This is the opening lyric to Bad Religion’s “Positive Aspect of Negative Thinking” off of their 1990 album Against the Grain.

Today reading about the factory workers in Chicago protesting the loss of their jobs, I really started wondering if this is the next evolution in the way we see businesses competeing in the global market place. Let me explain. From the article that I read on Yahoo, it stated that -

JPMorgan Chase & Co. plans to contribute $400,000 to Chicago’s Republic Windows & Doors LLC.

So what is so uncommon about this? Well atleast up ’til now we have seen large numbers like this fly across headlines almost daily, millions, billions, these numbers are so large that individuals really don’t need to concern themselves with them. But here is the difference about this, the reason this company was forced to close down and give their employees only three days notice is because Bank Of America, a competitor of Chase bank, would not grant the company the credit it needed to keep its doors open (no pun intended).

$400,000 is not that large of a sum for companies of this size, however what Chase Bank just did was marketing genius. Essentially, they purchased a $400,000 ad spot that reached every newspaper and news website’s homepage. The message was, “hey look at us, we are so stable that we can afford to help make a happy holiday for the ex-employees of a company our competitor forced to shut down.” They look like a hero in the financial mess that our country and the world is in. Even in their press release they state that they do not expect any of this contibution to return to them. However, it will. It will in the 250 employees of Republic Windows and Doors who have now just switched banks to the one who just gave them an extra paycheck. It will in the hundreds more who are in fear of their own banks closing and are in search of stability. It will in the thousands more who are hoping for a lottery style payout from Chase.

Has the old beast of marketing stategy and creative advertising finally been killed by the simple buying of customers?