More Co-Branding
Giovanni Battista Moroni, “The Magistrate,” 1560
At the risk of beating a pretty much dead horse, we are about to point out again, as we have on several occasions and in various subtle ways, that the finances of the Italian Government are not in perfect shape.
The reasons for this are important, but not very interesting, so for the moment we are going to let that go and concentrate on the amusing consequences of trying to operate a full-blown Western country with no money in the till – as, for instance, in the plan of an Italian general to partially finance the Army with the help of a cell phone operator, reported (here).
But it all just keeps getting better. Now the “Director of Judicial Organization” at the Ministry of Justice, Mr. Claudio Castelli – a very senior sort of bureaucrat – has told the Milan daily “Corriere della Sera” that he has taken steps to introduce the practice of seeking private sponsors for the activities of the Italian magistrature.
This will be done “with sobriety” and for now Mr. Castelli does not expect to accept cash donations, both for reasons of “transparency” and because of “accounting difficulties.” He expects the sponsorships to be paid in kind and offers a series of examples of how this might work.
For instance: “We stipulate contracts under which suppliers furnish us with paper at more favorable conditions and then the judicial administration publicizes this… The same could be done for all kinds of material goods; law books, fuel supplies and so on.”
There are of course some problems here, but Mr. Castelli does not find them overwhelming, especially once you look at the priorities: “Remember, we have a constitutional obligation to keep the judiciary functioning.”
And anyway, whatever “perplexities” people might have about the quality of justice supplied by a judicial system that is officially on the take would, in Castelli’s view, be overcome by using the Ministry’s centralized national procurement system to cut individual sponsorship deals: “That would eliminate possible embarrassment at the local level regarding the independence of those judicial offices that might find themselves dealing (in another capacity) with the same sponsors…”
Well, this sounds fine, and of course “thinking outside the box” is always welcome. And then, since “Upper Italy” is always detail-oriented, we won’t ask ourselves big questions about what might happen to the career of some judge who screws up, say, winter heating supplies to every courthouse in the country by thoughtlessly sending the managing director of a major oil company to jail.
We are instead intrigued about precisely what form the “sober and appropriate” advertising of the sponsor’s generosity might take. Does this mean the corporate logos on judicial gowns would be smallish and tasteful? Are courtroom walls to be decorated with “appropriate” display advertising?
The mind swings to the mileage a knife manufacturer – let’s say, the official supplier of letter-openers to the judicial system – might for instance get out of “good placement” at the Italian equivalent of an O.J. Simpson trial. Or what a nice Enron-style judicial proceeding could do for a supplier of accounting software.
And if display ads seem a little showy, it could all be done with the spoken word, discreetly inserting a brief spot into regular courtroom procedure: “Has the jury reached its verdict? It has? Good. Now, before we go ahead with its findings, I’d like to say a few words on behalf of…”
We’ll leave the rest of the plug as an exercise for the reader.