fairy godmother

Today I spotted this in my friends house.

Note the unicef logo all over it . . . the makers promise that for every pack bought they will donate funds to provide one vaccination for a child in a third world country.

Great idea.
Whilst you are waiting for your next load to emerge from the washing machine you can feel good about yourself with the knowledge that a poor starving African baby is not going to get some horrible disease.
Wash your pants and save a life.

But (yeah it's me, you knew there was going to be a but) have the makers of household products given up trying to convince us to buy their products because they are better then the rivals, and instead resorted to emotionally blackmailing us to do so ?
It's no longer buy Fairy because it's kind to your skin, the environment and can remove blood, shit and tears in cold water.
Oh no, now it's if you don't buy our product you are depriving a child of an injection.

Is there some unicef funded doctor in darkest Peru who has a queue of anxious mothers and sick babies hoping that he will get a text from Asda informing him that three more boxes have been sold so he can vaccinate three more children ?

If whoever makes these products can afford to fund vaccinations (which lets face it probably cost no more then a couple of quid each) why the fuck don't they just do it ?
The products that carry these kind of promotions don't cost anymore when they run them - so the money is coming out of their (probably huge) profits anyway - and charity donations are tax deductible, which lets face it is the real reason they do it.

I actually think it's quite disgusting that instead of just giving the charities the money they feel the need to turn it into a marketing opportunity as well. No doubt the 'brains' behind these schemes will justify it by saying that it enables their customers to feel as if they are helping needy children, but most people that want to help those less fortunate will make donations to charities anyway.
And Fairy - as you can see from the picture on the packet - has always used a baby as it's logo, and markets it's washing powder as being safe to use for baby clothes. The other product that I have recently seen use a similar idea was disposable nappies (diapers for all you across the pond).

Seems to me that that is trying to tug on the hormonal heartstrings of parents with babies.

You're walking round the supermarket and you like the smell of the detergent in the yellow box and that brand of nappies work better and are cheaper but hang on . . . . if you buy the ones you really want then a child in India might die. . .

Yup. Disgusting marketing ploy.

Just put your hands in your deep corporate pockets and give them the vaccines.
You can brag about it on your packaging if you want but don't try to use poverty stricken kids to make people buy your fucking overpriced product.