JCPenney Celebrates the Gift of Giving

They say that JCPenney is one of several large retail chains that's hovering on the brink of bankruptcy, but that hasn't interfered with the launch of their new holiday campaign, which promotes the concept of giving things to others and includes what appears to be some rather generous giveaways by the store itself. The campaign is called #JustGotJingled, and it's described on a very appealing new website the store recently launched to highlight individual examples of people doing things for others. For example, management at one JCPenney location recently approached a number of shoppers and asked them to walk the floors to find other shoppers of their choosing and tell them they could pick out anything in the store and take it home as a holiday gift:

Now, I'm a total sap for clips like this, and tears were rolling down my cheek as I watched this video for the first time this morning. What a wonderful treat to be able to make someone's day by giving a stranger something special from out of the blue. Of course, JCPenney is probably hoping that this whole gift giving business will benefit their bottom line more than anything as people purchase gifts from the store's shelves. But this is a better ad than the any of the typical ones I've seen recently, most of which seem to star greedy, entitled consumers who seem unable to resist theater-sized big screen TVs and every other new device, whether it's needed or not. I think I'm going to spend a few dollars from my bare-bones budget at one of the nearby JCPenney stores this season.