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Fighting Fire with Desire

1/12/2020

7 Comments

 
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by David Hagenbuch, founder of Mindful Marketing & author of Honorable Influence

Earthquakes, hurricanes, floods—natural disasters are unfortunate reminders of how powerful earth is and how weak humans are.  Yet, in the wake of such tragedies it’s encouraging to see caring people help others in need.  So why has one woman’s philanthropy aimed at fire relief for Australia sparked a media firestorm?
 
Since late July, “Australia is [still] being ravaged by the worst wildfires seen in decades.”  A terrible drought and record-high temperatures are helping fuel the horrific flames.  So far, the tragic toll includes 27 people dead, over 2,000 homes destroyed just in the state of New South Wales, smoke 11-times the hazard level in Sydney, more than 17.9 million acres of land burned, and millions of animals likely dead.
 
Thankfully there are organizations and individuals responding to the tragedy.  One of those people is Kaylen Ward.  An attractive 20-year model from Los Angeles, Ward tweeted a promise on January 3 to send a picture of herself to anyone who sent her proof of a donation of $10 or more to a legitimate fire relief organization such as the Australian Red Cross or Salvation Army Australia.  Ward kept her promise, and within four days, her efforts helped raise an amazing $1 million!
 
Why has Ward’s work been so successful and controversial? It was because she wasn’t wearing anything in the photos; Ward was nude.
 
The people receiving the pictures, weren’t surprised—they got exactly what Ward promised and what might be expected from an “influencer and sex worker” who makes a living from nakedness, often by selling nude photos and videos of herself on OnlyFans.  Recently, she’s come to call herself “The Naked Philanthropist.”
 
One reason people have taken issue with Ward’s promotion of wildfire relief was a perception that she must somehow be skimming money off the top for herself.  However, she quickly clapped back at such allegations, tweeting that “none of the donation money to Australia has or ever will go to me. The only money I have made is money from my [Only]fans. I guarantee I am not pocketing any donation money.”
 
Given that people donated directly to the relief organizations and just direct messaged Ward copies of receipts, she had no access to the money.  In contrast, Ward apparently incurred some direct costs from her philanthropy.  After her initial tweet went viral (over 88K retweets and more than 226K likes), she said she had to hire four people to help her sort through all of the messages, verify the donations, and send out over 10,000 nude photos.
 
It’s likely, though, that whatever those cost were, they were more than offset by all the free media ‘exposure’ (sorry) she’s received, probably worth at least tens of thousands of dollars, not to mention the contact list of future customers she undoubtedly built from all those who direct messaged her for a free pic.
 
Likewise, Ward’s social media following exploded.  Before her first ‘fire relief post’ she had about 176K Twitter followers.  She now has over 387K.
 
Knowing those positive personal outcomes, some may argue that her philanthropy was intentionally self-serving.  Ward takes issue with that assessment, however, saying that she had seen the impact of the recent California fires firsthand and knows “how devasting” they can be.
 
Also, soon after stopping her nude photos promotion, Ward started a GoFundMe campaign aimed at raising money for the New South Wales Rural Fire Service and the World Wildlife Fund.  She stated:  “I want to continue raising funds to save the people and animals of Australia,” because the causes are “very important to me.”
 
It’s hard to judge motives.  There’s also not necessarily anything wrong with a person wanting both to help others and to advance his/her own career.  Many forward-thinking organizations take a similar strategic approach to their philanthropy such that they do well financially while doing good socially.
 
But, then there’s the specific nature of Ward’s career.  It’s pornography. 
 
Many individuals and organizations believe that there are standards of decency that should be upheld, including ones involving sexual explicitness.  Facebook, which owns Instagram, is one of those organizations:  It disabled Ward’s Instagram account because she apparently violated the site’s prohibition of offering nude images.
 

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 Some may say, though, that the means justify the ends, i.e., given the devastation Australia has endured, ‘baring’ oneself is acceptable in order to provide relief to those in need.  Such an argument usually stems from a belief in consequentialism, or that the greatest net happiness is what determines whether an action is ethical, not freestanding moral principles like decency, dignity, and decorum.
 
But, if one considers consequences, there’s a need to look at all the consequences likely to come from Ward sharing her nakedness.  Those include consequences associated with pornography.  Here are several of the negative outcomes that individuals often experience from using porn, provided by Caron Andrews:
  1. Changes the brain:  Through the release of dopamine each time, the brain requires more and more porn.
  2. Affects behavior:  Porn users often have more violent attitudes toward women and exhibit more domineering and harassing behavior toward them.
  3. Leads to sexual dysfunction:  Actual physical intimacy becomes less stimulating.
  4. Harms one’s sense of sexuality:  Porn can cause people to have deviant and even dangerous sexual tastes.
  5. Stunts real-life relationships:  Users often draw away from others and keep secrets from them.
  6. Teaches that women are sexual objects:  Women are often ‘stripped’ of dignity and presented as vehicles for men’s sexual satisfaction.
  7.  Makes people feel bad about themselves:  The lack of congruity between one’s values and actions causes stress and feelings of hypocrisy.
  8. Changes moods:  People who use porn are often easily annoyed, angered, and depressed.
 
The preceding list isn’t comprehensive.  Besides negative impacts on individual users and those close to them, some suggest that pornography carries a major economic price: $16.9 billion a year in lost productivity.
 
Again, it’s impossible to know Ward’s true motivation, but even if she really did mean well, her philanthropic approach was greatly misguided.  The nude photos probably pleased their recipients and the corresponding donations likely helped ease Australia’s pain, but Ward discarded basic decency while fueling the flames of a terrible social problem, which makes her work “Single-Minded Marketing.” 


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7 Comments
Zachary Zigarelli
1/13/2020 03:19:57 am

This method of fund raising is most interesting and I have not seen anything like this attempted before. While she may have sacrificed her common decency in this case, she went to extremes that in the end returned baffling results. I also believe that the sexual nature of her promise was a smart and powerful incentive to entice donations from people who usually wouldn't give a brain cell to the thought of donating to anything in the past. Although her methods may not have been the purest, she managed to reach an entirely new demographic with her stunt which greatly expanded the donations toward this cause. And given her following Go Fund Me I do believe that her heart is in this for the right reason regardless of the popularity and follower biproduct created in the process. Most times celebrities will donate or point eyes toward a cause to donate to in order to preserve or build public image, but I believe that he has not had enough time in popularity for this to be her primary goal in the matter. From a moral stand point this is a bit of a dilemma. On the one hand she may be building up her sex business for further profits in the future, while at the same time disposing of her decency by putting herself out there for the world to see. On the other hand she is raising awareness for a cause that needs as much help as it can get and reaching out to this new demographic has helped significantly. In the end does the good outweigh the bad? Does supporting a worthy cause justify practically purchasing pornography in the progress. These are things people must think through when making a decision to donate. One solution could be to use the hightened awareness to donate to the charities without then cashing in for the photo. This would still support the cause while remaining separate from those who cashed in for their "reward". In the end I very much agree that this would fall under the single minded category of the matrix and while it was not the most edifying way to go about raising donations and awareness, it greatly helped the cause of the people effected by the wildfires in Australia.

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Rosey Jones
1/13/2020 10:58:46 am

What I really do not like about Kaylen Ward's marketing actions is that it created a dichotomy that forced her audience to support the porn industry in order to support the fight against Australian forest fires. The majority of people will all agree that the Australian Wildfires are tragic and the the cause to fight against them is go and ethical. However, a minority of people will stand for the porn industry and its repercussions on society. So by selling her nudes for money for the wildfire cause, Ward tied the cause of fighting the Australian wildfires to this porn controversy created a sort of publicity that is not good for the Australian Wildfire cause. Not all publicity is good publicity.

I do think that Kaylen Ward's intentions for this exchange were most likely pure hearted, considering that sending nude photos not out of the norm for her profession or lifestyle. However, I cannot help but agree with Professor Hagenbuch and Zachary that Ward's marketing actions did not uphold social values (though they did create stakeholder value), making her marketing actions single-minded.

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Ruthanna Eckert
1/13/2020 11:09:18 am

This specific topic is certainly a very confusing yet interesting one. I think it's important to look at this marketing strategy and identify your own reaction to it. When I first heard about Ward's fundraising efforts and the means by which she was going about raising money to provide relief for Australia, I didn't really give it a second thought. I first happened upon the issue in an article I found on Facebook that virtually praised Ward for her innovative and smart-thinking. The article ended up by agreeing with that disapproving voice in the back of most people's heads that whispered otherwise, however, and the author admitted that it was certainly a controversial way to raise money for a good cause. That being said, however, kudos to her for being so creative and successful, it ended with. I didn't really think past that. Did I approve initially? No. Did I disapprove? I don't know, because I didn't think far enough to decide on that, and that's what I realize is the important part. As a consumer and someone who is greatly interested in marketing to other consumers some day, it is critical to evaluate topics like these that specifically pertain to the ethics behind not just how one markets, but how one interprets and understands ethics in society. After hearing more about "The Naked Philanthropist's" efforts, my next initial reaction was to think "Oh well, I'm not her and her actions won't effect me". But then I thought, what if they did? What if I was the wife that found a few of those pictures on my husband's phone? Or the son that found it on his dad's laptop and will never trust him the same way again? What if I found it on my dad's phone? (Not that I at all have reason to think that, but still, it's a concern that I even have to wonder that because of Ward's actions.) As you can see, things that people choose to do can have a HUGE impact on others, and Ward brushed completely over any acknowledgement that porn is actually a BIG problem that damages the lives of many people. Was what she did effective in raising money? I mean, obviously it was. But I still wonder if she would do it all again after a sit-down, face-to-face meeting with all the people who were damaged in some way by what she did.

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Hannah Hope
1/13/2020 11:18:10 am

I believe that while she did end up helping to aid in the relief of destruction from the fires in Australia she may have ended up doing more wrong then right. By sending her public promise to give nudes to anyone who gave only $10 of aid to Australia she most definitely grew in popularity. This was of course good for her but how many of those people were already addicted to porn and how many did she start an addiction in. As described above in the article porn is a very dangerous addiction just like drugs or alcohol. By making her public promise she most likely encouraged many people to start an addiction that they may not have started if she had not done so.

This is why her choice is most definitely single-minded. I believe she most likely did this simply to gain more followers to get more money in the future. If someone followed her request and received a nude from her who was unfamiliar with her work that is just like how a drug dealer may tempt someone into a free sampling of marijuana. Although the money was going to a good cause her picture was simply just a gateway to her success for the future as a porn star.

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Manny Covington
1/13/2020 12:29:04 pm

I believe that this way of fundraising is wrong in terms of her sending nudes for people donating. While some might argue that the people and her are doing good for donating, like the list of 10 consequences that could possibly be a result of consuming this harmful material. I also do agree with you in terms of it being simple-minded as it doesn't hold up the societal value of being decent. Had she just set up a gofund me page or promised to price match for donations, it would end up being mindful and would overall be more effective.

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Emily
3/6/2020 08:34:43 pm

This situation is so comical to me. While there are many people who support what Ward did to raise money, so many more people are upset over it. People are freaking out over what she did to fundraise, but I applaud her for coming up with an original way to go above and beyond her part in society. As I did not take part in Ward's fundraising activities, I do not feel wrong for not bashing her work. Sex work is not legitimized as real work in society, but I believe people do what they have to, to live. This is not to say that I support the pornography industry, but that I don't feel the need to take it upon myself to judge others and their work. As "wrong" as what Ward did may seem, it's more than I can say I did.

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thomas link
8/24/2021 09:50:54 am

great one...

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