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Shopping and starving

Posted in General, Advertising December 28th, 2006 by Melinda Varley

Christmas is usually the time when we are inundated with ads showing us scenes of starving children in Africa, homeless people freezing on the streets and refugees in war-torn countries across the world - did we pay attention his Christmas?

This year, the ads haven’t been in less supply, but the December sales reports would suggest that they have been ignored.

The ads aim to tap into our ‘spirit of giving’ attempting to persuade us to be thankful for what we have and also get across the message of how much we have and how little others have (this is how I interpret them, and yes I do feel guilty).   

Christmas in Britain, this year was my first, was a very spectacular occasion. Millions of Christmas themed lights filled the city skies, liquor shops were almost bought dry and many of us spent weeks eating and indulging in Christmas parties and events.

I can safely say that most of Britain has definitely had more than their fair share of festive goodies this year, but sadly, many more around the world spent the day like any other, starving and searching for clean water.

Images of Christmas have bombarded the press, but the two that stand out are how the poor people of the world spent it and how the western world spent it. Poverty and shopping – two very different ends of the scale.

Working in Oxford Street, I have never seen so many people in one area in my life. People are fighting over items, pushing past crowds and just being down right rude, all for a couple of materialistic items they probably do not need.

Here are some of the stats from this week’s sales:

• Fights broke out at Brent Cross shopping centre, North London, yesterday, where 5,000 shoppers scrambled to get their hands on cut-price goods from Next.

• More than half a million shoppers are estimated to have passed through Oxford Street.

• Queues at Bluewater shopping centre, in Kent, started at 1am and stretched for half a mile when the first stores opened at 5am.

• Families queuing for the MetroCentre, Gateshead, used relatives to block others from electrical goods.

• Seven junctions of the M60 came to a standstill as crowds descended on Manchester’s Trafford Centre.

• Traffic lights were changed to stay green for longer near Brent Cross shopping centre to help shoppers leave the car parks.

• A woman was given medical treatment when she collapsed with exhaustion while queuing in the White Rose Shopping Centre, in Leeds.

Now that doesn’t sound very festive does it? What ever happened to the spirit of giving?