This may make me come of as me being overly cynical (which I often am) — and I certainly don’t want to discount the generosity and clear public good that is being done here — but the holiday season has long been a time when companies try to earn goodwill for themselves by doing good will for others. What I mean is that, given the spirit of season and the fact that everyone is in such a positive mindset, many companies see this time of year as the perfect opportunity to get people to view their brand as less of a monolithic, heartless, cash-grab concealed in a logo.
‘Tis the season to convince people you are not Ebenezer Scrooge — at least not all the time.
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Citigroup, one of many financial firms that most consumers would give nothing but coal this December 25, has captured the Christmas spirit better than any other company that I’ve seen by halting all home foreclosures and evictions for the next 30 days. While many companies use the holidays to give away relatively cheap goods or even make worthwhile monetary donations to good causes, the act of easing the pain of families who have suffered the most from the global recession is perhaps the best thing any company could do — even if it is admittedly only a temporary respite for evictions that both homeowners and the bank hopes can be avoided.
The suspension means Citi will halt foreclosure sales and stop evicting homeowners from properties it has already seized. The company projects it will help 2,000 homeowners with scheduled foreclosure sales and another 2,000 that were due to receive foreclosure notices.
Das also said the company is working on “some long-term fundamental alternatives” to foreclosure, but declined to be specific.
“We know that moratoriums are not permanent solutions,” he said.
Google, on the other hand, is gifting convenience and service to the masses in a way only it can by offering free wi-fi at 54 airports across the U.S. (and on all Virgin America planes) from now through January 15. The stated goal here is allowing people to better stay in touch with loved ones while they travel, but the real purpose seems to be the one operating goal that drives all of Google’s ability to generate revenue: Making people think it’s awesome. Well, mission accomplished, Googleplex.
(And in genuinely charitable news, the “Search/Email/News Aggregation/Video/Web Browser/Advertising/Map Provider/Whatever Google Wave Is Giant” is also encouraging fliers who take advantage of the access to donate to any of the nonprofits on this list and pledging to match all donations.)
KPMG is one of many companies forgoing Christmas parties this year and instead finding other ways to corporately celebrate the holidays.
At consulting firm KPMG, thousands of employees spent time last week putting together gift packs of a book and a teddy bear, dressed in a KPMG T-shirt, to be sent to needy children.
Bruce Pfau, KPMG’s vice chair for human resources, said the usual holiday parties didn’t seem right this year.
“With more and more people seeing the negative effects of the economy, we really thought that it would be more in the spirit of the holidays and a more satisfying experience for our people if we did something that was more focused on community service,” he said.
And then you go out and tell MSNBC and the Washington Post and the Kansas City Star and Fox New York all about what a satisfying experience your community service efforts were, right?
Still, these companies are obviously doing some real good in the world and that is indeed commendable. But, ultimately, let’s not forget that the actual reason many of them are doing it often has less to do with the spirit of giving and more to do with the spirit of positive press generation.
