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 Activism, Corporate Social Responsibility, Energy & Sustainability, Green Marketing, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, media-general, Politics, propaganda, Protests and Crackdowns, Transparency vs. Secrecy Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

My friend Tad Hargrave wrote a great post about magnetic marketing, in which he claimed:

There are only three types of potential clients you will ever experience: responsive, neutral and unresponsive.

  • Responsive people will come across your work and light up. They’ll get excited and want to sign up and hire you after learning a little bit about you. They’ll be curious, want to know more and ask you a lot of questions. These people are a ‘yes’ to what you’re up to in your business.
  • Neutral people will listen to what you have to say but they won’t react much. They’ll sit there in your workshop politely and take it in. But they won’t sign up for much. They may be cordial and listen respectfully but they for sure won’t seem ‘into it’ like the responsive people do. These people are a ‘maybe’ to what you’re up to in your business.

  • Unresponsive people will actively pull away, show disinterest, might even be rude. These people are a ‘no’ to what you’re up to in your business.

I think there’s a big difference between those who are unresponsive and those who respond with hostility. So I posted this comment:

Let me “bend the magnet” a bit more and take your analogy to its logical fourth category: those who are actively opposed to what you’re doing. You and I as marketers in the green/socially conscious/cool and groovy/progressive activist space will not only attract the cool and groovy people–we’ll repel the Hummer-driving, cigar-smoking, GMO-loving executive at Monsanto or the local nuclear power plant to the point where they might actually speak out against us–just as WE have spoken out against THEIR actions.

And I’m fine with that. Quite frankly, they are a way to gain the attention of those people in in the uninvolved category, who may be within their orbit but have never thought about these issues. They’re a doorway into media coverage, and give us legitimacy in the eyes of reporters (and their readers) because these big important corporations are actually acknowledging and discussing out issues. And every once in a while, lightning actually strikes and some of them start examining the issues and taking action on our side of the fence (as Walmart has—for its own profit-driven reasons—on sustainability, for instance).

I think of my experience as one of 1414 Clamshell Alliance members arrested on the construction site of the Seabrook, NH nuclear power plant, trying to keep the plant from being built, back in 1977. New Hampshire’s governor at the time, Meldrim Thomson, and William Loeb, publisher of the largest newspaper in the state, the Manchester Union-Leader, called us “the Clamshell terrorists.”

Yet not only had we all pledged nonviolence, we had all actually undergone training in nonviolent protest and joined small, accountable, affinity groups (which continued to function after our arrest); it was a precondition for participation.

Governor Thomson kept the Clamshell prisoners incarcerated in National Guard armories around the state for about two weeks. When we emerged, we found we’d:

  • Birthed a national safe-energy movement based in nonviolent civil disobedience
  • Rapidly and throughly raised consciousness about nuclear power plant safety (and the lack thereof)
  • Created a climate where, unlike previous accidents that had gotten little or no coverage, the Three Mile Island meltdown in 1979 (and later catastrophic failures at Chernobyl and Fukushima) became front-page news.

Seabrook did go online, so we failed in our immediate goal. BUT in an era where former President Richard Nixon had called for 1000 nuclear power plants in the US, Seabrook was the last nuclear power plant to go on line in the US other than Shoreham, NY, which was shut down after preliminary low-power testing and never supplied the electrical grid. I believe the opposition of Thomson and Loeb to our movement helped make it a mass movement, just as the overreaction against civil rights and anti-Vietnam War protestors helped those movements gain strength.

What do you think—do we need our enemies as much as our friends? Can we “ju-jitsu” their hostility into a benefit for our cause? Do you have a great example, either form your own work or something you’ve heard about somewhere? Please leave your comment below.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Business-general, Copywriting, language

Guest post by John Forde

[Note from Shel: I agree with Jack on this. In my 30+ years in business, I’ve been asked to write many complaint letters—and my track record in getting results for my clients and for myself is pretty darn high. I’ve been a subscriber to his newsletter for many years. If you’re a copywriter, I suggest you subscribe as well. He’s both entertaining and useful. Signup info follows his post.]

There was something else that got me thinking about today’s topic. I saw a post over on Copyblogger.com (an amazing site, by the way) about using our copywriting skills to get better customer service.

Their tip focused on help tickets for tech services. But it’s a great insight and one I’ve tapped myself, more than a few times. In fact, I’m a little famous for getting results, among friends and family — enough that I’ve been asked to write “complaint” letters for others.

Not only does a good customer service get problems fixed, it can lead to even more perks. And, I find, all you have to do is follow a simple formula. For instance, I don’t really “complain” in complaint letters. Nor do I get mad or use all-caps or threaten lawsuits or the like. That’s almost always a waste of time.

Instead, I start out with a quick tale of praise and expectation. After all, I say, I bought with the belief that this was the best there was. Almost always, by the way, this is true. Sometimes, I share a little story about why we were excited to make the purchase, too — a birthday, a special trip, to give as a well-deserved gift, and so on.

I’m thinking here, for instance, about a letter I once wrote to Canon, when a video camera failed. It wasn’t just a camera to me. I bought the thing to take video of our son, in his first few days. But the lens jammed so we missed it. From there, I let the seller know that I’m more let down and disappointed than I am angry. I trusted the provider with something important. I believed. And they didn’t deliver. Surely, I allow at this point, it was a one-time mistake… unintentional… and something they could easily fix. Then I tell them how I’d like to see that happen.

In the close, I repeat how much I’m sure they meant to do better… and remind them once again how to go about fixing things, including how to reach me with their solution. I’m not someone to take advantage, but when things have gone wrong, this has almost always worked. For instance, with the Canon camera, I got several personal calls from the head of technical support (yes, he called me) with apologies and attempts at a fix. When we couldn’t get it to work, he gave me an address to send it in. Days later, I got cc-d on a personal email — in Japanese — from the President of Canon, written to his brother in New York, asking him to personally oversee the repair. I kid you not.

I’ve also had the Gap send me $200 in gift certificates and vouchers for four pairs of free pants (this was in the early ’90s) after I bought a defective pair of jeans… We’ve gotten free flight vouchers from two different airlines and courtesy upgrades… Apple has asked me to be on their confidential, early-release program for beta versions of their software… and the list goes on.

Never, ever do I make up a problem where there isn’t one… or pretend it had an impact it didn’t… but when something does go wrong, you’d better believe that copywriting can help solve it.

 

Sign up for Jack’s newsletter, and get $78 worth of gifts, at https://copywritersroundtable.com

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Business-general, Energy & Sustainability Tagged with , , ,

Utilities are beginning to push back on solar, according to the New York Times article, “On Rooftops, a Rival for Utilities.” They claim costs to non-solar users will go up as the fixed costs of the distribution grid are spread over progressively fewer customers. And they want to curb “net metering,” in which solar homeowners get to sell power back to the company at a decent price.

Well, they’ve had 40 years to figure out that solar is coming—and that the market will enjoy the idea of a power source that doesn’t have to be purchased over and over again, and isn’t tied to the sharply rising prices of oil, coal, gas (currently enjoying lower prices), or nuclear with its high capital costs, abysmal safety record, and potential for catastrophic accident.

Yet many utilities actively promote solar—because it reduces the demand for new powerplants, which are not only extremely expensive to build, but also face massive citizen opposition and extensive regulation. Plus, distributed solar—generating the power at the point of use—eliminates the huge friction losses of transmitting power over vast distances. Transmission losses are one of the utility industry’s dirty little secrets, and one of the reasons why I’m not a huge fan of massive solar or wind farms. It is absurd to me that we squander 7 percent of the energy we generate, just moving it around.

I suspect that most solar construction is on-grid, where the solar system supplies power to the utility when it’s sunny, and draws power back out at night or during extended cloudy periods. The utility grid serves as a giant battery.

Utilities need to reinvent their business model, which is based on a percentage return of capital investment (a rather high return, at that). Surely there are other ways to maintain a power grid.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Activism, Energy & Sustainability Tagged with , , ,

Environmental groups have been saying for years that fracking for natural gas or oil puts our water supplies at risk. Yesterday, the Washington Post quoted an internal memo from an unnamed employee, corroborating that the methane gas showing up in the water in Dimock, Pennsylvania is fracking-related:

The previously unreleased document from an employee at the Environmental Protection Agency’s regional office found that drilling or fracking, in which water, sand and chemicals are shot underground to free trapped gas, caused methane to leak into domestic water wells in Dimock, Pa. The findings contradict Cabot Oil and Gas Corp., which drilled in the town and said the explosive methane gas was naturally occurring.

Dimock’s evil, explosive water is featured in the movie, “Gasland.”

Future generations might forgive us for squandering our oil and gas, especially once we have moved, planet-wide, away from dirty fossil-fuel and nuclear energy sources. But they will NOT forgive us for squandering and polluting our precious water.

It is time for us to say, “enough.”

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability Tagged with

An op-ed in today’s New York Times, “Gangplank to a Warm Future,” is important to read not only because of its compelling environmental arguments against natural gas fracking, but also because of who is writing it: Cornell professor Anthony R. Ingraffea is one of the scientists who helped develop the fracking industry.

Let’s hope that Professor Ingraffea will use his considerable intelligence now to help develop cleaner, safer alternatives.

Read the article!

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Advertising, Business-general, Copywriting, Entrepreneurship, Frugality/Frugal Fun, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies Tagged with , , , , ,

Some things should always be left to professionals. You don’t ever want to trust me to do any carpentry for you…or even have me paint a room. and the older I get, the more I move from a D-I-Y (do-it-yourselfer) to a have-it-done.

Writing your own press release is something most people should not tackle. Here’s a comment I just made on a self-publishing discussion list in response to an advocate of D-I-Y press releases:

When I write a press release for a client, I spend significant time with the book. Sometimes I read the whole thing. Sometimes I read sections I’ve asked the author to flag, plus the beginning, end, and some random sections. Plus a synopsis, for fiction, and a thorough look at the TOC and Index for nonfiction. And always I read the author questionnaire I send, and the supporting materials I always request (such as press coverage of the author)…I read enough to thoroughly immerse myself in the project. And my press releases for clients have been picked up by the New York Times, among many other places.

Yes, the author has far more subject knowledge than I do. But *I* have the expertise in crafting a message that the media, and the public, will find exciting. Most authors don’t, and believe me, I’ve seen their attempts.

One of the *problems* is the formulaic approach F___ recommends. Those formulas yield terrible press releases straight out of the 1970s. I don’t follow the formulas. I write press releases with the idea that the reader says “Wow! I want more of this.” Writing a standard reverse-pyramid 5Ws press release (who, what, where, when, why)–the most common formula–doesn’t accomplish that.

My favorite press release out of the probably thousands I’ve written was for a book on electronic privacy. If I followed the 5Ws formula, my release would have had a headline like “Electronic Privacy Expert Releases New Book.” How fast is the reporter going to hit delete on a big-snore headline like that? My headline was “It’s 10 O’Clock. Do You Know Where Your Credit History Is?” Following a lead about the credit history “vacationing” in databanks of big corporations, the book finally showed up in the third paragraph.

I refer to this type of press release as “the-story-behind-the-story,” and other than my own books, I don’t know a lot of books that teach how to do this… My book, Grassroots Marketing for Authors and Publishers, does give that context, and gives a lot of book-specific examples, including a wildly successful press release by listmate Ruth Houston that violates all the rules–proving that F___ is right that *some* authors can do their own press releases very effectively.

Some can do their own layout, too. I have discovered after laying out two books in my early publishing years, that I’m someone who should not ever lay out my own book. And most authors should not ever write their own press release.

In an earlier post in the same discussion, responding to a post that called professional publicity services a waste of money, I describe the advantages of a third alternative between do-it-yourself and pricy full-service publicists:

R___’s point is well-taken. With any expenditure, you want to be sure the results justify the expense.

And she’s right that most book publicists who are any good are frightfully expensive. Typically, you can expect to pay between $2000-$10,000 a month, with a 6-month commitment required. It takes a lot of sales to justify a $12-60K expenditure.

However, it’s not an either-or. There is a third alternative between doing it all yourself and spending $60K on a professional full-service publicist.

That alternative is hiring a la carte: use a professional writer to create a get-noticed media release that is likely to wildly outperform anything you do on your own, and then either hire one of the publicists who is willing to work a la carte and just do the distribution/follow-up, or use a wire service, or do it yourself with a list compiled by a media list specialist (such as our own Paul Krupin of Direct Contact PR).

As an example, I charge $325 to write but not distribute a news release on a book. I refer out to others for the other pieces for a few hundred more, and the total cost is under $1K. So if you did, say, six releases in a year, you’d still pay less than for one month of a high-end publicist.

Oh, and regarding the likelihood of better results: I had one client do a comparison test. He sent my release to half his media list, and one he’d written to the other half. He became a fan and a steady customer when mine got 6 times as many media responses.

One further lesson: these two posts demonstrate examples of promoting my own services on a discussion group while not making enemies—because the self-promotion is in the context of—and directly relevant to—a discussion already underway.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Demographics/Psychographics, General Commentary, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, poverty Tagged with , , , , ,

I’ve always enjoyed Bruce Springsteen’s work: his hard-driving melodies, brilliant working-class lyrics, sense of justice, and enormous passion.

And last night, seeing the amazing movie “Springsteen & I,” I’ll add—he has a huge heart. 40+ years into his career, he clearly remembers his roots, and he’s willing to get down with ordinary folks. He has not let stardom go to his head.

And it was really nice to see a celebrity musician movie that was not all about a slow decline due to drugs and/or alcohol. This movie, much of it shot by amateurs—fans giving tribute to The Boss and remembering special moments or personal encounters—is a tribute not only to the passion his fans have for him, but also for the passion he has for his fans. He comes across as very human, very likable, and a hell of a performer. And it says a lot about his character that several of the musicians in the concert footage from the 1970s are still in his band.

Watching this working-class hero in action, I remembered the 1984 attempt by President Ronald Reagan and columnist George Will to co-opt Springsteen for the right wing, and Springsteen would have none of it. The big flag on the cover of “Born in the USA” fooled them.

The song, of course, is a Vietnam veteran’s lament about his bleak economic prospects in the age of Reagan—with this lyric, among others:

Come back home to the refinery
Hiring man says “Son if it was up to me”

Click here for full lyrics to “Born in the USA”, along with a nice write-up of the kerfluffle.

Of course, the marketer in me is always alert when I interact with popular culture. And wearing that hat, let me note that yes, Bruce is a man of the people, but he’s also a very smart marketer. Springsteen has fully documented his own career, making it easy for the producers of this movie to find footage of the exact moment a fan is talking about—whether inviting up a show-hogging Elvis impersonator or jamming on the street with a local busker.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Demographics/Psychographics, Energy & Sustainability, Entrepreneurship, Green Business, People Helping People Tagged with , , , , ,

A friend sent me a link to a very interesting article, “A Locavore’s Dilemma: On the Fantasy of Urban Farming” by Will Boisvert

According to Mr. Boisvert (whose name, ironically, translates as “green woods”), we would all do more for the planet to buy big-agro chemiculture food from thousands of miles away than to develop food sources in or close to urban areas.

I’ve heard this argument before. And I do think it’s important to do our research and know the numbers; it’s important to make a business case for local food sustainability, whether urban or rural.

But I’d say Mr. Boisvert totally misses the point.

He says the most sustainable thing we can do in NYC is build more housing, to avoid further stress on the exurbs and suburbs, which are very UNsustainable. But I don’t see why it has to be housing vs. food. Build that 600-person apartment building he wants, and THEN use add urban agriculture and solar arrays to harness the roof for food and energy.

And his attack on COmmunity Supported Agriculture farms (CSAs) is just bizarre. I don’t think our annual membership fee for the organic CSA we belong to here in Massachusetts would even cover the same amount of factory food at our local supermarket, and it’s far cheaper than buying the nonindustrial stuff at Whole Foods, a pricy organic grocery, or the farmers markets.

We do need to look at the economics/carbon impact of urban agriculture and the urban food movement, and often, they’re not pretty. But no uglier than mass-scale farming.

He writes:

Hauling each spud from upstate thus requires as much fuel as moving it 585 miles by corporate semi or 2,340 miles by rail. I don’t know the numbers, but I think truck is a lot more common than rail.

If that’s true, then even with the much-reduced efficiency per mile, the number of miles is so much fewer that local food, especialy urban agriculture, comes out way ahead. If the potatoes go 127 miles at 28 ton-miles/gallon vs. 2500 miles from Arizona at 120 tm/g, the Catskills come out way ahead: 4.5 gallons vs. 20.8 for the far-shipped chemiculture ones. And his analysis doesn’t recognize that the efficiencies of big trucking disappear rapidly when that huge truck is running 4 mph stop-and-go in NYC traffic, while those of urban farming increase.

As he notes, a neighborhood urban farm might use one gallon to transport to multiple sites across the city, in a small van. And if we’re really talking hyperlocal, your neighborhood rooftop or small-lot urban farm could efficiently deliver in a five-mile radius with a bicycle (more efficient in time as well as fuel, in NYC’s traffic-choked streets)—which can offset the fuel costs of hauling the soil up to the roof by crane. Equipped with a handlebar box, a rear rack, and maybe even a small trailer, bicycles can carry quite a bit. Even back in the 1960s when I was a kid in the Bronx, a lot of local merchants offered bicycle delivery (using massive one-speed bikes with huge handlebar boxes).

Even if it’s trucked in a van, the fuel cost of a three-block delivery is pretty close to zero.

And unlike Mr. Boisvert, I don’t discount the many other benefits. Better quality food, community-building, job skills training for those interns and volunteers, and an understanding of the food cycle. My own first garden was in Brooklyn, in fact, and the thrill of growing my own food in my mini-urban farm definitely helped push me to the locavore mindset. I discovered a new crop: radish seed cones; the young ones are terrific in salads. And that was also around the time that I started advocating using flat roofs as food and energy resources.

I do have some concerns, and would like to see research, on how urban agriculture can avoid pollution-borne contamination of the food. But he doesn’t talk about that.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Politics, Protests and Crackdowns, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , ,

With the recent dustup over the sovereignty and airspace route of Bolivian President Evo Morales’ airplane, I found myself wishing that Mario Benedetti were still alive to write a poem about it.

Among Latin America’s most famous 20th-century poets, Benedetti was a South American patriot from Uruguay—that is, an enemy of the repressive government that ruled the country for decades—and a great one for skewering the halls of power, especially when they were allied with reactionary governments. He would no doubt have had some trenchant commentary on the US and its allies, and the interference they put up during Morales’ journey home from Moscow, as he did about his own difficulties, as a known friend to Castro’s Cuba, in getting a visa to speaking the US.

I was introduced to his work in a meaningful way by the very accessible translations of Benedetti by my friend and client Louise B. Popkin, of Arlington, Mass. She was a personal friend of Benedetti and worked closely with him to translate a large selection of Benedetti’s poetry, available in a critically acclaimed bilingual edition, Witness: The Selected Poems of Mario Benedetti.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail