Month: October 2015

By Posted on Posted in Activism, Advertising, Branding, Business Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility, Democracy, Innovation, language, Marketing Trends/News, People Helping People, Politics, propaganda, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , ,
Screenshot of KPMG's internal "higher purpose" video captioned "We Shape History"
Screenshot of KPMG’s internal “higher purpose” video

This Harvard Business Review article and accompanying video are too good not to share. The video is less than two minutes and well-worth watching. Watch it with your marketer hat on. Pay attention both to the direct message and to the outcomes.

KPMG is positioning itself as an agent of social change, a social entrepreneurship giant involved in everything from keeping the Nazis at bay during World War II to certifying the election results that allowed Nelson Mandela to become the first president of a free South Africa.

I’m not passing judgment on the accuracy of the claim that the wonderful, world-changing projects highlighted in the video represent KPMG’s (and predecessor Peat Marwick’s) overall corporate culture  over many decades. I haven’t done the due diligence on that, and frankly, I’m pretty skeptical of the claim. Big Four accounting firms don’t tend to be known as cauldrons of world-changing social entrepreneurship.

But clearly, the company decided to spotlight its role as a changemaker and to foster an employee culture of empowered action—and that’s terrific. Not at all surprised to see the excellent results. Every manager should look at the amazing engagement this campaign created, with over 42,000 stories submitted by employees and 76 percent agreement that their jobs had deeper meaning.

Be sure to note the graph at the bottom, contrasting several employee satisfaction metrics under managers who emphasized or didn’t emphasize a higher purpose.

If one of the largest accounting firms in the world can take this on, your probably much simpler business can do it too. Every person who supervises others should take that data to heart and make sharing their own organization’s higher purpose a consistent part of their own employee motivation (if you get stuck on this, contact me; I can help).

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By Posted on Posted in Branding, Business-general, Copywriting, Entrepreneurship, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Networking, Transparency vs. Secrecy Tagged with , , , ,
Business Book Photo by Jennifer Marr
Business Book Photo by Jennifer Marr
Business Book
Photo by Jennifer Marr

As a new subscriber to John Corcoran’s newsletter and a constant reader, I followed John’s link to his list of 20 influential business books. It was a terrific list (I’ve read quite a few of them). And he got quite a few additional suggestions from readers. (Side note: sign of a successful post: 40+ comments, most of them recommendations.)

He has never heard from me. As far as  know, he has no idea who I am. But I, of course, jumped in. I’d like you to read my comment in “learning mode,” think about what lessons you can pull from it, and post a comment on this page. THEN check out the lessons I think I’m imparting here, and comment again on that page. (You probably want to look at John’s list first.)

Hi, John, great list. I’m fairly new to your email tribe and this is the first time I’ve seen it. I’m a business book writer and an addicted reader (read about 70 books in the first 9 months of 2015) and was delighted to see how many I’ve read. I’ll look forward to listening to some of those podcasts. I’m listening to the interview with Dan Pink as I write this.

My own recommendations? Two in particular that no one else has mentioned:

1) The Success Principles by Jack Canfield and Janet Switzer. By far the best thing I’ve ever come across on personal motivation and the life hacks to build world-changing influence.

2) Cash Copy by Jeffrey Lant utterly changed the way I think about copywriting. Plenty of other books I’ve read since have a similar trajectory, but Cash Copy happened to be the one I read first–somewhere around 1988 or 1990. It turned me on to the whole idea of the you-focus of solving a pain point or helping the reader achieve a goal, rather than what I call “we we we all the way home copywriting” (e.g., “At _____ [company], we believe…”). That led me to develop “story-behind-the-story” marketing materials for my clients, such as a press release for a book on electronic privacy that used the headline, “It’s 10 O’Clock—Do You Know Where Your Credit History Is? (The book didn’t even get a mention until the third paragraph.)

I’ve been told by a number of people that my own Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green has opened them to the idea that green business is not just the right thing to do but can be quite profitable, thank you. I’m hoping my next book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, will broaden that discussion to show that turn hunger and poverty into sufficiency, war into peace, and catastrophic climate change into planetary balance. John, I’ll be in touch with you privately to see if you’d like an advance review copy.
—Shel Horowitz, https://impactwithprofit.com

Again, I invite you to post your immediate takeaways here. Then visit https://greenandprofitable.com/the-lessons-i-think-i-was-teaching to see if my intention matched your reaction, and post again over there. It may prove a fascinating and illuminating conversation—and give you lots of insight to use in your own marketing and customer relations.

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By Posted on Posted in Branding, Entrepreneurship, language, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Networking, Psychology, Shel's Personal Life, Transparency vs. Secrecy Tagged with , , ,
Business Book Photo by Jennifer Marr
"The Bystander Effect" Photo by Iwan Beijes
“The Bystander Effect”
Photo by Iwan Beijes

In part 1 of this post, I referred to the “story-behind-the-story” news releases I learned to write after reading Jeffrey Lant’s Cash Copy. So here’s the story behind the story of Part 1: the lessons I hope you come away with.

First, of course, are the obvious messages: John Corcoran and his readers prepared a good resource, and reading those books can provide you with new skills and insights. And the two books I added to the list provided ME with  important skills and insights.

But I’m a marketer. There’s a deeper psychology here. I believe in transparency, so I’ll step you through the goals I had in posting this, and the action steps I took to meet those goals—so perhaps it may influence the way you craft your own messages:

  • To introduce myself to—and build and nurture a relationship with—John Corcoran. I build relationships with many people who have a network I want to be part of, and who I’d like to see me as a colleague whose expertise complements theirs. This is my first communication to him. I got on his list a few weeks ago after listening to a webinar he did with one of his marketing partners. As far as I know, he doesn’t subscribe to my newsletter, doesn’t know me from any of the discussion lists I participate in, hasn’t heard me speak or read any of my books. Thus, I’m assuming it’s a cold contact.
  • To introduce myself to his community in ways that may spark interest in my books and/or consulting and copywriting services

Notice how I work toward those goals as I:

  1. Complement him on the resource he put together, right in the very first paragraph
  2. Mention that I’m a business book writer—thus positioning myself as someone it makes sense to pay attention to, since he pays attention to all these other business book writers—and an addicted reader who consumes business books, and thus a natural member of his community
  3. Show that I’ve taken the next action step: listening to his podcasts and naming the first one I played; I’m engaging with his material and psychologically rewarding him for making the resource available
  4. Add two new books that no one has mentioned, along with the reasons why I recommend them—and in those reasons why, I begin to reinforce, not just to John but to anyone else reading this page, the idea that I’m a creative, problem-solving marketing guy that people could turn to for new approaches to marketing (notice how I mention that the example was from work I did for a client)
  5. By citing the year I first read Lant’s book, show that I’ve been in this world for decades
  6. By using the “we we we all the way home” reference, show that I have a sense of humor and a knowledge of cultural references
  7. Provide direct value in the post, by suggesting (without selling and without hype) and giving an example of story-behind-the-story copywriting and mentioning that going green/solving the world’s biggest problems can be a formula for profitable, successful business
  8. Reference the relevant book I have out, and the one that’s coming out soon
  9. Make a direct offer to John: the gift of an advance copy (of course, I’m hoping he will recommend it to others)
  10. Tell him to expect a private email from me, so when he sees it, he’ll open it
  11. Finish with the most relevant of my website URLs, so anyone else whose attention I caught can easily track me down without having to do a search

Incidentally, this transparency extends to my outreach to John. When I send my private note, I will include the links to these two posts so he can see how I used my post on his site as a case study for you. 😉

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Peace and War, Protests and Crackdowns, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Nonviolent peace demonstration in Britain
Nonviolent peace demonstration in Britain
Nonviolent peace demonstration in Britain

Once again, yesterday, I came across the tired old canard that the only way to fight bad things and bad people is to put weapons in the hands of good people. We hear it after every mass shooting.

And not only is it not true, it’s a very destructive thought pattern. Too often, when good people get guns, they turn into not-so-good people. Lord Acton’s famous dictum, “Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely” seems to hold very true. Dictators were often first hailed as liberators; as one of hundreds of examples, think about Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe.

Gandhian techniques were actually very effective against the Nazis. The scholar Gene Sharp documented this extensively in The Politics of Nonviolent Action trilogy. And frankly, the Brits in India were no saints. They were brutal and violent, though lacking the organized killing machine (gas chambers, etc.) the Nazis built. You may be familiar with the King of Denmark very publicly wearing the yellow star. That’s just one example of hundreds. Many of these incidents had better outcomes than a lot of gun-based responses.  And even when they didn’t, the reprisals were directed against those who acted, and not—as so often happened when partisans killed Nazis—the entire community.

The segregated American South was also quite brutal and violent, as shown very effectively in the recent movie, “Selma.” Martin Luther King considered Gandhi a mentor. Gandhi in turn learned from (and actually corresponded with) Tolstoy. Mandela, I’m sure, studied both Gandhi and King, and in turn influenced the Arab Spring.

None of this happens in a vacuum. We can trace nonviolent resistance in a reasonably straight line at least back to Christ, and of course there are several incidents of Gandhian tactics in the Old Testament. My personal favorite is the refusal of the midwives Shifra and Pu’ah to carry out the Pharaoh’s command to kill all the Hebrew boy babies, though Abraham’s argument with God over the coming destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is a close second.

Tweet: Could nonviolence stop Nazis? https://ctt.ec/f753a+

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By Posted on Posted in Diversity, Energy & Sustainability, General Commentary, Innovation, People Helping People, poverty, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice, Technology Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Summary board prepared in real-time at Leslie Hinkson's talk on desegregation, TEDx Springfield

#TEDxSpringfield’s fourth annual event was held Friday, and as always, lots of brain stim.

I’ve already blogged on my personal favorite talk: Randy Pierce, a blind athlete who recently climbed Kilimanjaro, on how he perceives the world. But there were plenty of other highlights to share:

  • Summary board prepared in real-time at Leslie Hinkson's talk on desegregation, TEDx SpringfieldLeslie Hinkson: If we want real desegregation, we need to not only make sure black and white kids attend the same schools, but that they interact socially within the school.
  • Bill Miller Summary Board: TEDxSpringfieldBill Miller: To deal effectively with homelessness, first get people off the streets and into housing. THEN start addressing the other pieces, like jobs, addictions, etc. And this is good for the community, even the business community.

 

Amanda Herman storyboard at TEDxSpringfieldAmanda Herman: Making films “focusing on what people wish to happen, in their dreams. What is it to make someone else’s dreams come true? I gather with people to transform their ideas into public arts projects…The outcome of each project is joy…What’s possible and impossible in the world is largely a social construct. It’s up to us to redefine what is possible…and make it happen.

Darby Dyer storyboard, TEDx SpringfieldDarby Dyer: Despite 100,000 objects between the sun and Jupiter, our risk of being hit by the kind of cataclysmic asteroid that may have wiped out the dinosaurs. And the sun will keep producing energy and light for the next 5 million years or more. We are the “Goldylocks planet,” with perfect conditions to support human life. But even if we don’t have to worry about the planet surviving, we do have to worry about human survival. Catastrophic climate change is real, it’s here, and our window for addressing it is shrinking.

Nick Cummings poses with his summaryboard from TEDx SpringfieldNick Cummings: A recent high school graduate who has faced disability-level breathing problems since birth, he shared insights on being social when you don’t fit in, and on overcoming the depression of being different: “DON’T think the answer is in a pill or a bottle, unless that pill is made of chocolate and the bottle is Mr. Bubble bubble bath…Find the positive in every situation. Take all that raw emotion and have it drive you to be better…We’re all gloomy depressive messes some time. But there must have been something so fantastic before that to make you feel that way. A roller coaster doesn’t only go up.

Laney Rosenzweig StoryboardLaney Rosenzweig: If we can replace the images we have of traumatic events (often with metaphors), we can reduce the post-traumatic stress. Our memories are not fixed, but fluid, and we can create memories of traumatic events that we can live with, that don’t trap or paralyze us.

 

Thom Fox Storyboard, TEDx SpringfieldThom Fox: As a former drug abuser and gang member, “I’d been on my way to being dead…Life doesn’t have to be miserable. If you don’t like your life, change it. I understood that I could reach out and they’d be kind enough to help. No one succeeds alone. Once you get through hell, you can help one person, two people. That could be exponential and change the world. The more opportunity you create for others, the more you create for yourself.

“The one commonality for all the bad things that happened to me—was me. That’s what I had to overcome.

“Tofu takes on the flavor of whatever it’s with. People are like tofu. Surround yourself with potential, and it will be fulfilled… One person changed my life. I’m passing that on exponentially. What if your conversation was that one thing that changed their life?”

Angela Lussier Sumamryboard, TEDx SpringfieldAngela Lussier: “When I graduated, I thought I had to abandon the artist in order to become a business person. What I realized is I can be an artist and a business person. Even stuffed celery could be an art project…I did a video, with sliding down slides and swinging on swings. I thought, is this something business people do? But the response was, ‘we had so much fun watching you have fun as you taught business principles.’

“The difference is my mindset. I was really outcome-focused at the beginning. Today, I have a creator’s mindset, more focused on learning and growing—the journey. The creator’s cycle: Being–>Dreaming–>Doing–>Making–>Being (reflect on what happened/worked: what happened, what didn’t, what am I scared of). The moment we want to quit lies right before the doing stage. When you move from ‘this won’t work’ to ‘let me just try this,’ a lot of things happen.

“When I figured out that I’m a weird person, I found out everyone else is too; we’re all just pretending to be normal.”

Several other speakers were also on the program, and they had good insights as well—but the notes I took on their sessions don’t lend themselves to reportage. Here are their storyboards (all prepared in real time by the graphics agency Collective Next).

Kalyan_Summaryboard_TEDx John_Longo_Summaryboard_TEDx Diane_Smith_Summaryboard_TEDx Marek_Summaryboard_TEDx Tinsae_Summaryboard_TEDx

 

Tweet: Learning, Breathing, and the End of the World: #TEDX Springfield https://ctt.ec/TgiPS+

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By Posted on Posted in Diversity, General Commentary, Psychology Tagged with , , , , ,
Summary board prepared in real-time at Randy Pierce's talk on blindness, TEDx Springfield
Summary board prepared in real-time at Randy Pierce's talk on blindness, TEDx Springfield
Summary board prepared in real-time at Randy Pierce’s talk on blindness, TEDx Springfield

Randy Pierce, an athlete who recently climbed Kilimanjaro, enjoys a spectacular view or a great sunset—even though he happens to be blind. Just because he can’t see it and has to have it described doesn’t mean he can’t enjoy. His talk was my personal highlight of the fourth annual #TEDxSpringfield yesterday.

Formerly sighted, he had lessons for anyone going through a difficult transition, not just losing sight. “The transition trauma moment is incredibly difficult…If we want to just live there, we can be paralyzed and stay there forever.” Anger and depression are perfectly normal when you lose something you’d always had, but it’s our choice about whether to remain stuck there, or use the trauma to springboard growth. He shared a powerful example of this from his own experience learning to use a blind cane.

While the blind cane was the tool that let me walk around safely, it was also my scarlet letter that let me feel less than, feel their pity, their lack of understanding…

In those early stages, you might be angry, depressed, enthused, in denial. I was all of those. I broke my cane and threw it away, focused on the risk management of how people would react to me… I accidentally knocked over a toddler [too low to the ground to enter Pierce’s sensory awareness] who didn’t have the warning of my cane. I let my vanity restrict me and it caused damage. A really good eye-opener on evaluating more of the risk and what is the right way to manage it.

Once, he asked if anyone was sitting in a bus seat, and hearing no response, plopped himself in the lap of a woman too shy to answer his query. And this, too, was a teachable moment for Pierce:

I can mitigate the challenge of social interaction. I wear glasses so others are not upset by my eyes shaking back and forth. I could have said “if you’re sitting there, please say hello so I don’t sit in your lap,” instead of “is anyone sitting there?”

What he learned from these early experiences is that the risk of being rejected by others is a lesser risk than the risk of failing to connect with those who are ready.

Reach out and connect with people. Make it safe for them. Take a way the risk of rejection for THEM. But how much greater risk is isolation? Make the risk of a little rejection and understand that [not all will work out]. People look for the safety of the community they have in their pocket (phones). But think about how many lost future communities [never occur because we isolate ourselves in our phones and ignore the people around us].

Pierce choses a dynamic, almost Mandela-like optimism and a methodical approach. He achieved an athletic feats that trips up even 90 percent of sighted people: grabbing a moving trapeze and using it to ring a bell.

I have plenty of points of darkness in my life. But how long do I have to wait until I put my focus to the dawn that’s coming, the vision? If you get that vision, there’s a great dawn ahead of you in many ways…Vision is always going to be waaay more important than sight.

See tomorrow’s post for other highlights of #TEDxSpringfield

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By Posted on Posted in Branding, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Networking, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , , , ,
Shel made friends with these three Australians while traveling in Turkey
Shel made friends with these three Australians while traveling in Turkey

Pretty much every networking guru agrees: sending handwritten notes, especially thank-you notes, is one of the best ways to grow your importance in the minds of the people who receive them.

And I know that the hand-written thank-you notes I’ve received stay in my own mind for years, even decades.

But maybe, like me, you have terrible handwriting. And maybe you also get very bad writers cramp. So I hereby give you permission to build your network through other tools. Here are a few of the ways I do that:

  • If I don’t recognize the caller ID: “Good morning/afternoon/evening, this is Shel. How may I make your day special? This starts a lot of great conversations.
  • On the discussion lists I participate in, I do my best to answer people’s questions with friendly, helpful, useful advice—and to answer a lot more questions than I ask. For about ten years, this was the biggest source of new clients in my business, and all it cost was my time.
  • Of course, I add value when possible. On social media, this is so easy: retweet, Like, and share good posts, sometimes engaging in dialog or bringing others directly into the conversation (tagging them). But outside of social media, you can add lots more value without a whole lot of work. Make e-mail introductions to people who could benefit from knowing each other, even if you have nothing to gain from their connection. Send an article or video link you think will interest your contact. Be of service as a volunteer. Interview movers and shakers for your blog, your telesummit, or the book you’re writing.
  • Each year, I select a cool oddball birthday greeting (this year, it’s space aliens singing Happy Birthday). Whenever a Facebook connection’s birthday comes up, my assistant sends them the greeting. When they thank me, I often ask how they’re doing,w hat they’re up to, and when they respond to that, I fill them in on my own very exciting work turning hunger and poverty into sufficiency, war into peace, and catastrophic climate change into planetary balance. NOTE: since many of my FB friends know each other, I typically do these as private messages rather than wall posts.
  • I’m always ready to start or join conversations with strangers—such as the three young Australian women in the picture, whom I met while hiking in Turkey. I’ve actually formed lasting relationships on public transit, at conferences, and yes, even at business networking events.
  • Thank people publicly. When you make people look good in front of others, they remember.

 

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By Posted on Posted in Copywriting, Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Environment, Frugality/Frugal Fun, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, language, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, propaganda, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , ,
Urban bicyclists taking a break
Urban bicyclists taking a break

What surprised me about Seth Godin’s blog post today on cars vs bicycles was the way he based his pro-bike arguments in classic liberal altruism: protect the underdog, ensure the safety of the less powerful. This is even more remarkable because he lives in New York City, whre bikes have clear superiority over cars for many purposes. (His tounge-in-cheek pro-car arguments, on the other hand, were like the modern Republican Party: I have more power than you, so get out of my way.)

I’m a big believer in convincing by harnessing the reader/listener/viewer’s enlightened self-interest. So I’d rewrite his pro-bike list with these eight positive reasons:

  • In dense urban areas, you’ll get there much faster on a bike than in a car, for trips of up to five and maybe as much as seven miles, especially in rush hour
  • You can park within a few feet of your destination (in big cities, I often start looking for a parking space half a mile/one kilometer ahead, and sometimes don’t find a space until a mile/2KM on the other side)
  • In less populated areas, the bike provides a healthy, fun workout
  • You notice more on a bike: stores and restaurants to check out, architectural details, big scenic vista, some ripe and yummy fruit to pick on a wild raspberry vine, that gorgeous hawk soaring above you
  • You enjoy that wonderful feeling of being outside with the breeze and sun
  • Your carbon footprint during your trip is reduced by orders of magnitude
  • You get to smile and be smiled upon by other people; positive human connection, no matter how fleeting, is a good thing, and hard to achieve encased in a ton or two of steel and plastic
  • Bikes are waaay cheaper—bike economics: outright purchase of something between $200 for a decent used street bike on up to, say, $600 for a new one of better quality, maintenance costs of $50-$100 per year, fuel cost of zero; car economics: at minimum, $5000 plus hundreds or thousands in annual maintenance for a functional used car with a remaining lifespan of three years or more, plus costs of fuel and insurance, on up to several tens of thousands for a new one.

Of course, Seth is using the bike vs. car argument as a metaphor for the caring vs. selfish economy. But as an avid biker (going back to commuting to high school in New York City, and continuing through my current rural lifestyle)—and a benefit-focused marketer, I had to point out that bikes do actually offer a number of real advantages.

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