Month: January 2018

By Posted on Posted in Consumer Issues, language, People Helping People, Technology, Uncategorized Tagged with , , , , ,

Let’s finally bury the terms “wheelchair-bound” and “confined to a wheelchair”!

For someone whose legs don’t work or don’t work well, a wheelchair is a device of liberation, opening up many places s/he couldn’t reach otherwise. With the aid of a wheelchair, a person with walking disabilities can run errands, walk in the park, hold a job that might be otherwise unavailable…

Language, too, can be liberating, instead of restricting. How about “uses a wheelchair” or “is in a wheelchair”? The way we frame things influences how we and others perceive them—that’s the secret of marketing, of politics, of education, and of changing the world. Let’s market the idea that people with disabilities can be strong, healthy, active participants in society, not bound to the furniture.

And while we’re at it, let’s do a better job of making more things accessible to people who use wheelchairs. That means more curb cuts, wider doorways, and wider bathrooms. It means rethinking transportation of people with disabilities,

Kangaroo electric wheelchair car—One way to rethink transportation for wheelchair users
One way to rethink transportation for wheelchair users

changing the ways we wait in lines, and of course, how we design wheelchairs. It means thinking about the field of vision of someone whose head is several feet lower than a standing male adult.

And also it means being much more accurate in our descriptions of just about everything. Example: If you run a restaurant and the bathroom is a 24-inch-wide sliver of space on the main floor with barely enough room for a standing human to turn around—or worse, down a steep flight of steps and a narrow hallway in the basement—don’t describe your restaurant as wheelchair-accessible, even if the front door is barrier-free.

Fix things so your place of business really IS accessible. As Boomers age and our bodies get less reliable, this makes good business sense, because more of your customers will continue to be able to visit your business.

Note: I am able-bodied. I wrote this in response to seeing a “wheelchair-bound” comment from a marketing friend in his late 50s. My views on this have been shaped by:

  1. My experience in my early 20s as a paid organizer for an elder’s rights organization
  2. Seeing the incredible things that people with disabilities have been able to accomplish when society accepts them as people who can contribute and doesn’t treat them as a burden—and noticing how much more that was in evidence after physical barriers began, slowly, to be eliminated once  the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 took effect.
  3. Hosting a meeting and discovering that someone who wanted to attend couldn’t come because I lived at the time in a second-floor walk-up
  4. 6 years in my 30s and 40s as an official city-appointed member of the Northampton, Massachusetts Commission on Disability, dealing with such issues as how local theaters could provide access to people with mobility impairments
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By Posted on Posted in Branding, Business Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility, Demographics/Psychographics, Psychology, Socially Responsible Investing Tagged with , , ,

For decades, I’ve told anyone who’d listen that doing the right thing for the planet and its inhabitants can be the core of a highly successful business strategy. In my latest book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, I cite dozens of studies that show this.

Now, AdWeek reports on a powerful new study that reinforces this key truth. 65 percent of respondents—2 out of every 3 consumers—rate the need for brands to “take a stand on social issues” either very or somewhat important, and especially so when discussing brands’ social media presence. Of the self-identified “liberals,” the number went up to 78 percent, or nearly four out of five.

Concern for the planet—and the living things that ride "Spaceship Earth"—is good for business (picture of Earth and sun)
Concern for the planet—and the living things that ride “Spaceship Earth”—is good for business
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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Advertising, Branding, Demographics/Psychographics, Entrepreneurship, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, Green Marketing, Innovation, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Technology Tagged with , , , ,

Watch the 3-minute video at the top of Expand Furniture’s Smart Space-Saving Ideas page. Don’t multitask; you need to see people going through the few seconds of converting a piece of furniture from one use to another, or storing it in tiny spaces when it’s not needed.

This entire product line is an excellent example of the principle of one part, many functions (which I discuss in Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, BTW). If you want to create a green business, one of the planet-saving tricks is to build for multiple uses. It’s also an example of miniaturization; when not needed, these chairs, tables, sofas, and storage units take up almost no space.

Think of the all-in-one printer/scanner/fax as one example that’s gone mass-market. A smartphone is an even better example because it’s far more universal AND and embraces miniaturization.

When I was a kid growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, portable communication existed in concept and showed up in comics, science fiction, etc. (Maxwell Smart’s shoe phone, Dick Tracy’s walkie-talkie). And so did the idea of all-powerful computers that contained the world’s knowledge.

But combining those two concepts into one device that fits in a pocket—WOW! I don’t think I came across anything that even hinted at this until the Apple Newtown and Palm Pilot PDAs in the 1990s, and I don’t think either of those had Internet access.

Now, think about the video. Most of the furniture ideas are not really a new concept. William Murphy received his first patent for a “disappearing bed” in 1912 (and the concept predated him); modular sectional sofas and tables with self-contained expansion leaves have been on the market for decades.

The one really new product is that miraculous looking couch that seemed to pull out of a twisted piece of foam. It’s actually paper, and you can get a better look at it here and in this post’s photo.

Expand Furniture's FlexYah bench is made from paper
Expand Furniture’s FlexYah bench is made from paper

Yet this gets only a few seconds in the video. The rest of it is simply doing more with ideas that have been around forever.

Some of the other designs could be called “deep Kaizen.” The Japanese concept of “continuous improvement,” Kaizen got very popular in the US business world a few decades back. So yes, we’ve had Murphy beds forever—but have you ever seen a Murphy bunk bed before? An ottoman that holds a set of five padded folding chairs? A coffee table that can transform in under a minute into a full-size dining room table?

And this brings up another principle: repurposing. Ask yourself what do you already make or sell that could be used differently? I ask my consulting clients this question regularly, and it opens up many conversations about new markets and new ways of marketing to them. Expand has identified several target markets: condo dwellers and people living in Tiny Houses, among them. But some of the marketing photos and videos deploy the pieces in massive, spacious living rooms, too. The company understands that a photo like that changes the way people think about their products and make it attractive to a whole different sector.

How will you take these insights into your own business?

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