Month: August 2014

By Posted on Posted in Business-general, Customer Service as Marketing, General Commentary, Publishing, Transparency vs. Secrecy, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , ,

Hyperion Contact Us page

Dear Hyperion Books:

All I wanted to do was to send you a review copy request so I could review “Stirring It Up” by Stonyfield Farm founder Gary Hirshberg. I review books on socially and environmentally conscious business.

I went to your contact page expecting to find a press contact. But all that’s there is how to write to you if I want to contact one of your authors directly. There’s no way to contact ANY of your departments, except a few social media links.

Oh yes, and from my desktop computer, your Twitter page link goes to one spammy tweet from last November that I don’t think is yours. Oddly, on my laptop, it goes to a no-such-account page, as does your Facebook link.

I even went to your bookseller page, where I found a link to the Disney media center–which includes media pages for lots of Disney broadcast properties but not Hyperion.

Surely, with all the resources at Disney’s disposal, you could have a person in charge of media contact for Hyperion, and you could list at least one way to contact you that actually works. There’s not even a phone number!

In the 21st century, there’s absolutely no excuse for companies to barricade themselves behind windowless fortress walls. Empowered customers don’t just get mad; they tell their 10,000 closest friends on Facebook or Youtube (“United Breaks Guitars” is up over 14 million Youtube views). If I were a paying customer with a gripe, I’d probably be buying “hyperionsucks.com” right about now.

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , ,

When Bank of America bought Countrywide Bank for $2.5 billion in 2008, it inherited Countrywide’s infamous toxic mortgage policies.

By 2011, the Wall Street Journal reported that the acquisition had already racked up $20.6 billion in charges related to Countrywide’s shady mortgage practices:$8.5 billion to investors, $5.5 billion into a defective-mortgage payback fund to cover future claims, and $6.6 billion in various other costs.

And now there’s more bad news for the company’s shareholders: a $16.65 billion settlement with the Justice Department over the Countrywide mortgages. And let’s not forget the legal bill, now around $70 billion, not to mention the possibility of criminal prosecutions.

In short, Countrywide’s disgusting practices have now cost Bank of America over $107 billion: more than 50 times the acquisition price.

Lessons to businesses:
1. Business ethics is a lot cheaper than predatory practices
2. Be very careful when you buy toxic “assets” that turn out to be big liabilities

I’ve been making the case since at least 2002 that green and ethical business practices are more profitable than crooked ones. If you’d like to know more, please pick up a copy of my . It’s been on the best-seller list at least 32 months, so I guess people find it pretty useful.

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility, Democracy, Energy & Sustainability, Environment, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, localism/locavore, Politics, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , ,

A front-page story in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports that a court ordered a utility company to buy the organic grass-fed cattle farm it ruined by driving a powerline through it. Nice to see David beat Goliath every once in a while.

Hmmm. Maybe this strategy can be applied (at least in Minnesota) by organic farmers suffering the double indignity of losing their organic status because of contamination by GMO plants from nearby farms, and then getting sued by Monsanto for illegally using the seed they didn’t want in the first place.

But a far better solution, of course, is to develop projects in ways that don’t threaten organic farms. We need more of those, not less.

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By Posted on Posted in Diversity, Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Environment, Green Business, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, Innovation Tagged with , ,

Offices: too hot, too cold, and no Goldilocks to find the happy middle ground of “this one is just right.”

How can you find that happy medium that accommodates the woman in a sleeveless sundress ?and? the man in the suit…the person whose desk is a foot away from the air conditioning vent (which chills air far below the ambient room temperature) ?and? the one sitting in the hotspot caused by a sunny window?

The obvious solution is zoned temperature control, at a much more granular level than we typically get.

Here’s a really interesting article about temperature control in offices. Don’t worry; it’s not particularly technical. It’s not written for geeks, but for ordinary people trying to solve the problem.

It starts by discussing the problem in context: demonstrating several reasons why office temperature control usually doesn’t work very well.

Then it solves the problem with a smartphone app that lets individual users have a say in the temperature of their little area.

And here’s the really good news about this: in testing in one office building, HVAC bills dropped 23 percent. Lots more opportunity for savings, too.

There’s potential for much greater energy improvement. The General Services Administration (purchasing arm of the federal government) has prepared thinks raising office temperatures in federal buildings a mere two degrees F in the summer could save $1.87 million of our tax dollars. It has identified seven specific steps the federal government could take to drop energy use by an astounding 568.2 million kilowatt hours per year. Only two of them are in the “very expensive” category.

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