruction of many of the institutions needed to hold society together in the 1960's and 1970's. The 1980's were a brief reverse of that trend, but by the 1990's we were back at it hard. Today, we live so deeply in the culture of cynicism that we "question" everything, we mistake cynicism for wisdom, we mistake snark for reasoned debate and we pride ourselves in our ignorance. It allows people to dismiss objective fact as a subjective point of view, to think truth is relative, and to dismiss anything because the "wrong" person espouses it. It poisons relationships. It poisons society. It poisons learning. We have reached a point where we know nothing, believe nothing, trust nothing, and can achieve nothing.

How does this relate to Dominos?

Charity.

There has long been a debate as to whether or not disclosing an act of charity invalidates the act. We all agree it is a good thing, for example, to help people in need (well, most agree, some are too cynical to understand this). But many think that advertising the fact you acted charitably invalidates your charitable act because, by telling people, you convert the intent of your act of charity from a selfless act of kindness into a selfish act of self-promotion. And naturally, cynical people are masters at rhetorically finding self-interest to negate good deeds.

Are they right?

No. The charitable act is still a charitable act. The person helped is still better off, and the act was done without requirement. These are good things and should not be dismissed cynically. We should be encouraging them regardless of motive.

That said, I would offer one caveat. This is when the act of charity was itself done cynically. How can we tell? Famous people often do some charitable acts before a camera when they are in trouble and need good PR. Companies do this too. Or how about when the effort spent advertising the charitable act far exceeds the act of charity itself? I would consider that cynically exploiting the goodwill of people because the effort was not in the charitable act, but in exploiting the charitable act. While I would not criticize the act of charity itself, I would criticize the exploitation. In fact, I think this type of behavior only adds to the culture of cynicism because it confirms the false idea that charity is something people do to virtue signal.

And that brings me to Dominos.

Dominos is running an ad during NFL games (and more). In this ad, they talk about how delivery fees are killing small business restaurants and how they decided to help. They bought $100,000 worth of delivery fee cards "and no one paid for delivery fees." And then some small business people praise Dominos for their efforts. Angelic, right?

Or is it?

Let's do the math. Start with the $100,000 spent. Divide it by 50 states... you get $2,000 per state. Divide that by, let's say, two major cities per state. We're down to $1,000 per major city. If Dominos advertised, "We just spent $1,000 in your city on small business's delivery fees," would you be impressed? Hardly. Dominos gave these out as $50 cards. So basically, they gave $50 gift cards to 20 businesses in the two biggest cities in each state. Still impressed? I'm not, but it's charity and I will commend it. I'm glad they did it. Nice.

BUT... then they advertised it. It's in heavy rotation too, so they've probably spent $10 million advertising this fact (Dominos spends about $40 million a year on advertising). That means they spent about $100 advertising every dollar they actually spent helping. I would call that cynical exploitation. You?

Here's the ad: LINK. Tell me it doesn't suggest that they bought a TON of these.

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As an aside, all the cynicism about people only acting out of self-interest comes from a deeply cynical and wrong philosophical argument. The argument comes from an apocryphal story involving Lincoln and another passenger arguing on a coach about whether or not altruism (a truly selfless act) exists. As they argue, they come upon a pig stuck in the mud. It's squealing in pain. Lincoln jumps out and saves the pig, ruining his suit. He then notes to the other passenger, if there was no such thing as altruism, then why would I ruin my suit to help the pig? The other passenger retorts: you did it out of self-interest because you could no longer stand to hear the suffering, so you ultimately were only doing this to make yourself feel better. Cynics latch onto this and argue it means there is no such thing as a selfless act.

But they forget Lincoln's reply. He said, if there is no such thing as altruism, where does the impulse to stop others from suffering come from in the first place? And he is right. Altruism exists. To argue otherwise falsely devalues the human spirit.

Thoughts?