Interesting idea from Meinl Coffee, if you can write and like coffee (the two usually go hand in hand):
On March 21st, World Poetry Day, we let our imagination wonder. We dream of a place where money is replaced by emotions. A better world. For one day, we’re changing the currency in coffeehouses around the globe. And Julius Meinl coffees or teas will be paid with your poems.
I can’t tell if they would also take normal tendered currency on the 21st, or if they would have any quality or plagiarism controls on the submitted poetry. Not everyone can write good or passable poetry. Do they not get coffee or tea, then?
Read that last sentence in the quote. Technically, it’s misleading, though it’s not meant to be a technical sentence and no one reads it as such. In praxi, between the customer and Julius Meinl, the currency really is poetry (anything can be money), but Julius Meinl actually pays for it, since they (probably) didn’t pay for their stock with poetry, and neither do the wholesalers, and so on up the supply line. At the very bottom of the line, it’s really not Julius Meinl but the customers exchanging tender throughout the year with Meinl, who are really paying for it. The cash register is the last point of value exchange. and the customers are paying enough such that Meinl can afford to offer coffee and tea for non-tender currency.
I’ll leave it to the more astute students of microeconomics to really get deep into this.
2 Comments
In the marketing biz it’s called a “promo” — it’s advertising in kind, funded from the same budget that pays for more typical advertising. Yep, the consumer pays one way or another.
I think that’s what I was trying to say, but had to bloviate too much about it. Regardless, it’s not a bad idea. It’s a bit of a novelty but it might play well with their customer base.