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

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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By Posted on Posted in Marketing Trends/News

https://www.danavan.net/weblog/archives/contrasts_press_releases_vs_blogs_blogging.html

I still think there’s a definite place for the press release–but not, fergoodnessake, those horrid no-news corporate blather annuncements. If you find the real news in it, a press release can be just as exciting as a blog.

As an example, I was once hired to write a press release for a new book on electronic privacy. Instead of the boring, expected “Electronic Privacy Expert Releases New Book,” my headline was “It’s 10 O’Clock–Do You Know Where Your Credit History Is?

I had fun with it, and so did the client–and, I imagine, the media that received it.

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

Can one self-employed guy working from a farmhouse in Massachusetts actually have an impact on the way business is conducted in our modern world?

Some people seem to think the whole Business Ethics Pledge campaign is misguided, or at best tilting at windmills. I can tell you this: It’s gotten incredibly positive feedback. The last project for which I’ve gotten so many thank-yous was saving our local mountain from a very poorly-conceived housing development, a campaign I started that involved several thousand people (I still get thanked for it, five years after the campaign started and four years after we won). That campaign confirmed the idea that one person can indeed make a difference, and that difference is most easily achieved if the lone individual joins with others into an organized force.

I wrote my book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First, to help change the world’s attitude about business. And when I realized that the book by itself wouldn’t reach enough people to create the social change I want, the Pledge was a logical next step.

The Ethics Pledge campaign doesn’t resonate with everyone. But it is deeply meaningful to some sectors of the business world, and at this point I feel an obligation to continue pushing the Pledge and everything it represents, both to attempt to actually accomplish its (admittedly ambitious) goal, and because I feel an obligation to continue offering support to those who’ve placed their trust in this campaign and who have helped spread the word about it.

Since the 1950s, the concept of the “hundredth monkey” has been used to describe a paradigm shift that happens when a certain very small percentage of individuals shift their actions or beliefs–and then, like a wave, the new behavior or attitude spreads rapidly through society. Malcolm Gladwell calls that point of critical mass “the tipping point.” Usually, a movement starts small, builds for some time while nobody’s noticing (often in another culture), and then explodes into the public consciousness. We’ve seen it over and over again, in every sphere of our lives: politics, art & culture, and yes, business:
# The Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott created the tipping point in national consciousness to begin the end of segregation, after 50 years of quiet behind-the-scenes activism in small groups.
# The original Earth Day, in 1970, moved the consciousness of
American society so that we began to pay attention to our society’s effect on the environment. But remember–Rachel Carson’s Silent Springwas published back in 1962; the nuclear test ban movement was even earlier.
# The collapse of European Communism in 1989-90 probably wouldn’t have been possible without Prague Spring and the brave resistance to the Soviet invasion, two decades earlier.
# Business innovations like Kaizen (continuous improvement) were based on the writings of Western business thinkers but pretty much ignored here at first. Bbut they were adopted widely in Japan, and brought back successfully to the US only after the Japanese automakers started cleaning the clocks of the American giants.

Will the Pledge campaign actually succeed? I don’t know. 25,000 each influencing at least 100 may or may not be enough to create the “tipping point”; there’s really no way to find out other than to do it. And if it turns out that this relatively small group is in fact enough to change the business culture, and I had abandoned the quest before reaching that point, how would I live with myself? Just because it’s Quixotic, doesn’t mean it won’t necessarily work. I believe it will work, but I won’t know until the campaign is complete–not for quite a few years, at the current rate of signing. At the least, the campaign will be part of the necessary groundwork so that when the second wave arrives, the consciousness is ready to shift. At best, the first wave is already laying the groundwork, and the pledge will be a catalyst for that rapid change throughout society.

After all, I’ve been involved in “impossible” movements my whole life. When I started in social change, segregation was a very recent memory, the war in Vietnam was raging, and Nixon was calling for 1000 nuclear power plants. Segregation, the Vietnam war, and the (extremely dangerous) nuclear power industry were all brought to a halt by the power of ordinary human beings working together. Some of them had greatness thrust upon them–but they were ordinary people nonetheless.

I’m an ordinary person who happens to have a combination of organizing skills and marketing skills, and I’m willing to tilt at this particular windmill to see if in fact I can move it around on its axis. When the housing development on the mountain was announced, the experts all said “this is terrible, but there’s nothing we can do.” It was actually that powerless response, rather than the project itself, that inspired me to form Save the Mountain–I knew I could prove them wrong. I fully expected that campaign to take five years; we defeated the project completely in just 13 months.

Too few social change agents have a long-term view, IMO. But let’s remember that it took 100 years from the time the Quakers set a goal of ending slavery in this country. They had no mass communication and rather poor organizing skills; with better tools, Lech Walesa toppled the Polish communist government in a matter of months. Ending segregation and the Vietnam war each took about a decade of large-scale public organizing, and quite a bit of small-group stuff in the decades leading up.

Copywriter, marketing consultant, and speaker Shel Horowitz is the author of six books and publisher of five websites, five webzines and three ezines. His two most recent, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First and Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World have both won awards. He’s currently engaged in a campaign to get 25,000 people to sign–and spread–the Business Ethics Pledge:

This article is copyright 2004 by Shel Horowitz. Permission is granted to reprint it in full and unchanged, including the bio and reprint permission, in any Internet, print, or e-mail medium for which no fee is charged. If you wish to use this article and charge for it, or if you’d like to make changes other than minor grammatical tweaks, please contact shel AT principledprofits.com

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