Standard Bank accused of ‘poverty porn and exploitation’

Bought out in perpetuity with no further compensation, a group of school children may have lost their rights to their own image for the cost of a pair of school shoes.

Caught in a predicament they are still yet to explain, Standard Bank allegedly offered 146 pupils in Mpumelelo Primary School, a rural school in Mpumalanga, new school shoes.

Rights

Now it’s been alleged the parents of the pupils signed away their rights to their images to Standard Bank to be used in any medium.

This would be in any campaign, magazines, billboards, internet, YouTube and internal marketing or training. Standard Bank spokesperson Ross Linstrom said Standard Bank had donated shoes to pupils “in the Nsikazi district as part of the For-good Employee Programme”.

Linstrom said Standard Bank took the rights of privacy of all stakeholders extremely seriously, particularly as it related to children.

“The bank has noted and is looking into the circumstances of the particular release document shared on social media,” he said.

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Exploitation

However, South African Guild of Actors (Saga) chair and actor Jack Devnarain said this was definitely exploitation of the rights of children.

According to Devnarain, the contract meant Standard Bank could take ownership of the children’s images however they were recorded and in any medium.

 “Standard Bank is basically saying ‘I’m giving you a pair of school shoes and in return, I will own your image for the rest of your natural life – and I will be able to use it however I see fit’,” he said.

“And I can use it even if it makes money for me, but you have already been completely paid out. “So, this is what you call a buyout contract and it is quite sad and usual to see this kind of contract.”

Devnarain said it was alarming that Standard Bank was exploiting children in such a way by “dangling a carrot in front of them and their parents who are very hard-pressed financially in an economic climate where people are struggling to find work, where people don’t have money to buy school shoes”.

“Here you have one of the biggest corporate entities in South Africa that’s stepping up and saying, ‘here’s the school shoes, but we’re going to own your image for the rest of your life’.”

Copyright bill

Devnarain said this was why Saga had been pushing for the copyright bill to be signed into law. He says Saga wants to achieve two things:

• Look for more donors to support the school and the children with shoes, uniforms and with a feeding scheme; and for Standard Bank to revise this contract; to cancel and redraft it.

• If they are going to use a child’s image, they have to ask for the permission of the parents and compensate the child financially. They cannot own the images for any other campaign,” he said.

Poverty porn

Marketing, communications and reputation strategist Clive Simpkins said while it was standard practice in the world of advertising, modelling and theatre for people to sign releases on a particular set of photographs or a picture, this was “poverty porn and exploitation”.

“Standard Bank has a massive corporate social investment and [public relations] budget with which to do good things for the community,” he said.

“To tie a pair of school shoes to signing a release in perpetuity on photographs of children is tantamount to blackmail and coercion. Because which impoverished parent is going to say no?” Simpkins said in image and reputation terms, this was a big blot on the bank’s copybook

“As a client of the bank, I am disgusted. If I were in charge of marketing or public relations at Standard Bank, I would issue an unreserved apology, rip up those releases and kit out every child from head to toe,” he said.

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