Why would you say that?

"Apologies for the rubbish tea and coffee, we've sadly done the right thing and started using Fair Trade."

I guess it's meant to be a joke, but it put me off having a cup of tea during my meeting.

Is it ironic? Is it funny? Or is it a bit rubbish?

Comments

[Asi]

not funny.

some people argue that fairtrade coffee/tea is not as good as non FT.

not true.

there are amazing FT coffee but I guess that for a business its a matter of $$$.

the same budget of non-FT it might taste worst than regular coffee.

[Will]

Tetley tea shareholder?

[gordon euchler]

i don't like when people make fun about the quality of coffee. it is such a good friend, always helpful and warm.

[Ben]

It's really shit for loads of reasons, faux honesty, bad humour and insensitivity to name a few.

Any clues to the perpetrators?

[East of Dulwich]

I think there's a long tradition of equating being "ethical" with martyrdom in this country. I remember in the 80's people drinking low-grade Nicaraguan coffee through gritted teeth to show their solidarity.

Some people stuck in a time-warp still talk as though child labour is an essential ingredient to make the kind of product you'd actually prefer to buy. (They're wrong of course).

[Amelia]

I didn't want to "name and shame" Ben , but it is a DM agency that I work with called AIS. Do you know them?
I just sat in the meeting and wondered about why they wrote something like that. I think they think that it has to be funny, it is just so bizarre. It reminded me of the picture that looked like an Arse (see 2 posts earlier), did no-one say "but this looks like an arse", in the same way did no-one say to the copywriter "but this copy is shit."
???

[giles rhys jones]

nice response ben - this is shite - i agree. shame on you ais.

[Rory Sutherland]

I personally like it. It takes away that oh-so-worthy tone from so many green announcements - such as those cringe-making signs in hotels that suggest they want you to re-use their towels to save the planet and not to reduce their laundry costs.

I also think the very name Fairtrade is dubious. If you want fair treatment for 3rd world farmers campaign against the CAP.

[Stan Lee]

And there I was thinking it was the Americans who didn't get irony.

[Amelia]

The problem is that their tea and coffee really is quite horrible...

[Gary]

Amelia, those signs were produced off the back of a very real insight – Fair Trade tea and coffee isn’t quite as delicious as the expensive stuff we used to buy. But we’ve started to use Fair Trade products as part of our CSR policy. We’re very proud of the work that we do as part of this policy and we want to tell people who come into archibald ingall stretton about it in our own way, without being self-righteous and preachy.

We do, however, take our CSR policy very seriously and are committed to working with The Climate Group in a number of ways to reduce our carbon footprint. As well as buying only Fair Trade tea and coffee and recycling extensively, we were one of the first agencies to go carbon neutral. We offset our own emissions through approved programmes and are investing in forestry here in the UK and abroad – programmes like encouraging sustainable farming techniques among the indigenous population of Mexico. This approach has led to a number of our clients asking us to help them formalise their own environmental policies and promote these throughout their organisations to all of their employees.

If you’d like to come in for a chat to learn more about our CSR policy, feel free to make an appointment. I’m sure we can discuss it sensibly over a cup of coffee.

[lol]

i'm with rory. nice to see a refreshing take on the whole CSR issue, unlike some of the overly-worthy stuff you can sometimes see. far better to use a little humour (or dare I say Irony) than to hide behind management-speak mantras. i'm not going to defend the coffee though. ick.

[Francois]

Gary - I dont think you should apologize for that. I thought the message was ironic - I am not a 100% that Fair trade is the right thing to do anyway (see the Survey in the Economists last year) - enough of the moral lessons giver and more political uncorrectness please. For a lot of people Fair trade is unfortunately a very easy way to satsify their conscience. Agree with Rory - lets tackle CAP first. I dont drink coffee anyway. Why do I care ?

[Amelia]

I love blogging! Where else would you be able to have conversations like this...except maybe in the pub face to face.

Anyway - loads of great stuff, thank you to all.

Gary, I apologise for naming and shaming. If you look at the pix I cut out the name of the agency and it was only mentioned in the comments. But happy to hear from you. I work with you guys on a lot of projects and am a big fan. I am pleased that you take CSR so seriously. Is it true that fairtrade stuff tastes worse than other? I'm not sure, that's what we have at home and it tastes pretty good. Anyway, happy to have a cup of tea and talk about CSR with you though (shall I bring my own tea-bag? that was a joke BTW Gary)

Stan, I may well have spent too long living and working in the States and not pick up on the ironic intent of the copy. But it didn't seem to be totally ironic reading it, and in fact Gary does say "it's not as delicious as the other more expensive stuff we used to buy", so I guess maybe it wasn't so ironic but actually a kind of apology in case people didn't like the hot drinks.

Rory, Francois and Lol: Agree that Fairtrade without re-looking at CAP is a band-aid solution (as we used to say when I worked in New York) but using the power of your pound for good is a good thing.

Question to the masses - if your company does good things like switch to Faritrade coffee, or have recyled paper or energy efficient light bulbs in an office, do you have to put a poster up and tell people? It's a genuine question.

A

[mark rapley]

How sad that codes of conduct are necessary in any sphere - in the City of London it used to be said that 'meum pactum dictum'(my word is my bond) and the great lines to a new recruit were: ' There are no rules in this firm, but if you break them we shall fire you!

[Sonja]

Shows two things for me:

1. How easy it is to get self-deprecating humour wrong (or rather, how difficult it is to get it right) - cf your post a while ago on Barclays trying to do an 'Innocent'

2. That if a company is doing something 'good', they should just let people find out for themselves. It's so much more powerful that way than when it's announced - because no matter what tone you announce it in, it's always going to seem like you're looking for a public pat on the back.