MasterCard announced a campaign to donate hundreds of thousands of meals to starving children in Latin America and the Caribbean in relation to Lionel Messi, Neymar and the upcoming World Cup. It should’ve been a slam-dunk publicity stunt, raising awareness for kids going hungry and feeding them. Instead, the Messi MasterCard campaign is getting torched on social media.
The Messi MasterCard campaign states the credit card company will donate the equivalent of 10,000 meals to the World Food Programme for children in Latin America and the Caribbean for every goal scored by Messi or Neymar at any official tournament until March 2020.
Goals that changes lives: for each goal scored by Messi or Neymar Jr. Mastercard will donate the equivalent of 10,000 meals to @WFP to fight childhood hunger and malnutrition in Latin America and the Caribbean #TogetherWeAre10 #StartSomethingPriceless https://t.co/URfIp77ElN pic.twitter.com/Ckq61oJgld
— Noticias Mastercard (@MastercardLAC) May 31, 2018
On the face of it, this seems great. MasterCard will give a lot of meals to a lot of needy children. But it doesn’t take long to realize the ramifications of donating money only when one of these two players score. Social media quickly jumped on, pointing out that every time Messi passes instead of shoots or a goalkeeper makes a save, they are denying 10,000 children a meal.
This is absolutely SICK! Having the means to provide 10000 meals and then basing that decision on the outcome of a sporting event is morally wrong! It could meant the difference between life and death for a child and isn’t a corporate companies PR excercise!!
— Simon Wait (@swait1982) June 1, 2018
So are goalkeepers going to be responsible for children going hungry? #PRowngoal
— Lisa M (@Mrs_Metters) June 1, 2018
So, final of the World Cup, Messi steps up to take a penalty, Goalkeeper has to choose between potentially saving 10,000 lives, or helping his team stay in the cup. Wank.
— Darren Huck (@DenzelHuck) June 1, 2018
— Nick Brown (@sTeamTraen) June 1, 2018
You are going to be looking for a new PR consultant very, very soon.
— Grace (@gracelord) June 1, 2018
I hope Argentina and Brazil meet in the W/Cand both teams agree for messi and neymar to trade off goals just to fuck over this horrible idea
— bottlers fc (@eniyeuk) June 1, 2018
The Messi MasterCard charity campaign was clearly done with the hope of bringing attention to starving children and finding a fun way to donate food to them, but it clearly wasn’t well thought out. It’s commendable MasterCard wants to end child hunger, but this obviously isn’t the best way to go about it.
Now, every time Messi passes to Gonzalo Higuain to miss an open-netter, 10,000 children will go without a meal. Every time Neymar has his shot saved, 10,000 more kids go to bed hungry. It’s too easy to see the negative side of this publicity stunt instead of the charitable side.
But on the bright side, the Messi MasterCard fiasco has definitely brought plenty attention to the World Food Programme, for better or worse. So maybe throw them a few bucks if you can, so children don't have to rely on some rich footballers to eat.
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