Today’s post comes from marketing genius and idea man Spin Williams, who is always in residence at The Meeting That Never Ends.

Somebody asked me the other day why it’s so hard to solve the problem of poverty, and the thought that came to mind immediately was this – “There’s no money in it.”

And isn’t that obvious? I mean, if we could find a way for people who already have a lot of money to make a profit out of ending poverty, it would be gone overnight!

I brought this brainstorm up to my colleagues at The Meeting That Never Ends, and everyone agreed it would be pretty great if we could get even richer by un-poorifying chronically impoverished people. Unfortunately, we couldn’t think of a way to do it that didn’t involve us just handing them bundles of cash, which would make us feel like chumps and cut into our profit margins pretty severely.

Then somebody brought up this article from the New York Times that talks about the benefits of early intervention in child rearing. Apparently “everybody knows” this is the right thing to do.

The writer, Nicholas Kristof, had an interesting suggestion –

We wish more donors would endow not just professorships but also the jobs of nurses who visit at-risk parents; we wish tycoons would seek naming opportunities not only at concert halls and museum wings but also in nursery schools.

That last one really caught fire at The Meeting.

The idea seems to be that helping young children thrive would be a great PR move for rich people, a notion we would endorse if tycoons wanted great publicity. But I know my tycoons, and when it comes to slapping their name on things, it’s not publicity they’re after, it’s immortality! So the nursery schools they named would have to be stadium-sized, or as tall as skyscrapers.

Then we thought – what if we could match up some black-hearted corporations that really NEED a little shimmer of do-gooder gold on their surface with the people who empower very young children?

So we Googled two lists – one of creative preschool names and another that named U.S. Defense Contractors, and  started to mix and match.  Suddenly the puzzle pieces fell into place! Look for some of these great new institutions to pop up soon!

• Alliant Techsystems Journey School
• Halliburton Baby Stars
• Cradle to Ceradyne
• Just For Kids Pinnacle Armor Preschool
• Peter Pan Man Tech Early Learning Center
• Navistar R Kids
• Concurrent Technologies Country Day School
• Raytheon Pumpkin Patch
• Hybricon Toddler House
• First Steps General Dynamics Whee!

I love the sound of it.

Not only do these institutions come off as  incredibly advanced, they’ll look great on that first line of your resume. Assuming you want to blow things up for a living!

See? Marketing solves problems!

Your pal,
Spin

What’s the most impressive school on your resume?