As the primary author of two books in the Guerrilla Marketing series (Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World and Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green) and a speaker at the recent Guerrilla Marketing Summit, I was very interested in how the digital marketing pioneer Hubspot views the whole Guerrilla Marketing concept and brand.

In their seven examples, I was particularly thrilled that they included UNICEF’s super-successful Dirty Water campaign.

Screenshot of a still from the Unicef "Dirty Water" video
Screenshot of a still from the UNICEF “Dirty Water” video

After all, my two Guerrilla books are the ones that extend the Guerrilla Marketing concepts to the worlds of social change of environmentalism. This was a bit of a gamble for UNICEF; there were obviously significant costs in everything from developing the branding to shipping the filthy water. I hope they’re replicating the campaign in other cities, and creating strong follow-up messaging targeted specifically to those touched by this campaign, to keep them donating into the future.

My definition of Guerrilla Marketing is a lot broader than Hubspot’s. To me, Guerrilla Marketing has three main parts:

  1. Being nimble in our thinking and actions, seizing opportunities quickly, including news tie-ins
  2. Going outside and beyond conventional thinking patterns–disrupting the mental flow to get noticed, to move people to action, but in ways that don’t feel obnoxiously intrusive
  3. Focusing not on how great your brand is (the mistake I see so many marketers make. I call it “we, we, we all the way home) but on the results: the benefits, the problems solved, the pain relieved, the wants and needs met or exceeded–whether for the individual customer or for the planet and the species that live on it.

Hubspot’s choice of the Bounty sculpture is a beautiful example.

Ideally, Guerrilla Marketing will be done at little cost, too. But, as the UNICEF and Grammy examples show, there are plenty of Guerrilla Marketing opportunities that aren’t necessarily cheap.

Let’s look at those two more closely, because they offer us very different lessons. It will take you exactly three minutes and 40 seconds to watch the two videos. Go ahead; I’ll wait.

UNICEF

This elaborate campaign involved creating a brand, bottling filthy brown water, and offering it on the streets of New York. The goal: to increase awareness that the clean, drinkable water we take for granted in most of the US (and the developed world generally) is unimaginable luxury for people at the margins in developing countries. Many have to drink filthy, disease-causing water, and many get very sick. The campaign encouraged people to use the money they currently spend on bottled water to provide clean water for those who don’t have it. Each dollar could supply a thirsty child for 40 days. The video documents the whole campaign, in a fast-paced three minutes.

I found this very effective. I love the way they were able to not just raise awareness, but funds. The negative branding is definitely a Guerrilla tactic, and the results are clearly positive. Bravo!

Grammy Ad

This was an expensive missed opportunity. Maybe it’s a generational thing, but this one really didn’t work for me. Great concept, but terrible execution. I want the protagonist be moved and touched by what he’s seeing, but he strolls through the talking posters, blithe and indifferent. He’s not even glancing at the posters! What’s going on in HIS head? We don’t even get a hint. Have  the talking portraits of Harry Potter and the constant animations of things people didn’t animate in the past made a talking poster no-longer-special? And while my wife frequently accuses me of ADD, I found that I hadn’t even processed and recognized one song before it switched after a few seconds to something else. (And OK, I confess, this was not music I’m familiar with anyway). Some of the problem was that the songs all sounded so similar and all seemed to have the exact same beat.

I also think the choice of having multiple copies of each poster was unfortunate. Yes, I recognize that’s a common way to display posters in urban environments. It has NEVER worked for me. I’ve studied some of the advertising masters like David Ogilvy, and they taught me the importance of white space: of having one central object (or person, animal, tree…) able to stand out from what’s around it, because of that empty space around it. If I were buying billboards, instead of, say, 9 medium-sized repeated pictures, I’d use the space for one much larger version of the image. I’d use that white space and not add to the clutter.

Imagine walking down the street and seeing a 20-foot billboard suddenly start to sing with its one and only mouth! Imagine hearing snippets of three or four songs that each have a clear identity, in a true medley, each sung by one giant poster of an artist you recognize instantly. Would you be as blase as the protagonist? I doubt it!

So maybe the commercial would need a full minute instead of 39 seconds. That’s OK. In print copywriting, it’s perfectly OK to take as much time as you need to tell the story; I’ve seen emails with links to 40-page sales letters. Even in broadcast, even though airtime is expensive, we’ve seen many successful commercials that ran an hour (they’re called infomercials and they run on shopping channels). The UNICEF video was three entire minutes and I watched without multitasking, because I was interested both in their message and how they promoted it. If you can’t get it done in less than a minute, either buy more airtime, or script a commercial that CAN get it done in the time you bought.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

I posted a petition on Facebook, and someone commented, “Like this would make a difference?”

But here’s the thing: You never know what makes a difference. It was a pleasant shock to discover years later that Nixon was actually paying attention to the peace protests. I think the protests after the first Muslim ban and over the tearing of children from parents seeking asylum certainly made a difference. Amnesty International has made a demonstrable difference in the lives of thousands of political prisoners around the world. And I know that my participation in certain other actions, especially the Seabrook occupation of 1977, made a difference.

Nonviolent occupiers approach the construction site of the Seabrook nuclear plant, April 30, 1977. Unattributed photo found at https://josna.wordpress.com/tag/anti-nuclear-movement/
Nonviolent occupiers approach the construction site of the Seabrook nuclear plant, April 30, 1977. Unattributed photo found at https://josna.wordpress.com/tag/anti-nuclear-movement/

So we keep working and maybe sometimes we have far, far more impact than we thought we would. Who would have predicted how much traction the Arab Spring, or Tiannanmen Square, or Occupy would have gained, how much impact they had?

Who could have imagined in 1948 that all the Jim Crow segregation laws would come tumbling down, not only in the US but even in South Africa and Zimbabwe (then called Rhodesia)? Who could have predicted as recently as 2000 that same-sex marriage would be a legal right in all 50 US states and many other countries around the world? All of these victories are anchored in activism, sometimes decades of activism.

Who would have guessed that the incredible kids who survived the Parkland shooting on Valentine’s Day 2018 (toddlers when Massachusetts became the first state with marriage equality) would channel their angst into a movement that brought millions into the streets, tens of thousands to their voter registrars to register for the first time? Who knows which ones will grow up to be world leaders, and which long-time elected officials will be displaced by a wave of change?

In recent months, we’ve seen the cycle of impact quicken. Movements and memes that had been kicking around for years suddenly reach critical mass. Who would have expected the flowering of older and dormant movements such as #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter?

As an activist for more than 48 years, I remain optimistic, even in the face of so many defeats—because I also see these and many other victories. I see hope in so many people’s movements in the US, and in the complete change within two generations from a Europe ruled by power-mad fear-mongering dictators to one whose purpose actually seems to create a better world for the planet and its residents.

So yes, it makes a difference. Ordinary people can make a difference. Ordinary people make a difference constantly in fact: when I give my “Impossible is a Dare” talk, I cite examples like a seamstress (Rosa Parks) and a shipyard electrician (Lech Walesa) who changed their entire society.

What are you doing currently to make a difference? Please share in the comments.

 

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

Social-good products like this solar-powered LED lamp make a difference AND a profit
Social-good products like this solar-powered LED lamp make a difference AND a profit

Too often, businesses think of sustainability as a “have to” instead of a “delighted to.” Let’s change that attitude! Here are three among many reasons why business leaders should be thrilled to embrace deep sustainability:

  1. The powerful business case. More and more stakeholders are demanding that the companies they patronize address wider environmental and social issues; those who fail to do this are starting to lose market share. Not only that, but going green the RIGHT way can substantially lower costs of energy, raw materials, and other goods while building in customer loyalty and tolerance for higher prices. To say it another way, greening your company can significantly up profitability! Companies in the Fortune 500 figured this out some years ago. Pretty much all of them have sustainability departments (under various names) and have made huge progress in the past decade. Of course, we still have a long way to go. But many smaller companies are resistant. Because they see expenses, not income streams, they dig in with their old, inefficient ways. But certainly, the low-hanging fruit–taking the steps with quick payback–increases profitability directly, by raising income and lowering costs.
  2. The ability to market sustainable goods, services, and processes to three different types of consumer: the Deep Green, who makes purchasing decisions contingent on social responsibility; the Lazy Green, who will do the right thing if it’s convenient; and the Nongreen, who is indifferent or even hostile to a sustainability agenda, but who will happily buy green products and services if they are positioned as superior (more comfortable, more durable, less toxic, etc.). Of course, these three kinds of customers need three different sets of marketing messages–something many green companies don’t understand, and thus leave a lot of money on the table.
  3. The power of business to go beyond sustainability—to regenerativity. To actually make things better: identify/create/market *profitable* offerings that turn hunger and poverty into abundance, war into peace, and catastrophic climate change into planetary balance. Lifting people out of poverty (and creating new markets), ending war, solving climate change as ways to make money: how cool is that?

I’ve spent the last several years studying this trend and have written an award-winning book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, that shows how in detail. It’s been endorsed by over 50 business and environmental leaders, including Seth Godin and Chicken Soup for the Soul’s Jack Canfield. You can learn more at the Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World page at GoingBeyondSustainability.com (I think it’s by far the best of my 10 books, several of which have won awards or been translated and republished in other countries).

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

Read this brief article. Then come back and let’s talk about it. This tab will still be open in your browser.

I found it a fascinating yet quick deep-dive into the liberal versus conservative mindset. Sharing this article on Facebook (where I happened to see it), Nathan Mackenzie Brown, founder of Really American  commented,

A must read if you care about politics. FYI, it’s also very short.

My take away from this is, if you are liberal, don’t fear monger, even about Trump.

The authors’ central point is that when we feel personally secure, we tilt more liberal, and when we feel, threatened we lurch rightward. Not exactly rocket science, I know. But what they bring to the table is the idea that if we address the security concerns, the political tilt is actually reversible.

This is something that DT innately understands—the power of fear. He built his base by demonizing various Others. My capitalized O is intentional; I’m talking about whole groups and classes of people (Mexicans, Muslims, the press, etc..

It’s very rare to run a successful US national campaign rooted in fear. Reagan (“morning in America”) and Obama (“hope” and “change”) both won on optimism. Laughable as it seemed at the time and even more so in retrospect, Bush II ran as a “compassionate conservative.” Even Nixon ran on his “secret plan to end the war.”

But DT mixed a very pessimistic worldview, based largely in “they’re out to get us” with a soaringly optimistic slogan (MAGA). His opponent was a centrist with close ties to the groups DT was calling out.

Hillary Clinton also failed to consistently express strong political views, and tried to harness competing slogans at cross purposes: the wimpy and ineffectual “I’m with her” and the arrogant “it’s her turn”/”it’s our turn” both reinforcing the perception that she was an in-group, establishment figure out of touch with the public, while “stronger together” was somewhat optimistic but not really rooted in vision, and seemed a reaction to DT’s divisiveness.

George Lakoff and others have written that conservative politics are often rooted in an authoritarian-father mindset, while liberals are the products of permissive-parenting thinking. I have a number of issues with Lakoff’s approach, though I see much truth in it.

Left and Right come together at both the Libertarian (Freedom) and Authoritarian (Control) ends of the spectrum
Left and Right come together at libertarian AND authoritarian (copyright 2018, Shel Horowitz, all rights reserved)

But let me add one of my own long-held theories: Beyond the Left-Right axis, we have to look at another set of operating principles: where someone stands on freedom vs. control. So at the top end of this graphic (which is copyright 2018 by Shel Horowitz, as is the entire post—please contact me if you’d like to reprint), progressive environmentalists and Tea Partiers concerned about wasteful government spending join together in the Green Scissors coalition.

At the bottom end, I don’t see a lot of difference between communists and fascists other than their idea of who should control the means of production. They are both totally willing to rough up or even (historically) mass-murder their opponents, seize or maintain power by force of arms, and crush dissent. Was Hitler really so different from Stalin?

Let’s get some good discussion going on this. Comment below.

 

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

Guest post from former Florida Congressman Alan Grayson. This originally ran in his email newsletter. I’m including all his original links and reprinting with his permission. I especially love this quote: “if you are a useless lout who has done nothing good for The People, but you still aspire to public office, then negative ads really are your only alternative.”

It’s worth noting not only how badly negative ads position our perception of politics (“ah, they’re all crooks,” etc.)—but also the growth of some promising alternatives to the negativity. One great example is ranked choice voting. Experts including Voter Choice Massachusetts explain that ranked choice (also called instant runoff) provides incentives NOT to use negative ads.

—Shel Horowitz

Former Florida representative Alan Grayson
Former Florida representative Alan Grayson

My son is doing a science experiment on politics and negative advertising.  And the results are in.  But first, a few words on negative ads.

They are pervasive.  Back in 2012, virtually every dollar that the national parties spent on Congressional campaigns was spent on negative advertising.  (Expenditures for and against candidates are reported to the FEC separately, so you can look it up.)  It’s gotten a little better since then, but more than 90% of party and PAC advertising remains negative.
Belief in negative advertising is also pervasive.  I can’t think of a single political leader or political consultant who would tell you that “positives” are more effective than “negatives.”  We had an interesting example of this a few months ago.  When GOP Senate Leader Mitch McConnell tried to elevate Luther Strange above Roy Moore and Mo Brooks in the Alabama Senate GOP Primary, he didn’t say anything good about Strange (apparently, a hopeless task).  Instead, McConnell dumped $7 million of party money going negative on Moore and Brooks, which backfired when Moore got the GOP nomination.  (And the rest . . . is history.)
Which proves that if you are a useless lout who has done nothing good for The People, but you still aspire to public office, then negative ads really are your only alternative.
So anyway, my son Stone, a 7th grader, came up with the idea that for his science project, he would try to measure the effectiveness of positive and negative ads.  (He really came up with this himself.  Smart kid.)
He created four positive ad posters for candidate Johnson, with suitable imagery:
JOHNSON FOR CLEAN AIR AND WATER!
JOHNSON STANDS FOR EQUALITY!
JOHNSON WILL IMPROVE EDUCATION!
JOHNSON WILL RAISE YOUR SALARY!
Each ended with the tag line “Vote for Johnson.”
Then he came up with four negative ad posters for Johnson’s opponent, Smith.  They read this way:
JOHNSON IS A CROOK!
JOHNSON WILL RUIN THE ECONOMY!
JOHNSON WILL RAISE TAXES!
And the inevitable:
JOHNSON IS A COMMIE!  (featuring a picture of Marx, Lenin and Mao).
Each ended with the tag line “Vote for Smith.”
So the 7th graders saw the posters, and voted as follows:
Johnson 19
Smith 12
When my son told me the results, I felt an enormous sense of relief.  I really wanted Johnson to win, and not just because he’s a Commie.  No, I wanted Johnson to win because his positive ads are an effort to convey to the voters the enormous power that we all have.  What power?  The power to make the world a better place, by making better rules for everyone.
That’s why I do it, anyway.
You can look at these results and feel a renewed faith in humanity.  Or if not all humanity, at least seventh-graders.
Courage,
Alan Grayson
“I’ve got The Power.”
 – Snap!, “I’ve got The Power” (1990).
Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

Some marketers are engaged in a vigorous debate between people who identify as “thought leaders” and those whose skins crawl when they hear the term.

Whether you love or hate the term, “thought leader”, marketing by showing leadership through content and letting people meaningfully engage with those ideas is undeniably powerful. 

That type of marketing hooked me when I first tried it, as a 15-year-old 3rd-year high school student, and I’ve been using it ever since. First, I used it only to spread my ideas. Later, I also marketed products and services based on those ideas. And those ideas built me a decent following (and, eventually, a decent consulting practice)—sharing them through my books, articles, presentations, interviews, media coverage, etc.

This takes time and energy, and I know many people who do it better than me. But it certainly can be done. One of my book launches garnered over 1,000,000 short-term Google hits (for the book title, an exact-match four word string that wouldn’t show up in any other context). It’s the only time anything I’ve done got a million hits on Google.

I’ve even managed to help shift several mindsets at the international or national or local level.

My biggest success was changing the attitude about a proposed local mountaintop housing development from “this is terrible but there’s nothing we can do” to “of course we’ll win! The question is how.” This campaign took just over a year and used everything I knew in 1999-2000 about marketing AND community organizing (and the knowledge/labor of many others)—but the mindset shift took only four or five months. And that mindset shift created the conditions for our victory.

Lawn sign from the Save the Mountain campaign in Hadley, MA, in front of Mount Holyoke (a state park next to the mountain we saved)
Lawn sign from the Save the Mountain campaign in Hadley, MA, in front of Mount Holyoke (a state park next to the mountain we saved)

I also like to think I helped change the idea that business has to be evil. Of the five books I’ve published since 2003 (and the 10 since my first book came out in 1980), four show how business can profitably address issues ranging from business ethics to ending poverty—while reversing environmental destruction. I’ve given dozens of “Making Green Sexy”, “Impossible is a Dare,” and other talks on how business can be heroes.) And it’s been years since I’ve heard “business ethics? That’s an oxymoron!” When I first started talking about business ethics as a success strategy, I heard that false “wisdom” constantly.

I like to think my activity is part of WHY I no longer hear that horrible sentence.

Leading with ideas means finding others who will amplify those ideas. It’s not a coincidence that I actively seek out media coverage, endorsements, and more. 

My latest book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World has a blurb from Chicken Soup’s Jack Canfield on the front cover, another from Seth Godin on the back, and some 50 endorsements on the front pages. It has 4 guest essays from best-selling authors. These are some of the ways I’ve built credibility and gotten people interested, even though the book no longer has a current-year copyright.

One review of that book didn’t appear until 17 months after publication—and I’ve gotten reviews on books that were up to eight years old at the time. When you write about issues and do so with substance, your book can attract interest for years.

Of course, events can shift the relevance. If you try to repurpose articles on how to survive the coming Y2K crisis or books on the presidencies of Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney, or Al Gore, thought leadership is not the image you’ll project. 😉

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

As progressives and liberals breathe a big sigh of relief this morning after racking up victories in yesterday’s election, my Facebook feed is full of chatter about how the Democratic Party is not dead after all, though it’s still very ill.

I responded to one such post thusly:

Curable. Inject backbone 3x/day until they run candidates who stand for the people, give them the support to win, and stop backing down at the first hint of disagreement. Dems should have learned this lesson in 1988 from the disastrous Dukakis campaign. I kept waiting [after George HW Bush kept repeatedly accusing him of being a liberal] for Dukakis to say, “Yes, George, I’m a liberal. Liberals brought us the 8-hour day vs. 10 or 12 hours. Liberals protect the rights of people of all colors and gender identities. Liberals fight for the planet so we can all live healthy lives. Why aren’t YOU a liberal, George?” I think he’d have won with that approach. Instead, he kept doing this horrible, “Gee, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be a liberal” crap.

Yup. That time, as so many times, the Dems slunk away with their tails between their legs to count their losses and blame it on not being centrist or rightist enough. And they still seem to believe that rot.

When ordinary people can’t easily tell the Democrats from the Republicans by their positions, the Republicans will win, because being a true  Republican is more convincing than being Republican-lite. But being a true Democrat who is seen as standing for the people (rare thing!) generates far more excitement than being a true Republican and a toady to Wall Street and the ideology that puts money ahead of people, rights of the already privileged above rights of ordinary people, and voter suppression ahead of real democracy.

Despite his centrism, Obama was able to portray himself as a man of the people and generate that excitement. And he won, twice.

Gore, Kerry and Hillary Clinton never got this, despite pressure from the Left in the form of mass defections to Ralph Nader, Howard Dean, and Bernie Sanders. Sanders was able to move Hillary and the party platform well to the left, but she was unconvincing. And even when Sanders beat her by 13 points in the Wisconsin primary, she still took the state for granted (never campaigned there in the general election).

The lack of candidates with actual spine and the ability to energize the masses will continue to be a problem until the Dems remember their working-class roots. When they run charismatic progressives in places where the ballots are counted fairly and the populace is not prevented from voting, they tend to win. We get the Cory Bookers, the Barack Obamas, the Elizabeth Warrens.

When they run nonentities, they lose, even in my own very liberal state of Massachusetts. Martha Coakley ran a terrible campaign to keep Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat Democratic, and it went to Scott Brown. But then along came Elizabeth Warren, and boom! Brown ran a nasty campaign, Warren portrayed herself as a people’s champion on economic issues, and she won. And she has kept her promise, expanding it as one of the most pubic opponents of the current regime.

For the most part, the Dems’ lack willingness to take bold positions. Worse, they also lack the spine to challenge Republican-initiated disruption of the electoral process—which is the Democratic Party’s hospital bed, and could become the party’s grave. After narrowly stolen elections in 2000 and 2004, the party didn’t fix the plague of voter suppression in 2009 when it had the chance. And thus the election was stolen again in 2016.

The new governor-elect in Virginia is a centrist who probably won largely on the basis of being far less bad than his openly Trumpist opponent—and because Virginia went back to paper ballots, which cannot be so easily hijacked as electronic-only votes (unlike the recent Congressional race in Georgia, for example). How much stronger the victory if there had been a candidate who truly engaged the populace?

A voter marks a ballot. Photo by Kristen Price.
A voter marks a ballot. Photo by Kristen Price.

Today is not only the morning after the election. It’s also the one-year anniversary of the theft of our democracy in the 2016 election. While some of the loss is because Clinton was uninspiring, tainted with scandal, and vulnerable to accusations of her loyalty to Wall Street, at least as much was the result of a failed constitutional process that allows candidates with fewer votes to win, big-time voter suppression of likely-Democratic voters, probable fiddling with the results in electronic-only ballot areas, the interference of a foreign government, and other factors that seem to add up to a big fat case of fraud.

I will commemorate this disaster at an impeachment rally in downtown Amherst, Massachusetts, at noon on the corner of Amity and Pleasant Streets. Hope to see you there!

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

I received a fund appeal from a climate-change nonprofit asking for money to put this ad on the air. I was so appalled that I sent this letter:

[Subject] THIS AD WILL DO THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT WE WANT Re: Enough tiptoeing around it

[Body] No, and here’s why: This ad shows an astonishing ignorance of the deep triggers that change or reinforce behavior.  You pit an audio track that is 100% climate-denier against visuals that fail to make a connection between the catastrophes shown and climate change.

For climate skeptics, this will not only not change their mind, it will REINFORCE the idea that climate change is a hoax. They will focus on the audio. Those of us who understand that climate change is real will focus on the visuals, and will be able to make the connection that climate change worsened the storms—but we’re not the ones who need to be convinced.

As a marketer with over 40 years experience who believes strongly in the ability of marketing to create social change, I think this ad will do more harm than good and should not be released.

Please don’t run it!

We’ve known about the difference between how the brain processes the obvious and the subliminal  messaging in an ad for decades.  I think I learned about this when I started reading a lot of marketing books, back in the 1980s. We’ve also known about “social proof” (the idea that because other people are doing something, you should too) going back to early-20th-century advertising geniuses like John Caples and Edward Bernays.

Edward Bernays' secretary Bertha Hunt smokes in public at Bernays' 1927 "Torches of Freedom" march
Edward Bernays’ secretary Bertha Hunt smokes in public at Bernays’ 1927 “Torches of Freedom” march

And we’ve known about the negative impact of negative images about the environment since at least the Cialdini study of 2003 (which showed that people are more likely to litter after watching an anti-littering video showing lots of people littering) and probably much earlier. So why would any marketer script an ad like this?

By contrast, consider how the super-successful anti-littering campaign “Don’t Mess With Texas” rallied people around state pride. Cleverly, the ad agency didn’t even announce it as a clean-up-the-state program at first. Aiming at the demographics that were most likely to litter, they handed out bumper stickers with just the slogan, then later introduced commercials that tied it to the real purpose: stopping littering. And Texan litter rates went way down!

We’ve also known for many years that cultural and language differences have a lot to do with any marketing piece’s success. I’ve written often about the way companies sometimes market the same product differently to different nations or subcultures, or how a company can even change up its whole product line for different markets. Here are two examples from very different industries (breakfast cereal and luxury cars) in an article I published five years ago on an Australian website.

Don’t make the mistake that Chevrolet made when it tried to market the Nova in Latin America. In Spanish, “no va” means “it doesn’t go.” Oh, and look at every possible way to break up a website or product name into separate words. Unintended consequences of a badly-chosen name are still consequences, as that link demonstrates extremely well.

Have you examined your own marketing to make sure the subliminal message, the obvious message, and the goal are all aligned? Do this right away—or contact me. I’d be happy to do it for you, at very reasonable prices. I’ve written eight books on marketing including several that won awards, were translated and republished overseas, and/or made some best-seller lists—note that I’m using social proof here ;-)—and have studied marketing for more than 30 years.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

Found this list of 25 “Greenest Brands in America“—but frankly, I’m skeptical.

It’s based on reader votes. In any kind of reader popularity contest, the votes go to companies the most people are familiar with—or those whose marketers actively campaign and tell their fans to go vote for them.

Certainly, all these corporations have major environmental achievements; by now, every major corporation does. In fact, I attended a conference last month that focused on the profitability case for green action. Several of these 25 had speakers. I even moderated a panel that included Coca-Cola.

But this kind of survey pushes away the small companies with smaller followings but very green practices (Interface, Timberland, Patagonia, etc.) Only two such companies made the list: Tom’s of Maine and Ben & Jerry’s, and both are owned by much larger companies.

Patagonia's fish/mountain range-shaped logo
Patagonia’s fish/mountain range-shaped logo

I was also struck by three absences I would have expected to be there: Walmart, which has done more to green the supply chain and its own operations than any other player, but whose demographic doesn’t typically participate in sustainability surveys (and which has serious issues on other parts of the social entrepreneurship spectrum, especially on labor and supplier policies), Starbucks, which talks a great line to the right demographic, but whose practices don’t always mirror its rhetoric, and Whole Foods, whose entire mission intersects so well with green practices. Also kind of surprised to see Apple included. Either they’ve cleaned up their act or people give them more kudos than justified because their products are so cool and their fan base is so strong. To go from the Foxconn scandal to being named on a Top 25 list for green practices in just over two years is quite remarkable.

Even in surveys based on research, what you measure influences your conclusions. For example, Monsanto often wins data-driven corporate responsibility awards (and loves to brag about them), yet to many food activists, its policies are anything but responsible; they would call this award greenwashing.

 

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

For the past 3-1/2 years, I’ve been not just thinking but taking steps to change the entire direction of my business from basic marketing consulting for green businesses to shaping profitable ventures that directly turn hunger and poverty into sufficiency, war into peace, and catastrophic climate change into planetary balance. In other words, showing how social entrepreneurship is a business success strategy that increases revenues and decreases costs. Obviously, more revenue plus lower expenses = higher profits.
Yeah, thinking big. Big enough so it took some serious time to get ready (far more than I thought it would. Here are some of the steps I’ve taken:
  • Hired a remarkable business coach, Oshana Himot, who helped me see that I didn’t have to wait until certain metrics were in place before dong this work that’s been in my heart for decades—and that if I did wait, I’d never get there. She has also worked with me on role-playing sales conversations, etc., to the point where now I really am ready.
  • Launched several new talk topics, including “‘Impossible’ is a Dare”—which I first gave as a TEDx in 2014; I’ve done it several times since, in longer (and once, shorter) formats. You can get a nice taste of it in my 4-minute demo video, if you’re interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tooSVbHQ5Ik&feature=youtu.be
  • Wrote and found a publisher for my 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, and went to press (a year ago) with about 50 endorsements, Chris among them—alongside Seth Godin, Jack Canfield, and guest essayists Cynthia Kersey (“Unstoppable”) and Frances Moore Lappé (Diet for a Small Planet). The book has won two small awards so far.

    Cover of Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World by Jay Conrad Levinson and Shel Horowitz
    Cover of Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World by Jay Conrad Levinson and Shel Horowitz
  • Organized a very ambitious telesummit (also in 2014) that flopped utterly and made me realize I was NOT ready to go after clients in this new niche—and began to do more work to get myself ready.
  • Put up several websites to help me figure out where to put my energy: I had to develop https://transformpreneur.com and https://impactwithprofit.com before I figured out what I really wanted to say and to whom. The result is https://goingbeyondsustainability.com
  • Determined that small businesses were probably my most likely clients, but that they were not likely to have the budget freedom. Thus, I chose to go after larger companies who might sponsor me to work with their clients, suppliers, NGO partners, etc. Bought a program on how to get sponsors and created a fabulous proposal, driven by benefits to the sponsoring company, that (hopefully) will get my hired to speak and consult.
  • Created a list of ~200 companies I mention favorably in the book and hired someone to research the contact info.
  • Hired a designer to develop a log.
And now I’m finally at the point where it makes sense to reach out to those companies and see if I can get traction. I only need about three to say yes to a medium-to-large project to have a full pipeline.
To me, this is true sustainability; business has to survive—and thrive—in order to make that difference. But the business world often defines sustainability much more narrowly: as simply going green. In positioning my services, I wanted to make a statement that “sustainability,” under that definition, is not enough. It’s keeping things from getting worse, where I think we can make things better. Thus, the name, “Going Beyond Sustainability. And this logo:

https://goingbeyondsustainability.com logo and tagline
Going Beyond Sustainability logo and tagline

This, I believe, is the future of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR): fundamentally reinventing society to better serve the needs of its planet and its people, self-funding through profitable products and services.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail