Make Profits, Not War

THE COMPANY THAT STAGED THE WORLD-HUNGER FUND-RAISER IS OUT TO TRANSFORM CORPORATE CHARITY INTO A GROWTH INDUSTRY.

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Here's a metaphor for the Age of Reagan.

It's an ingenious company, entrepreneurial, too. Foreign oil money provided the seed capital, but customers include some of the largest corporations in America. The marketing strategy is to tap and choreograph the spirit of voluntarism. Orbiting satellites, electronic microwaves, Hollywood celebrities, and rock 'n' roll -- all of these come into play.

"I want to create a real global village, a true family of man, and to do that we need social venture capital," explains Michael Mitchell, an independent television producer and event organizer, whose credits include the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games and last summer's Live Aid concert. Now incorporated as Worldwide Sports & Entertainment Inc., Mitchell seeks to produce, direct, and syndicate dozens of new global mega-events wrapped around worthy social causes. A portion of the upfront money would come from corporate sponsors that see the possibility of doing well by doing good, of polishing up their corporate images by being active partners instead of paying guests, basking in the afterglow of world peace and brotherly love. The profits would come from television networks and cable operators willing to pay millions for the transmission rights.

Michael Mitchell was executive director of Alaska's aborted World's Fair when he signed on as vice-president of the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee (LAOOC). It was in harnessing corporate capital to sponsor the greatest mega-event since the games in ancient Greece that he caught a glimpse of how to realize and sustain his dream of the global village -- and turn a tidy $220-million profit.

Fresh from Los Angeles, Mitchell joined with a Harvard-educated Malaysian petroleum baron by the name of T. Ananda Krishnan. With a few of the old hands from LAOOC, Mitchell and Krishnan were working out details of the 1986 World Cycling Championships when an Irish rock 'n' roller named Bob Geldof rang them up. The rest -- as much as $70 million in aid for African famine relief and a profitable evening for ABC television -- is history.

Nothing at the Live Aid concert was more surprising than the rousing cheers of the crowd as the names and logos of some of America's biggest corporations flashed on two mammoth screens above Philadelphia's John Fitzgerald Kennedy Stadium. Corporate sponsorship money topped $5 million, but Mitchell did not have an easy sell. It's not that Chevrolet, AT&T, Eastman Kodak, PepsiCo, or American Airlines were pro-starvation. It's just that corporate marketing strategists were afraid that their companies and their products might become associated in the minds of consumers with tragedy or controversy. In the Age of Reagan, doomsaying is out.

For those corporations that took a chance by investing in Michael Mitchell's dream, it couldn't have turned out better. "The Live Aid experience was an extremely positive endeavor," says an enthusiastic Sterling Wesley, the assistant manager for passenger-car merchandising at Chevrolet Motor Division. "Our major marketing mission at Chevy is to increase sales in the under-35-years-old age category, so it made sense for us to go with Live Aid. We did consumer research after the broadcast that showed us we were right. Chevy received a real boost from being associated with the concert."

With references like that, Mitchell is now making the rounds of the world's biggest corporations, preaching his gospel, selling his products. "Helping the less fortunate is good business," he says. "There's more money to be made in hunger than in war." Mitchell reports that General Motors Corp. and PepsiCo are among the companies that have now approached him to "tailor-make a global village event around their products." He has also been approached by several foreign governments.

Arguably, Mitchell's most ambitious project, however, is to persuade USSR General Secretary Mikail Gorbachev and his family to participate in a seven-nation supershow on Christmas Day 1986. The hitch: the Soviets have discouraged the observance of the holiday since the days of Lenin. "This is live, worldwide television, and Gorbachev will have to stretch things a bit and open his gifts with everyone else," explains Mitchell, who reports that the Soviets like the idea and have agreed, in principle, to participate in the show.

At the dawn of modern capitalism, philosophers dreamed that free markets would undermine the desire of kings to make war, by liberating the ordinary desire of their subjects to make money. The hope proved premature. But now, with the miracle of television, Mitchell would rekindle the dream. Imagine it: a cozy Christmas get-together -- the Reagans and the Gorbachevs and 2 billion of their closest friends and neighbors. And while we're at it, let's all raise a glass of wassail to George Orwell, Marshall McLuhan, and hearty ol' Saint Nick. Disarmament talks? Afghanistan? Who cares? In the Age of Reagan, there's money to be made in reminding us that governments are irrelevant and politics are obsolete.