FC: Microsoft's "Freedom to Innovate" swag: A Comprehensive Review

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

I mentioned the swag in a recent column:
http://news.com.com/2010-1071_3-1021938.html

I await the reviews of the Freedom to Innovate 15oz ceramic mugs and 
Freedom to Innovate bumper stickers.

-Declan

---

From: Macki <macki () rotten com>
Subject: MS' Freedom To Innovate Swag:  A Comprehensive Review
To: declan () well com
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2003 02:04:42 GMT

Declan,

A couple of weeks ago you mentioned Microsoft's FreedomToInnovate.com and the
availability of T-Shirts. Intrigued, I had to check them out. The shirts
say "Microsoft" over the front left breast and on the back is a rather
uninspired logo of an American flag with the union portion of the flag 
replaced
with a lame sub-PowerPoint-clipart-grade computer terminal graphic. The text
reads "Proud to Support Microsoft's Freedom to Innovate / Sign up at
www.microsoft.com/freedomtoinnovate"

As a fan of both ironic clothing and corporate faux grassroots campaigns, I
ordered one right away.

The shirts are sold by an outsourced company called "ID Partners, Inc." which
sounds like some sort of PR branding firm. It was supposed to come with two
matching bumper stickers, but they were missing. In fact it didn't even have a
packing slip or invoice, the shirt was just shoved into a FedEx tyvek pouch 
and
sent out. Taking a cue from the mail-order sextoy industry the package was as
discreet as humanly possible. The return address only said "ID Partners, Inc."
and had a New Jersey mailing address. Think of all the explaining I'd have to
do if it showed up here with a Redmond return address, oh my!

Lots of other things were strange about the ordering process, like the fact 
that I requested USPS and it was sent FedEx, that they sent me a 
confirmation email with a blank tracking number, the weird way that the 
following people are CC'd on all order confirmations: 
bkratz () idpartnersonline com, tara () idpartnersonline com. Needless to say, 
they must not sell very many. Bruce Kratz apparently is responsible for 
this mess. His name is listed as author, next to the copyright notice, in 
the comments of the stylesheet laden HTML of the confirmation email (no 
plaintext was provided). Bizarre.

Rotten.com sells a lot of T-Shirts, so I'm fairly familiar with cloth material
and screen printing quality. These are the cheapest pieces of crap ever. I'm
afraid to wash it lest all of the ink flake off. However, the overpowering
stench of formaldehyde-like finishing chemicals demand that the shirt be
laundered ASAP. It will be interesting to see how much this "pre-shrunk" shirt
shrinks, since it is presently labeled size "small" despite being about the
size of most large shirts. Of course the shirt only cost $7.25 plus $7.00
shipping and it does come with the added value of promoting Microsoft.

Sure enough the shirt is made in Haiti by a company called Gildan 
Activewear. A  quick trip to google confirmed the obvious: this shirt was 
made in a sweatshop.
http://www.google.com/search?q=gildan+activewear+sweatshop

I will wear it with pride.

--Macki

PS: I would like to thank Bill Gates, Bruce Kratz, and anonymous Haitian
slaves, for making all this possible.




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