The Humans of New York

Brandon Stanton is a street photographer in New York where he takes portraits of people from all over New York City. He is also popularly known as HONY, which is short for the name of his website ‘Humans of New York’. Its filled with slices of life in NYC and wildly popular worldwide.

On 25th of Feb, he posted that a DKNY representative had approached him to buy some of his photographs for use in an in-store prop. They couldn’t agree on a price (as he was being offered $50 per photo for 300 photographs) he decided to not sell them the photographs. However, a fan from Bangkok sent him a picture of a DKNY store where his prints were being used.

Instead of suing DKNY and asking for compensation, he went online and asked his half a million fans on Fb this:

I don’t want any money. But please SHARE this post if you think that DKNY should donate $100,000 on my behalf to the YMCA in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. That donation would sure help a lot of deserving kids go to summer camp. I’ll let you guys know if it happens.

DKNY responded with a $25,000 donation to YMCA.

You might think, wow, a happy ending and $25k for some kids to go to camp. Well, it didn’t end there.

Instead of being aggressive and condescending of DKNY’s donation, Brandon once again turned to his loyal fanbase and asked them this: 

As most of you already know, yesterday I discovered that a large amount of my photographs were used without permission by DKNY in a Bangkok window display.

In response, I publicly asked DKNY to make a $100,000 donation in my name to the Bedford-Stuyvesant YMCA, so that deserving kids could go to Summer Camp.

They made a $25,000 donation in my name. That really made me happy. I went to bed last night thinking about all the kids who’d be going to summer camp.

But then I started thinking about the kids who wouldn’t be going to summer camp. And I thought: “You know what, wouldn’t it be awesome (and fun) if we made a $75,000 donation?” That way, a bunch more kids could go to summer camp!

So help HONY make a $75,000 donation to the YMCA. That would bring the grand total to $100,000 and provide 300 deserving kids with an entire two weeks of summer camp. These camps give kids such a wonderful, affirming experience. For certain kids, from certain neighborhoods, it could very well be the best two weeks of their life.

And guess what, he raised more than $100k from his fans, while DKNY got a lot of angry people commenting negatively on their Facebook wall.

By now, you must be wondering, why is this on Rodinhoods ? Well, I think there are a couple of very good lessons we can take away from this.

I just loved the positive and graceful way in which Brandon handled this incident. Just visit his website or fb page for an exact transcript of the words he has chosen to describe what happened.

Focus: Although he had offers from lawyers to represent him, he decided not to go down that path, as it would only detract him and prevent him from doing what he loved. Instead, he decided to do something so that not only does DKNY realize its mistake but something good comes out it.

I want to let you guys know I have over 100 letters from lawyers in my inbox. I’ve been fully versed on my rights, and I’ve looked at the facts very closely. I’m not letting anyone “off the hook” for their sake. I’m letting them off the hook for my sake. 

I feel like the luckiest guy in the world right now. I do what I love every day. No amount of money would be worth taking my mind off that. Not for a month. Not for a week. Not for a day. 

In ten years, I don’t want to look back on this week as some sort of missed opportunity. I’d rather remember it as that time we took something negative and used it as an excuse to send a bunch of kids to summer camp– who otherwise would not have had the resources to go.

It also reflects the interesting times we live in, along with the power of social media to get complete strangers to support you if you are doing the right thing.

Cheers and have a great week ahead 🙂