They don't Lycett up 'em
It's a World Cup! In December! In Qatar! The number of column inches submitted to the internet about this binge of sport is legion. This post is about marketing, however.
Comedian Joe Lycett has been so outraged by the coalescence of football money and questionable regimes (under 25 woman in Qatar? Get permission, as one of your husbands four wives, before you start a new job or go to University) that he's just popped £10,000 into a shredder (https://benderslikebeckham.com). This act of sabotage was the culmination of his PR campaign, leveraging David Beckham's cash grab $10 million sponsorship deal with Qatar.
Morals aside, what should our reaction be to this? 10k is a huge chunk of money for most people. I suspect it's a decent amount for Joe, who is a successful TV celeb, but not at the top of the cake.
Set aside also Beckham, who is an unwilling participant in this story, for whom 10k is pocket change (https://twitter.com/joelycett/status/1591767179707432960?s=20&t=j2YdXQpEr3NqCCKHnVb-wA).
The accusation is levelled that Lycett should have donated that 10k to charity, as opposed to raising his profile in the name of equality.
If the 10k was spent on an awareness-raising campaign by the Terrance Higgins Trust (a well-known charity in the area Joe's campaigning for) how far would it have gone? I dare say not very far. £10,000 doesn't get much in the world of media advertising.
It wouldn't have made front-page news I suspect. In this way, the cash seems like quite a good deal and worth the anger from the perma-outraged Twitter crowd. He could have chosen, last minute, to donate and not shred the cash, but that wouldn't have made as much news impact.