Hi All :)
   Ok... Here is a idea along the idea of the charity gift (which is fine
with me :) )

   IIRC, Mr. Packard's wife (her name escapes me right now) established
(invented if you will hehehe) a Foundation to help children in need of
medical attention (again the name escapes me :( ) and a gift given to it
from HP 3000 users would definitely catch some attention....

Art "trying to remember from years ago when I worked at a Foundation" Bahrs

----- Original Message -----
From: "Sletten Kenneth W KPWA" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, August 17, 2000 4:34 PM
Subject: Re: [HP3000-L] Wall Street or Charity?


> John after Donna after Lars:
>
> > I love it. It is constructive, yet makes the point.
> >
> > The trick, and the key, will be getting the business press to
> > cover the story and thus force HP management to respond.
> >
> > John (I've already contributed) Burke
> >
> > > Now imagine those people decide to not spend $150,000
> > > for a printed page of paper, but make up their minds and
> > > make that a donation for some charity, maybe asking the
> > > HPe3000 division manager to represent them for handing
> > > over the donation...
> > >
> > > Would Wall Street Journal consider a story about that?
> > > Or would they just be angry about losing a $150K deal?
>
> First of all kudos to Lars for thinking of this....   and I'm not at
> all against the idea in principal....  but....  let me play hard-
> nosed grinch for a moment;  and throw out another possible
> variant:
>
> Giving $150K to charity in this context might be noticed in
> passing by the trade rags;  and it's not impossible that it would
> rate a few words in the WSJ....  but it's hard for me to imagine
> it would ever be much more than a short footnote on page
> whatever on a slow news day...  and we would have zero
> control over when it would run, if at all..
>
> IF we were going to try something like this, I would hold out for:
> Half-page instead of full page in WSJ;  give the other half to
> charity like Lars suggested and hope that gets covered too...
>
> BTW, I don't think an ad like Wirt put up or the variant of his
> words that I just proposed or most of the other versions that
> have been talked about would be grounds for being labeled
> "kooks"....  I'm betting it would do just what is intended:  Get
> people's attention (who and for how long is of course TBD)....
>
> Ken Sletten