New gimmick just a hill of beans

October 30, 2000 by neil manthorp

Neil Man­thor­p  — 30/10/2000

Pro­fes­sion­al sports­men quick­ly become used as adver­tis­ing gim­micks and walk­ing clothes hors­es — they get well paid for their efforts so they should­n’t complain.

The best ‘users’, how­ev­er, are the ones that actu­al­ly care about crick­et and the play­ers con­cerned. The ‘prob­lem’ ones are those who climb aboard with­out appar­ent regard for the pas­sen­gers already seated.

Before I con­tin­ue, allow me to say that Stan­dard Bank, over­all, has been very good for South African crick­et — I am aware of that.

Many crick­et sup­port­ers, how­ev­er, may still be con­fused about the lat­est ‘pas­sen­ger’ hitch­ing a lift on crick­et’s back — Bluebean.com. Sim­ply put, bluebean.com is Stan­dard Bank’s lat­est attempt to become more ‘web-friend­ly’ and the beans them­selves have been used to replace the last sea­son’s ‘Acco­lade’ medals.

The beans are, in fact, ‘points’ that have a mon­e­tary val­ue and can be redeemed at shops par­tic­i­pat­ing in the blue­bean scheme.

All this was explained to me in a press release hand-deliv­ered to my front door. Along with it came a use­ful blue shoul­der bag and a tin of blue jel­ly beans that actu­al­ly tast­ed very good. Thank you.

Also in the pack­age was a pho­to­graph of a smil­ing Shaun Pol­lock hold­ing a jar of the same jel­ly beans. He is pic­tured along­side his vice-cap­tain and two name­less, female mod­els. (Haven’t we moved past the era of using women as decorations?)

The cap­tion on the back of the pho­to­graph reads: “Shaun Pol­lock proud­ly dis­plays his blue­beans, cour­tesy of bluebean.com.” So far so good.

Then, in a moment of such seis­mic embar­rass­ment it may take years to for­get, the cap­tion con­tin­ues: “With him are Paul Bouch­er and the bluebean.com girls.”
Oh dear.
Thank you for the jel­ly beans, though.