BEGGARS INC.

It beggars belief how far scammers will go. I'm sure you've experienced bogus beggars and 'homeless' people asking for money like bass players in Cuba Mall for example.
I've seen a few in my travels:

• the early morning assembly of beggars in Verona who were bused in by luxury coaches. They assemble at the railway station and play football and fool about for a while until the organisers hand out crutches, wheelchairs, blankets and.... believe it ... babies for them as props. They can be seen during the day hanging around tourist spots with begging bowls.
• the young people in Chicago shopping district sitting on the footpath with cards and begging bowls or hats. Their ringing cell-phones give them away or, as we saw, the mother of one of them dropping off her kid in the morning from a luxury car saying "have a good day darling - pick you up at 3" before said kid took up a position on the footpath.
• the 'down and outers' at Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco (a tourist spot) who all have their clever and printed-too-well begging cards that have been centrally organised.

In Auckland we are starting to see the same things. K Rd and Queen Street from 7PM onwards is being populated by pretend beggars coming in from the suburbs. Most of them are young and do a couple of hours stint to collect some beer money before meeting up with friends. Some of them are real, don't get me wrong but the majority are bogus. The crappy, hand-scrawled signs are beginning to be replaced by ones that have been thought out a bit better and clearly printed out.

This got me thinking.

What the beggar business needs, as seen in overseas cities is a bit more marketing.
I'm not talking about the 'mafia-type' organisation that takes place in Italy, UK and other parts of Europe but to take the whole business more upmarket.

Instead of either crappy hand-drawn signs or 'witty' smart-arsed signs I advocate doing the full marketing and advertising collateral with pull -up banners, point-of-sale displays, hand-out brochures, business cards , PowerPoint presentations and maybe even the full audio-visual extravaganza.

The whole thing could be franchised with merchandise and maybe even brands carrying the message: