Month: January 2015

By Posted on Posted in Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News, media-general, propaganda Tagged with , , , , ,
Old Movie Camera: How much real news went through these cameras? And how much goes through today's?
How much real news went through these cameras? And how much goes through today’s?

When I’m in airports, fitness centers, and other places that force-feed TV news, I’m always astonished that anyone takes it seriously. Even in the 60s when they had real news staffs, it was so superficial. I read somewhere that an entire 1-hour newscast transcript would only fill a couple of columns on a page of the NY Times.

These days, it’s far worse than “if it bleeds, it leads.” Murder, mayhem, celebrity gossip, and an astonishingly small amount of actual news, and even less serious analysis. And those are the serious networks. Add in a serious case of propaganda and distortion and you can’t be surprised at how little most Americans understand their world, if they accept what’s fed to them by the medium they’ve chosen to “consume” the news.

Of course, the good news is that anyone who wants to educate themselves now has unlimited choices from around the world. My favorite newspaper these days is London’s The Guardian. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an actual paper copy.

In the 1980s, I used to subscribe to a magazine called World Press Review, which featured reportage on the same story from 8 or 10 different papers around the world; it was like a one-stop course in media literacy and the nature of 1) matching message to audience, and 2) shaping the audience through the message. Since I made (and continue to make) my career as a marketer and a journalist, these were crucial lessons.

However, it was a monthly, and the stories were at least three months old by the time they got to my mailbox. Of course, technology has passed it by now, and I don’t miss it; we can easily get the same effect by viewing the same story on NPR, Fox News, Al Jazeera-English, the New York Times, Paris Match (which Google will even translate for you, sort of), and your local newspaper.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Branding, Business Ethics, Business-general, Corporate Social Responsibility, Eco-friendly, Entrepreneurship, Green Business, Green Marketing, Innovation, People Helping People, Social and Economic Justice, Socially Responsible Investing Tagged with , , , , ,

This is big: The Guardian reports from Davos that Unilever is actively considering going for B Corp certification.

If you’re not familiar, B Corp is a legal definition of a profit-making corporation set up to promote environmental and social responsibility rather than a primary goal of maximizing short-term shareholder value and damn the torpedoes. In other words, it is legally allowed to pursue the greater good, even as most corporations are restricted by law and their charters. Maryland became the first of 28 US states to pass B Corp enabling legislation, in 2010.

It’s still a new movement. Only 1203 certified B Corps exist in the world, as of late January, 2015. Unilever’s Ben & Jerry’s unit was one of the first B Corps, back in 2012—and Ben & Jerry’s CEO Jostein Solheim is leading the effort, apparently with strong support from Unilever’s sustainability-minded CEO, Paul Polman.

The B Corp certification process is long and arduous for an entity as complex as Unilever, one of the largest consumer products corporations in the world; it’s likely to take years. But just the act of engaging in the conversation is a game changer:

  • Unilever’s tacit endorsement of the B Corp movement confers legitimacy; if one of the largest and most successful business organizations in the world can embrace it , other companies will say, “perhaps we should look into this.”
  • The B Corp movement is still not very well known, compared to similar movements such as Fair Trade. With Unilever coming onboard, a lot more people in the business world will hear about it—and take it seriously.
  • It will provide Unilever with substantial marketing advantages for several years. If the company is able to harness them properly, it can expect to sway many now-neutral customers to Unilever’s vast portfolio of brands. (As a marketing and profitability consultant to green/socially conscious businesses and the primary author of Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green, I can speak with some authority on this :-). )
  • Most importantly, it will show the entire business world that corporations don’t have to be rapacious; they don’t have to put short-term gain above the earth and its citizens (human and otherwise). It could even provide major leverage to overturn the body of corporation law that says corporations are legally required to put short-term profit ahead of all other considerations. And since most business people actually do want to do good in the world and many have felt burdened by this charter, this could create a seismic shift throughout the entire business community. (Some on the hard left will disagree that most business people actually want to do the right thing. Go ahead; the comments field is waiting for you.) Of course, there are a myriad of profit-making opportunities out there for activist companies willing to create and market goods and services that meaningfully reduce hunger, poverty, war, catastrophic climate change, and other suffering—you don’t need to be a B Corp for that. But as B Corp certification slowly becomes the default, it will speed that change.

In short, I’m heartened and excited by this news, and wish them success.

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By Posted on Posted in Advertising, Branding, Copywriting, Demographics/Psychographics, language, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies Tagged with , , ,

Many years ago, I signed up for a Discover card for some very specific reason (it may have been in connection with buying an appliance from Sears, which owns Discover). I use this card so rarely that at least twice, when I’ve received replacement cards, I noticed that I had never bothered to activate the one that was about to expire.

So I was extremely amused to get a very hypey 4-page mailer—it looks like the copywriter studied all the greats and completely misunderstood the lessons—that begins (bolding and underline in original—see picture),

Headline of the lying letter from Discover
Headline of the lying letter from Discover

YOU’RE ABOUT TO BE REWARDED …
The Loyalty You’ve Demonstrated
The Past 14 Years Has Earned
You This Exclusive Invitation.

How Exclusive? Fewer Than
One Discover® Cardmember In Five
Is Receiving This Mailing.

And then it goes on to tell me I qualify for fast-track balance repayment that could shave a year and several thousand dollars off my repayments.

What’s wrong with this picture? Let me count the ways:

  1. As I mentioned, I’m not a loyal customer. I don’t even keep this card in my wallet. So I don’t believe the copywriter’s attempt to make this offer sound exclusive.
  2. Even if this were my primary card, I’m not exactly bowled over to learn that 20 percent of a user base in the millions is getting the offer. Exclusive? Ha ha ha.
  3. One more way to assure me this is nothing resembling the exclusive offer it pretends to be: the invitation code (required to participate in the program)—is 23 characters long, not counting hyphens.
  4. The lack of segmentation—OK, so this is the mailing manager’s fault, rather than the copywriter’s—is appalling. I never carry a balance. On ANY of my credit cards. I use them as 20- to 50-day access to funds without accruing interest, an easy way to track my purchases and save on postage (by paying one bill on line rather than a bunch of bills with mailed checks), and oh yes, a way to get air travel by accumulating frequent-flyer points for stuff I was going to buy anyway. So under any circumstances, I’m not even in the target market for this “exclusive” offer.
  5. The text of the letter is actually a strong argument against running up credit-card balances. It shows just how much this costs—something many consumers barely think about. The takeaway I get from this letter is don’t buy what you can’t afford, and pay your bills on time and in full, as I do, so you never pay these exorbitant charges.
  6. The meme of “make 2015 the year you took control” is ludicrous. You want to take control of your credit card debt? Pay off your balance and stop running it higher. Switching from five to four years of repayment servitude doesn’t cut it.
  7. Finally, the visual layout is a real turn-off. The thing is just drowning in too much bold, too much underlining (and the underlining is inconsistent—either underline the individual words or the phrases including the spaces, but don’t mix them), too many call-outs in a fake-handwriting font (does the designer really think we’re going to be fooled by the slight bowing in the underline?).
  8. Page 1 of the lying letter from Discover
    Page 1 of the lying letter from Discover

    Oh, yeah, on page two, which is even more cluttered with bold, underlining, and “handwritten” pull-outs, a footnote mentions that not everybody gets the spiffy 6.99% APR that “Jim” gets. Some people are going to pay usurious rates of up to 18.99%—YIKES!

It’s letters like this that give marketers a bad name.

This letter actually did inspire me to take action. First, I’m writing this blog. I get to use them as an example of how not to do direct mail. And second, I’m finally going to cancel my Discover card. I don’t choose to do business with companies that lie to me.

By the way, if you’d like marketing that doesn’t scream, doesn’t lie, addresses its exact target audience and effectively differentiates your products and services, give me a call at 413-586-2388 (8 a.m. to 10 p.m., US Eastern Time) or drop me a note. I make my living as a marketing and profitability consultant, with particular emphasis on green/socially conscious, businesses, independent small business, and authors/publishers.

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, censorship, Corporate Social Responsibility, Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, Ethics in Government, Ethics-International, General Commentary, language, Marketing Trends/News, Media Ethics, propaganda, Psychology, Transparency vs. Secrecy Tagged with , ,

This may be a new level of stupidity. Murdoch-owned publishing behomoth HarperCollins actually prepared and started to sell an atlas that does not show Israel. At all. Lebanon, Jordan, Gaza, and the West Bank are there.

No big surprise, there was lots of pushback when word got out, and HC removed the atlas from circulation and said it would pulp any remaining copies. Even the UK Bishops’ Conference Department of International Affairs condemned the publication as a blow against peace in the region.

The company sheepishly withdrew, saying,

HarperCollins sincerely apologises for this omission and for any offence caused.

But the company is talking out of two sides of its mouth. Earlier, as reported in the Washington Post, it tried to justify the omission:

Collins Bartholomew, a subsidiary of HarperCollins that specializes in maps, told the Tablet that it would have been “unacceptable” to include Israel in atlases intended for the Middle East. They had deleted Israel to satisfy “local preferences.”

HarperCollins has quickly found out that it’s also unacceptable to abandon truth in a volume that claims to offer

“in-depth coverage of the region and its issues.” Its stated goals include helping kids understand the “relationship between the social and physical environment, the region’s challenges [and] its socio-economic development.”

Ummm, hello, and just how do you intend to put the region in context if you ignore the most conflicted issue it faces? Do you really think students in Arab countries haven’t heard of it? Did you really think this would stay a safe little conspiratorial secret just for the cognoscenti?

HarperCollins would have been totally justified in marking the West Bank and Gaza as disputed territory held by Israel, following conquest. But there’s no dispute about Israel being a nation.

This is a time when we all have social media at our disposal. That means it not only should have been totally obvious that this would backfire, but HarperCollins had the tools at its disposal to make the governments demanding this absurdity to be the ones looking ridiculous. If any governments insisted on refusing entry to accurate atlases, the company could have had a skilled social media manager explain why HC would no longer sell atlases into these countries, and create a pressure movement both from outside the country and from those inside who recognize that not knowing geography is a handicap in the global economic arena, and the Gulf states would have lifted the restriction.

Instead, what HarperCollins has done is to eliminate its own credibility. It’s hard to imagine anyone in the future trusting any reference materials from this publisher. Blatant and deliberate repudiation of truth is not a recipe for success in the world of reference books—especially reference books about the world.

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