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

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Hint: it has a lot to do with the government’s unwillingness to jump-start this sector the way it has previously jump-started such (polluting) sectors as automobile (not even talking about the bailouts, but about government-subsidized road construction starting more than 100 years ago) and of course, fossil/nuclear fuels.

Read this article from Green America to learn more about the ways governments in places like Germany and China have made renewable energy a priority. And then think about what would happen if the US created a Marshal Plan-style federal program to buy enough solar that it becomes affordable for all—as I have called for many times (see, for example, https://greenandprofitable.com/an-open-letter-to-nancy-pelosi-and-harry-reid/).

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By Posted on Posted in Democracy, Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Politics Tagged with , , , , ,

The amazing thing to me is that 18 to 24 months ago, it looked like if the Republicans put up a candidate who could breathe and talk, the White House would be theirs. We don’t know exactly what combination of factors created Obama’s near-sweep of battleground states and overwhelming Electoral College mandate yesterday. So that allows the luxury of putting forth a list, and people can make their own choices about which ones were significant.

Here’s my list:

  • The American public is smart enough to see that the reason why Barack Obama didn’t make as much progress as we all wanted—despite his own reluctance to make this much of a campaign issue—can be laid directly at the feet of a recalcitrant and hostile Republican Party that consistently refused to negotiate in good faith, and whose stated priority (as expressed by its own Senate leader Mitch McConnell) was  not to rescue the country but to deny Barack Obama a second term.
  • Trust in Mitt Romney is very low, because on most major issues, he’s had at least two and often more contradictory positions. He has developed a well-deserved reputation for saying what he thinks people want to hear at that moment, and conveying the impression that he has no core beliefs or principles—and because his attack ads and debate points were so blatantly based on outright lies.
  • Mitt Romney managed to alienate enough constituencies that he sabotaged his chances: women, people of color, students, people on Social Security (although, surprisingly, he apparently carried much of the elder vote in general), gays and lesbians, even veterans and dog lovers.
  • Mitt Romney’s amazing gifts for putting his foot in his mouth and for presenting himself as completely out of touch with ordinary people didn’t help him. Barack Obama’s progress on the economy despite lack of GOP cooperation helped him strongly—in the Upper Midwest, especially.
  • Citizens United and the infusion of enormous amounts of money by the Koch brothers, Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS SuperPAC, Sheldon Adelson, and others may have actually created a backlash against the influence of money in politics (one that perhaps we can harness to create real and meaningful election reform). Even in Massachusetts, a state that was never in contention, we must have gotten somewhere between 30 to 50 calls and at least that many mailed fliers, to the point where we were totally sick of it. I can only imagine the barrage voters in battleground states were getting.
  • Despite massive reports of voter suppression and fraud (see for example https://www.thenation.com/blog/171079/whats-scope-voter-suppression-election, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/06/2012-elections-polling-places_n_2036228.html, and the truly despicable vote manipulation techniques highlighted at https://www.bradblog.com/?p=9706 (with video of a Pennsylvania touchscreen recording Barack Obama votes as Mitt Romney votes)—margins of victory were wide enough to prevent another election theft. However, this is a problem waiting to happen again, and a fix has been overdue since at least the aftermath of the 2000 election. I support electronic voting machines that use paper ballots, which can be scanned instantly for a preliminary tally, but then get safeguarded through proper chain-of-custody procedures and hand-counted over the next few days if there’s any question at all about the preliminary tabulation’s accuracy. Machines that do not keep a paper trail should be BANNED. end of story.
  • Polls can be wrong. Margins of victory were not even all that close in states like Pennsylvania and even Paul Ryan’s state of Wisconsin. Yes, Florida, Ohio, and Virgina, among others, were quite close—but overall, Barack Obama’s victory in the so-called swing states was generally decisive, with spreads in excess of five points.
  • Barack Obama was able to pull out his core constituencies to show up on voting day, even though these include groups that historically have had low voter turnouts: youth (pretty much written off by the pundits ahead of the election), people of color, women’s rights advocates, LGBT people and their supporters).
  • The US is getting more socially liberal: ballot initiatives supporting such causes as gay marriage and not just medical marijuana but even recreational marijuana passed.
  • The day of the ultra-right is drawing to a close. Even Missouri, which went for Romney, returned Claire McCaskill to the Senate, repelling a challenge by Todd “Legitimate Rape” Aiken. While the party has shifted so far to the right that I heard one commentator refer to Utah Senator Orrin Hatch as part of the party’s moderate wing, real moderates have nowhere to go in the Republican Party right now, so they vote Democrat. My personal belief is that if Mitt Romney had taken a consistent moderate platform—as he did when he was governor here in Massachusetts—throughout the primaries, he would have easily won the primary contest as all the other (extremist) candidates competed for the extremist vote, then gone on to win the presidency. I am glad he chose instead the “Etch-A-Sketch” approach. Trying to be first ultra-rightist then moderate was a failed strategy from the beginning, in an age of instant world-wide communication; it might have worked if there were still such a thing as private conversations from candidates to voters.
  • People saw this race as important enough not to risk anything on third-party candidates. The top six third-party candidates candidates together only got about 1.43 percent of the vote (fewer than 1.7 million votes out of a total of 116.8 million votes cast)—with just over a million of those going to Liberatrian Gary Johnson, bringing him 1 percent, and Green candidate Jill Stein (whose votes—including mine—I’m guessing were nearly entirely in non-swing states) got 0.3 percent, a whisker under 400,000.  votes. None of the others, not even comedienne Roseanne Barr, got even one-tenth of one percent. (all stats from https://www.google.com/elections/ed/us/results with “display all candidates” enabled)
  • Other than during the first debate, Barack Obama outmarketed Mitt Romney, by presenting a better and more believable picture of the next four years to average Americans, and by at least making some sideways attempts to take credit for some of the substantial list he actually accomplished in his first term—and inspiring, once again, a horde of volunteers to get involved. While he was effective in this only compared to Mitt Romney (remember the 47 percent?), Barack Obama’s modest effort outshone Mitt Romney’s pathetic self-aggrandizing.
  • With galvanizing speeches by Michelle Obama and Bill Clinton, the Democratic Convention gave Barack Obama a significant lift that he never really lost.

There are other factors too, but I’ll stop there.

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By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Activism, General Commentary, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , ,

Guest Post by Julie  Gabrielli

It seems we are experts at knowing what’s wrong in the world – whether global problems like climate change and poverty, national concerns like the economy and health care, neighborhood issues like the lady down the street whose dogs never stop barking. Even within our own families, we tend to focus on what’s not working.

What happens when we turn and face in another direction? Not to actively ignore or deny those very real problems. But to focus instead on what we want. Do we ever even ask this question of ourselves or others: what sort of world do we want to live in?

Even then, the answers may come back framed in negatives, such as “I want fewer wars” or “to eliminate racism.” The brilliant Hildy Gottlieb first opened my eyes to this habit.

I tested this out one recent weekend at our neighborhood shopping area, taking video footage of everyday people addressing these big issues. People were quick to cite the problems: education, the economy, global warming, racism, negativity, stereotyping, war. When asked to say what they want, if they could wave a magic wand and fix everything, they were less confident, sometimes even embarrassed. As if talking that way is not an adult activity.

The danger of dwelling on what’s wrong is that we can become convinced that there’s no hope for us. We’re just a doomed species and blight on the planet. I know many avid and dedicated environmental activists who harbor this secret belief deep within their hearts: that the planet will be better off without us.

And why wouldn’t we reach this conclusion, when all we read about and see around us are the consequences of our bad behavior? The mortgage crisis, countries in the Euro zone so deep in debt they threaten to take the whole thing down with them, giant corporations cutting down the boreal forest in Canada to get at the dirtiest, most carbon-intense oil on the planet and then lobbying our government to build a pipeline to cart it to the Gulf of Mexico. Fifty million nonelderly Americans (18.9%) are without health insurance or access to good health care.

This stuff is senseless. Meaning, try as we might, we can’t make sense of it. I wonder if it’s because, as Einstein famously observed, we cannot solve our problems using the same thinking that created them. So why not try a different way? What happens when we focus instead on what we want, instead of what we don’t want? Try it. You may be surprised at what happens.

Why does this matter? you may be wondering. It turns out that we create the future every moment of every day. A positive vision of a future that we want is the galvanizing force that animates the world-changing work of all the people who will be in the film, “I Want America to Thrive.” Even the title speaks to a positive vision. Why not? It’s a surer way to transcending, rather than merely solving, our problems.


Eco-architect Julie Gabrielli has been at the forefront of the sustainability movement in Maryland for over 15 years. She is an artist and writer, always searching for the most effective medium to wake people up to the beauty of our world. To learn more and stay in touch, Like this film on Facebook. 

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

Some smart people in Belgium figured out that the top of an exposed-to-the-sky rail tunnel is the perfect place to put a massive solar array. This one installation generates 3300 megawatt-hours of electricity per year, enough to power almost 1,000 homes while eliminating 2,400 tons per year of  CO2 emissions.

Other people are being similarly creative with highways, such as this solar-powered highway in Oregon.

As I’ve said for years, we have the technology we need to solve our energy/carbon problems. All we need is the political will.

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By Posted on Posted in Advertising, Business Ethics, Demographics/Psychographics, language, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, media-general Tagged with , , , , ,

(continued from yesterday)

Scary warnings and official-looking documents from Publishers Clearing House
Scary warnings and official-looking documents from Publishers Clearing House
  • Publishers Clearing House still believes in direct mail that scares people into action. The envelope and packet are full of legal-looking documents, dire warnings in big bold print, etc.
  • The “involvement devices”—labels to pull off and attach, gold-covered panels to scratch off, very complicated instructions to follow exactly—are variations on the same stuff I remember from Publishers Clearing House mailers in the 1970s and 1980s. And they were old and tired even back then.
  • Publishers Clearing House apparently never got the memo on credibility in marketing. Instead of using real credibility builders such as testimonials, they fill the mailing with official-looking layouts, fake stickers with bar codes, and language on the return form with language like “I am claiming eligibility…” Oh yes, and they’re still using celebrities, as they used the late Ed McMahon for many years (in fact, I first heard of Ed McMahon through PCH sweepstakes, and had to find out later that he was a TV star). Now, it’s Brian Williams.

Back in 2000, the PCH sweepstakes mailings inspired this quote in the Direct Mail section of my earlier book, Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World:

Forget about glitzy, complicated sweepstakes offers, with seemingly dozens of different-sized papers, foils, stickers, and scratch-off cards; your production cost will be enormous before you even start. Besides, they cost you tons of money mailing to and following up on false prospects.

A simple, straightforward approach is far better. Use ordinary paper sizes and stocks, and win the prospect over through the strength of your offer—not gimmicks or packaging. You’ll stay within your budget, and target serious prospects, not a bunch of chiselers hoping for a million dollars from you, Ed McMahon, or the tooth fairy.

That was true when I wrote Grassroots Marketing, and even more true now.

PCH sweepstakes-related inserts vs. ad delivery from other companies
Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes-related inserts vs. ad delivery from other companies
  • Of the 44 pieces of paper in the envelope, only 9-1/2 were actually related to the PCH sweepstakes and offer. The others, including the back of one of the Publishers Clearing House pages, were ads from other companies. Given that so much magazine content is available online, for free, that a whole generation will barely pick up a paper magazine any more, and that numerous other channels provide the information we used to get from general-interest magazines, it makes sense that Publishers Clearing House realized its business model had to change. Now they’re apparently in the business of delivering cheesy offers from other merchants—what could have been a good use of the partnership strategy I advocate, if the offer quality and targeting hadn’t been so pathetic.
  • Geotargeting has become more sophisticated. One of the slips announces “SHEL HOROWITZ, THE SEARCH FOR A MAJOR PRIZE WINNER IN THE SPRINGFIELD-HOLYOKE TV AREA INCLUDES YOUR 01035 NEIGHBORHOOD!… There will DEFINITELY be a   Major Prize Winner of $1,000.00 from Your Local TV Area, which includes your Zip Code!” (capitalization, punctuation, and underlining are exactly as they were in the original). So Publishers Clearing House is now matching zip codes against media markets, and guaranteeing at least one winner—note the SMALL dollar amount—in my media market (which contains dozens of zip codes).
  • Technology isn’t perfect. My envelope contained two copies of a several-page ad bundle (one of several in the mailing)—and DID NOT contain the actual form to select magazines! Even if I’d wanted to subscribe, I couldn’t do so from this mailing.

I may get an onslaught of comments pointing out that Publishers Clearing House’s methods are obviously working, or they wouldn’t keep at it after all these decades. Of course they work! I freely grant that.

But to what effect? What’s the real benefit of developing a large list of purely transactional contacts who didn’t necessarily even buy—they entered a chance to win big bucks for free. Do these people have any loyalty? Has PCH done any segmentation other than geographic? Can they market to these people as individuals in any meaningful way?

The negative answer is obvious in the kinds of junk offers crammed into the rest of the PCH sweepstakes envelope: tchatchkes and trinkets and home repair products of dubious value—the sort of stuff that gets sold on late-night TV ads over obscure cable channels. It’s these clueless merchants that I actually feel sorry for.

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By Posted on Posted in Advertising, Business Ethics, Copywriting, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies Tagged with , , , ,

Thanks, I’m guessing, to the no-junk-mail opt-out list, it had been quite a few years since I’d heard from Publishers Clearing House.

Front of the envelope from Publishers Clearing House

Front of the envelope from Publishers Clearing House

Yup—Publishers Clearing House. The infamous magazine subscription discounter that used to clutter up my mailbox with screamy hype implying very strongly that I’d won some enormous fortune, if only I followed all the (seemed like) 39 steps to claim it.

The same Publishers Clearing House that once sent a mailer to Dance Spree, a community arts group, boldly announcing, “D. Spree, You May Already Have Won a Million Dollars” in a mailmerge whose dot matrix fonts didn’t match the rest of the offset-printed letter.

On a whim, I decided to open the envelope—not with any intention of entering the latest Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes, but to see if the business world’s shift over the last dozen years or so in the direction of switching off the hype in favor of softer and more ethical marketing approaches—a shift that I like to think I had at least something to do with—had made any impact on Publishers Clearing House, King of the Old-Style Hype.

The quick answer is no. What I received was a smoother, more sophisticated version of the same junk that Publishers Clearing House has been sending for decades.

Here’s some of what I noticed.

  • Very high environmental footprint. Not only did the fat envelope contain 42 separate pieces of paper, but several of them are on shiny paper stock that may not have come from trees, contain decals, etc. In other words, the packet will be difficult to recycle.
  • Improvements in printing technology are noticeable. The customized portions were done on a very high-quality digital printer that looks almost as good as offset. No more hideous dot-matrix mailmerge—except that on the mailing address “label” (you’ll understand the quote marks in a moment), there’s some all-caps text meant to simulate a hand-typed look, reading “THIS IS THE BULLETIN WE ALERTED YOU TO LOOK FOR”
Rear of the envelope from Publishers Clearing House
Rear of the envelope from Publishers Clearing House

 

  • Disguises and subterfuge. If you give it a casual look, you might think the envelope had three added-on labels (one of them crooked and another upside down), two checkmarks, a note, and a circle in pen, the aforementioned hand-typed-look message, and both black and red rubber stamp imprints. But actually, as far as I can tell, all the various items on the envelope designed to create a feeling that a human being prepared it individually are actually printed on. You’ll also see phrases scattered throughout the mailing, like “prize patrol,” once again designed to convey the impression that a human being is out there, trying to match you up with your winnings. Most people won’t be looking so carefully, of course—but we are not stupid, and I’m betting only a very tiny percentage will think any part of this is actually hand-prepared.

To be continued tomorrow (including a deeper look at the psychology they’re using, and why I discount it).

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By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Green Business, Green Marketing, Technology Tagged with ,

American Airlines recently did a great pilot program (no pun intended) to drastically improve the green profile of its 737. I found out about this because the company was proud enough that it put a link in the article in its e-blast to all American Airlines frequent-flyer program members.

In the article, you can read about seven different major initiatives for greener commercial airplanes incorporated into its “ecoDemonstrator” customized plane, six of which demonstrate clear cost savings through increased airplane fuel economy as well or lower maintenance costs. The seventh, switching to vegetable fuel from cooking oil, has major benefits in carbon footprint, waste reduction, and reducing the need for offshore oil drilling and other often-destructive extractive technologies.

The plane had a special paint job, so passengers were aware. And American Airlines acknowledges that both the company and airplane builder Boeing face pressure from consumers and other stakeholders to be more eco-friendly.

And the tests were a huge success. Which makes the closing statement in the article deeply puzzling (note: this is a direct quote, grammar errors and all, except that for SEO purposes, I changed “American” to “American Airlines”):

Prior to deliver to [American Airlines] for regular use, all test equipment was removed and the plane was returns to our normal configuration. And although it will look like an ordinary plane on the outside and inside, we’ll always know that we were the first commercial airline to help test these technologies.

Why? If the program is such a success, saving American Airlines money while increasing its “enviromarketability quotient”—making itself much more attractive to customers trying to chose a commercial airline—why on earth (or in the sky!) would they pull all the cool stuff out? I just don’t understand.

Tomorrow, when the work week starts, American Airlines will receive a Twitter invitation to comment on this blog, and explain their reasons. (I’ve already scheduled the Tweet).

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, People Helping People, Politics Tagged with , , , ,

This year’s Blog Action Day theme is “The Power of We” (hashtags #BAD12 and #powerofwe)—and I can think of no better example than the powerful story of Save the Mountain, a group I founded in 1999 to protect the threatened Mount Holyoke Range that runs behind my house in Hadley, Massachusetts.

Here’s how I tell the story in my eighth book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green (it’s in third-person because I have a co-author):

In November 1999, a developer announced a plan to desecrate ridgetop land abutting a state park by building 40 trophy homes two miles from Shel’s house. The original newspaper article interviewed several local conservationists who expressed variations on “Oh, this is terrible, but there’s nothing we can do.”

But Shel refused to accept that. Within four days, he had drawn up a petition, posted a Web page, called a meeting for two weeks later, and sent out press releases and fliers about the formation of Save the Mountain.

Note that all of these actions are marketing actions. He could have called a meeting and not told the public, and then a few friends would have shown up and realized that they couldn’t do very much. But by harnessing the power of the press, the Internet, and the photocopier, and crafting a message that would resonate with his neighbors–that not only was this terrible, but that there was something we could do–he was able to spark something that truly had an impact.

Shel and his wife, Dina Friedman, expected 20 or so people to come to the first meeting; they had over 70. From that day until December 2000, the group fought the project on every conceivable level: technical issues like hydrology, rare species, and slope of the road…organizing and marketing components including a petition drive (over 3000 signed), turnout of up to 450 at various public hearings, lawn signs, tabling, a big press campaign with over 70 articles…working with the state Department of Environmental Management to investigate options for saving the land…

Literally hundreds of people got involved with some degree of active participation. Many, many people brought widely varying expertise to the movement, far more than any of them could have had on their own.

By using his own skills in marketing and organizing, Shel was able to convert the outrage and despair and shock that were felt throughout a three-county area when this project was announced into a powerful–and highly visible–public force. As a group, STM had about 35 core activists, all working on many levels, both public and private. The persuasion in this case was not about the desirability of stopping the project; they had near-consensus on that, community-wide. Rather, it focused on the ability of a committed group of people to make a difference even when the experts said it was impossible.

Within two months, STM had established itself firmly in the public eye–and had actually shifted the discourse from “There’s nothing you can do” to “Which strategies will be most effective?” Collectively, the group used its powers of persuasion, and its skills at reaching the public with this message, to change the project from inevitable to impossible. The land was permanently preserved in just 13 months–four years ahead of Shel’s original five-year estimate for victory.

Excerpted, with permission, from Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green: Winning Strategies to Improve Your Profits and Your Planet by Jay Conrad Levinson and Shel Horowitz (John Wiley & Sons). To get your own copy from your favorite bookseller or an autographed copy dfrectly form me, (including $2000 worth of bonuses), please visit https://www.guerrillamarketinggoesgreen.com and scroll to the bottom.

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By Posted on Posted in Uncategorized

What a contrast! Two articulate, well-informed men talking about SUBSTANCE! ISSUES! People speculated ahead that the Biden-Ryan debate might be “too wonky” for average people–but I think ordinary folks are smarter than the pundits give them credit for.

Both men at the top of the ticket–the lying bully with nothing to say, and the sleepwalker–could learn from their running mates.

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By Posted on Posted in language, media-general, Politics, propaganda, Uncategorized Tagged with , , , ,

Dear Mitt Romney:

A few months ago, we heard that you participated in beating up a gay kid when you were a high school student. Watching you at the debate tonight, I can easily believe that you were a high school bully. You’re still a bully!

Do you think you’re going to score points by jumping in repeatedly when it wasn’t your turn, monopolizing the time to make the same three or four tired points over and over again instead of following the rules of the debate? Do you think the rules don’t apply to the 1%? Just because president Obama was too polite and Jim Lehrer too ineffectual to stop you from grabbing far more than your share does not mean it sits well with those of us who were paying attention.

And neither does your latest round of flip-flopping–or should I call it by its more accurate name: hypocrisy? How, all of a sudden, are we supposed to believe that you’re a great friend of the middle class, that you will not cut taxes for the wealthy, and that you’re happy about government regulation? That’s not what you said all the way through the primary debates. It’s not what you said in a campaign stop when you told that poor shnook, “Corporations are people, my friend.” And it’s not what you said when you dismissed 47 percent of the American people, at a private fundraiser when you thought the world wasn’t listening.

And then there are the lies: You know the $716 billion claim is nonsense. And where did you get the absurd statement that half of the green energy companies the government invested in have failed? If I counted right, this ABC news story cites eight separate false statements from Mitt Romney, and they didn’t even pick up on the energy gaffe. In fact, there’s a spate of Twitter activity using the hashtag #MittLies.

Yet again, the question must be asked, which is the real Mitt Romney? And can somebody please give Jim Lehrer the hook before the next debate and put in a moderator who can set limits on this out-of-control man?

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