Author: Shel Horowitz—Green/Ethical Business Expert

A lifelong activist, profitability and marketing specialist Shel Horowitz’s mission is to fix crises like hunger, poverty, racism, war, and catastrophic climate change—by showing the business world how fixing them can make a profit. An author, international speaker, and TEDx Talker, his award-winning 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, lays out a blueprint for creating and MARKETING those profitable change-making products and services. He is happy to help you craft your messaging and develop profit strategies. Learn more (and download excerpts from the book) at http://goingbeyondsustainability.com

By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Marketing Trends/News

https://news.com.com/2100-1032_3-5582792.html

“When Web surfers install the [Google] toolbar…and click the AutoLink button, Web pages with street addresses suddenly sprout links to Google’s map service by default. Book publishers’ ISBN numbers trigger links to Amazon.com… Vehicle ID licenses spawn links to Carfax.com, while package tracking numbers connect automatically to shippers’ Web sites.”

Here we go again. First it was Gator, then Microsoft, and now Google. While I do understand that in many ways this could be an enhancement of the user experience, I have serious problems with the idea of a third party replacing content on a website it didn’t create and doesn’t own, without permission and with potentially disastrous consequences for the creator of the content.

And I can see this closing the big swinging door in Cyberspace that lets ordinary Joes and Janes compete as equals among the giants…because on the Web, so far, if you create a useful, well-designed site with good information, and you position the site to be found by search engines and other ways to generate traffic, the prospect can choose to patronize a part-time business working from home, that spent a hundred bucks to put up terrific content, as easily as a Fortune 100 corporation that spent millions. It’s one of the few things left for the little guy in this world of increasing conglomoratization and centralization–and the implications are not pretty:

# The site that generated the content has some kind of revenue plan–perhaps direct sales, perhaps advertising on the found page and other pages the visitor might follow, perhaps commissions from affiliate links. By redirecting the visitor to its own chosen vendors, Google is essentially stealing that revenue. Seems to me the person who created the content should be allowed to monetize it. If the creator of the content wants to send people to Amazon to buy, that should be his or her choice, and accompanied with the correct affiliate link.

# Inevitably, traffic redirection will favor the biggest, best-established, most successful companies–because that’s what visitors have heard of, and Google has stated it will reward the most popular sites. This further centralizes the economic engine in the hands of a lucky few, and marginalizes those with innovative products and approaches, but small budgets.

So, for both economic and ethical reasons, I’d urge Google to re-examine this idea. There may be ways to implement it that address these and other concerns, but until I see them, I will oppose it.

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By Posted on Posted in General Commentary, Marketing Trends/News, Shel's Personal Life

A newsletter editor asked for favorite business books. And having created the list for him, I decided to share it with you. Listing my own two most recent books first is not a matter of ego; I actually do believe they’re the best out there in their respective subject areas (note that my other four books don’t make the list)–in part because my research and writing incorporated much of the best wisdom I found elsewhere (and I’m a voracious reader). I’ve written longer reviews of several of these (and others), one per issue in my monthly newsletter, Positive Power of Principled Profit. Archives are posted at https://www.principledprofits.com/subscribe-positive-power.html (scroll down about two screens)

1. Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First
By Shel Horowitz
Numerous examples of the crucial importance of real, meaningful customer service–the dollar impact of doing it right–or wrong. Much practical advice.

2. Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World
By Shel Horowitz
One-volume course in every aspect of low-cost, high-impact marketing: copywriting, media relations, Internet, personal banding, and more.

3. Love Is the Killer App : How to Win Business and Influence Friends
by Tim Sanders

Helping others–embracing the abundance principle–is a powerful way to grow your own brand–by a (young) senior Yahoo exec

4. Hug Your Customers : The Proven Way to Personalize Sales and Achieve Astounding Results
by Jack Mitchell (Hardcover)

A business owner who’ll do anything for his customers–even fly across the world to deliver a suit! He turns clothing shopping from commodity to magical experience–and he is very well-compensated.

5. The Soul in the Computer: The Story of a Corporate Revolutionary
by Barbara Waugh, Margot Silk Forrest

Barbara Waugh kept standing up for what’s right in her job at HP–and kept getting promoted! Shows how to be very ethical *and * make a difference in the world from within a major corporation.

6. Sell Yourself Without Selling Your Soul : A Woman’s Guide to Promoting Herself, Her Business, Her Product, or Her Cause with Integrity and Spirit
by Susan Harrow

Excellent practical advice for dealing with the media without falling in any snakepits

7. Winning Without Intimidation : How to Master the Art of Positive Persuasion in Today’s Real World in Order to Get What You Want, When You Want It
by Bob Burg, Bob Berg

A gazillion awesome strategies for de-escalating and turning conflict into agreement. Bob Burg has changed my life!

8. The Book of Agreement: 10 Essential Elements for Getting the Results You Want
by Stewart Levine

A very successful lawyer explains why collaboration is better than confrontation in the legal system

9. Co-Opetition: A Revolution Mindset That Combines Competition and Cooperation : The Game Theory Strategy That’s Changing the Game of Business
by Adam M. Brandenburger, Barry J. Nalebuff

The paradigm that the same businesses are sometimes competitors, sometimes co-operators, sometimes suppliers/customers, and sometimes complementors is extremely helpful in crafting an ethical approach to business.

10. Cash Copy: How to Offer Your Products and Services So Your Prospects Buy Them
By Jeffrey Lant

Not necessarily the definitive book on copywriting, but the first I happened to read that explained why most copywriting fails, and how to create copy that works. (I’ve since read many others, including excellent ones by Joe Vitale, Ted Nicholas, Claude Hopkins, John Caples, David Ogilvy, and many more, but this one completely changed the way I approach client work. I read it about 15 years ago, and without it, I doubt I’d have a copywriting business today.)

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics

When Business Ethics magazine shows that socially responsible investments perform better, the world might say, well, of course *you* would say that!

But now, a study from well-rated mainstream consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, in partnership with the Aspen Institute:

“Among financial leaders – public companies that outperform their industry averages – 98% include ethical behavior/integrity in their values statements, compared with 88% for other public companies. Far more of these financial leaders include commitment to employees (88% vs. 68%), honesty/openness (85% vs. 47%) and drive to succeed (68% vs. 29%). Forty-two percent of the financial leaders emphasize adaptability in their values statements, compared with a mere 9% for other public companies.”

I love this, because it gives hard numbers from the core of the business community that validate my claim in Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First that businesses with high ethical standards can be more profitable. this is not a fringe phenomenon, in other words, but a core principle of business success. Thanks, folks!

The study press release is at https://www.csrwire.com/print.cgi?sfArticleId=3511 and contains several more passages of interest.

I also followed a link from the press release to the Aspen Institute and was delighted to discover the many streams of fascinating work they’re involved in. Too few of these brilliant initiatives make the news.

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By Posted on Posted in Marketing Trends/News

https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=501842&page=1

I’m old enough to remember when TV ads were nearly entirely populated with white people. Now, according to this longish Associated Press story, TV is where many Americans actually “meet” people of different colors and ethnicities. Now, according tot he article, it’s Society that lags behind Television.

Well, it may be true in some sectors.

But I grew up in New York City and still visit there frequently. Riding the subway or living in the city’s diverse neighborhoods, the reality of our multicultural country is all around you (unlike Los Angeles, where my perception is that almost the only people who take the subway are people of color–whites must drive, I guess). I think there’s been a huge shift to explore other cultures–maybe not in ways that are all that meaningful, but the isolation breaks down at least a little bit even every time a person from the majority culture eats at an authentic ethnic restaurant–which, in my childhood, usually meant Chinese, and now might be Mexican, Afghani, Indian, Thai, Arabic… That we rub shoulders across cultures at universities, in the workplace, in hospital waiting rooms…and of course, on the Internet.

Yes, there is a class of people who is wealthy and uses their wealth to isolate themselves from the hoi polloi–but that’s nothing new–look at the royal courts of Europe in, say, the 17th century.

Oddly enough, I now live in a village with almost no ethnic or racial diversity: Hockanum Village, a small hamlet of about 200 people, nearly all of them descended from Britishers who settled here between 1743 and 1850. As a Jew, I’m exotic here. And though the village name comes from a Native American tongue, I know of no neighbors who claim that ancestry. It is the most welcoming place I’ve ever lived.

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, General Commentary, Shel's Personal Life

Last summer, I launched an international grassroots campaign to prevent future Enron scandals by creating a mass movement toward ethical business practices. My goal: 25,000 business leaders signing an ethics pledge, and each agreeing to contact at least 100 others. (Bless their hearts, some signers have e-mail lists of many thousand, and have run notices about the campaign.) Together, we could create the “tipping point” to make business slime as socially unacceptable as slavery. Knowing that it took the Quakers 100 years from the time they began their campaign against slavery until slavery was eliminated in the US–and they had very little training in community organizing and, of course, no access to modern communication tools–I set myself a timeframe of ten years. As a volunteer, I’m doing this on essentially zero budget, other than paying for occasional bits of my assistant’s time to set up web pages, and a few dollars here and there for press release distribution. But then again, I’ve been writing about (and practicing) low-cost marketing for over 20 years, so that oughtn’t to be difficult, right?

I knew this would be good for the world. And I also knew it would be good for the people signing, who could use the Pledge in their own marketing.

What’s been pleasantly surprising is how in just these first few months, it’s already started changing the shape of my own business, and not in ways I’d have predicted.

I did think the pledge would make it easier to get speaking engagements; so far, that hasn’t been true.

But…

* I’m in dialog with a very prestigious magazine in the ethical business sphere, which has contracted for an article. If they like my work, they’ll have me do that department every issue. While I won’t be writing about the pledge, my blurb will identify me as the author of Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First and the founder of the Business Ethics Pledge movement.

* Several new clients and prospects have approached me, specifically citing my stand on ethics, and usually telling me they found me through a link about the campaign. At least two of these will be long-term clients who will generate substantial revenue in copywriting and strategic marketing planning projects.

* I got an inquiry all the way from the Philippines about buying 500 copies of my book. Once again, the ethics campaign was a factor.

So apparently, it really is true: follow your dreams, your loves, your passions–and our abundant universe provides for you.

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By Posted on Posted in Marketing Trends/News

As I write this, it’s somewhere around 4 degrees Fahrenheit. We got another several inches of snow yesterday, more predicted in the future. Usually we have either bitter cold or snow; this month, we’ve had both plus biting winds.

But if I were a print magazine editor, I’d be thinking about summer stories right now. And if I wrote beach-reading books rather than marketing and PR how-tos, I’d be looking for fresh angles to pitch.

But it’s really challenging to think two whole seasons out. In daily journalism, there’s no time disconnect like that. In winter, you pitch winter stories, and in summer, summer stories.

I often wonder what it’s like to be in that headspace–to be doing photo shoots of people in swimsuits, splashing on the beach, when you know that when yo get back to your car, there’ll be an inch of ice to scrape off the windows. Deadlines and lead times are such funny things! for Internet media, or radio, it can be instant; I’ve certainly done my share of live on-air phoners, or seen the impact of an announcement picked up by a well-read Internet discussion group or newsletter.

Of course, the best part is that if you remember to go back into your files, all the pitches you sent out to monthlies half a year in advance can be quickly tweaked to pitch a whole other round of media, with shorter lead times. Never a dull moment!

The other thing it means, though, is sometimes you don’t know ahead of time what the story will be…and that closes you out of some media for the time being. Oh well, come back to them with something else, that you *can* plan in advance.

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By Posted on Posted in Marketing Trends/News, Media Ethics

https://online.wsj.com/public/article/0,,SB110626272888531958,00.html?mod=todays%5Ffree%5Ffeature

Yup–blogging’s getting mainstream. This fascinating Wall Street Journal article looks at the role of blogging in getting stories on the radar, and bloggers’ shifting self-perceptions into the world of journalism. Blogging has played a role in discovering–and covering such stories as the Dan Rather Bush memo escapade, and what WSJ writer Jessica Mintz calls “widely disseminated premature exit poll results that led many to believe John Kerry was winning the presidential election for much of Election Day.”

In my own mind (and in the minds of many others), there’s a huge question about whether, in fact, Kerry actually did win key states that would have given him the election. Irregularities that went far beyond the issues in the Ukraine, where in fact the election was done over. I am convinced that Bush did not win honestly in 200, and I am not convinced either way about who won Ohio (and thus, the presidency) in 2004. I find it particularly weird that in the US, partisan Republican Bush campaign officers (Katherine Harris, Florida, 2000; Kenneth blackwell, Ohio, 2004) get to oversee the election and count the votes. If you are Secretary of State with oversight responsibility for elections, you shouldn’t be chairing the state campaign of *any* candidate, IMHO.

Meanwhile, blogs are so legit now that Harvard University’s having a conference,”Blogging, Journalism & Credibility.” Mintz mentions this in her article, and Poynter.org’s Romsensko (in whose emailed blog I found the Mintz piece) gives a URL to listen in:
https://cyber.law.harvard.edu/webcred/index.php?p=12

Unlike most of the WSJ archive, this particular article is available to non-subscribers.

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By Posted on Posted in Events, Shel's Personal Life

In some ways, it’s an even bigger thrill to open a package and find copies of your book from another country than to get the finished books from the printer in the first place.

It’s happened to me twice: several years ago, when I received five Korean copies of Marketing Without Megabucks: How to Sell Anything on a Shoestring–and the other day, when I got two copies of “Ethics in Marketing”–which is what Jaico, the publisher in Mumbai, India, decided to call its version of Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First. In a spify, hardcover edition, no less. The only other book of mine ever to be published in hardcover was my very first one, published in 1980 and long out of print: a book on why nuclear power is a horrible way to generate electricity.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t that happy with the production *inside* the Indian version. Still, it means a great deal to a writer to be taken seriously halfway around the world, to have my ideas deemed worthy of widespread distribution.

The book is also supposed to be published in a Spanish-language edition out of Mexico City–but I never count unhatched chickens, especially since Chinese deals for two of my books fell through late in the process.

India seems quite interested in PrinProfit. I had the book exhibited at the Frankfurt Book Fair, and received six inquiries–every one of them from India. I personally think this book should do very well in Japan and Germany, among other places.

Oh yes, and it’s really cool to be able to show off the Korean version of MWM. I can’t read the text at all, but they used the English-language samples I’d included.

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Media Ethics

In an op-ed by Andrew Rotherham called “No Pundit Left Behind,” The New York Times called it “a stunningly inefficient use of public dollars – every bit as redundant as paying football fans to watch the Super Bowl.” The nation’s newspaper of record is referring to the news that conservative commentator Armstrong Williams was paid $240,000 to promote the No Child Left Behind Act–and promote it he did, but without revealing it was earning him a paycheck.

And because I write about business ethics, I find this story–which combines the public and private spheres in yet another act of blatant corruption–particularly instructive. First, Williams should clearly have reveled he was a paid lobbyist. Organizations such as Public Relations Society of America are very clear that failure to disclose a financial interest is a definite no-no for PR folks. If Williams hadn’t stumbled across the PRSA Code of Ethics, surely his own common sense would tell him that when you shill for a special interest, the relationship ought to be disclosed.

Of course, those of us who have followed the various scandals and mismanagement accusations connected with the Bush administration shouldn’t be surprised. The more they play the values card in public pronouncements, the more dirt shows up with a little scraping. I can’t remember an administration as obsessed with having everyone follow the party line, regardless of the consequences, and so quick to apply double standards on matters of truth, special interest relationships, and their own accountability.

I’m not being partisan, here. The current group is amplifying a trend that can certainly be traced at least as far back as the LBJ administration–but Johnson and Nixon and Clinton were amateurs. As a populace, we need to demand accountability, and not spin–not only from any presidential administration, but from the media that supposedly have the job of keeping them honest.

This story is breaking all over the mainstream press–but so many others are either buried on page 46 or left to the likes of the highly partisan Internet news organizations of the left and the right.

personally, I think America would have just as much appetite for substantive news as it does for the latest celebrity trial or “reality” TV show (sure doesn’t look like *my* reality!)

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, General Commentary

* [1] Of 1,889,000 hits on Google for “business ethics” or “ethical business,” 1,189,000–62.9 percent–are on pages updated within the past three months.

* [2] A survey of S&P 500 companies, published Wednesday in Lohas Journal, found a 150 percent increase in one year in the number of CEOs reporting on social responsibility in their shareholder letters, and an 800 percent increase since 1999 in CEOs who describe their companies as corporate or global citizens–with such major players as Pfizer, Hewlett-Packard, Bank of America, Citigroup and Cisco leading the way.

* [3] Businesses have devoted vast sums to disaster relief following the Indian Ocean tsunami, often far out of proportion to their size. One guidebook publishing company earmarked AU $500,000 (US $388,170) for disaster aid.

* [4] The US House of Representatives reversed itself and scuttled a plan that would have made it harder to challenge members facing allegations of ethics violations

* [5] The grassroots, zero-budget Business Ethics Pledge campaign that I launched in June has already reached six of the world’s seven regions, with signers as far-flung as Kenya, Panama, New Zealand, Portugal, South Africa, and Scotland.

Business ethics has become the hot business trend!

People are waking up. They are realizing that ethics and corporate citizenship build trust–that following and marketing an ethical stance is actually good for business. This bodes well for my pledge campaign–and for the state of the world.

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