Category: Demographics/Psychographics

By Posted on Posted in Demographics/Psychographics, General Commentary, language

A friend sent this article about brain behavior, irrationality vs. rationality, why we often go against our actual interests, the Left-Right split, and how we look at facts in ways that reinforce our existing beliefs.

He asked for feedback, and this is what I wrote:

It has often been a question in my mind how people can get swept up in mass irrationality, why they so often act against their own interest, and how to shift that.
I don’t pretend to have the answer, but one piece of the puzzle is to meet people where they are, agree on the areas where you have commonality, and then nudge the conversation forward a step at a time–while external forces are pushing much harder and faster. Excruciatingly slow, but it does seem to work. We saw this when GWB, in an attempt to block the momentum of the gay marriage movement, actually ENDORSED civil unions. He would have never done this without the pressure of the marriage movement making a formerly-seen-as-extreme step seem measured and rational. But I think he also had to be met on the ground of “family values” to be able to recognize that families are not just a husband, wife, and kids.

And what do you think about it?

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By Posted on Posted in Demographics/Psychographics, General Commentary, media-general, People Helping People Tagged with , ,

Re-examining the “Media Ecosystem”: Reflections on the National Conference on Media Reform #NCMR11

By Shel Horowitz, GreenAndProfitable.com

 

At the fifth National Conference on Media Reform (NCMR) since 2003, the media landscape was repeatedly described as a rapidly evolving ecosystem—a metaphor I don’t remember at the two previous conferences I attended, in 2005 and 2008.

Looking at the mainstream media, the ecosystem is in tough shape. Massive cutbacks to news resources, a crippling of expensive investigative reporting at the expense of infotainment, rapid dropoffs in newspaper subscribership and ad revenues, and a lot of journalists working for free or almost free are some of the outcomes of massive consolidation and deregulation over the past 30 years or so—combined by a major rightward shift in the politics of media owners that is reflected in the way stories are covered, or if they’re covered at all.

Yes, the Internet is partly responsible. Many people seek out alternative news channels from their local bloggers on up to international outlets like the UK Guardian and Al Jazeera. And people under 30, growing up with computers in the home, never got into the habit of curling up with the morning paper over breakfast. And yes, Craigslist has hurt newspaper classified sections, hard.

But the Internet also made possible the incredible renaissance of alternate media. Anyone can be a publisher or a journalist now, and hundreds of thousands have done so. Many have built strong communities across geographical or interest-group commonalities.

And the collapse of mainstream news was predicted decades ago by George Orwell and Ray Bradbury, among others. The infotainment focus of broadcasters bringing technology to bear in order to dumb down popular culture was clearly laid out in their books, 1984 (published in the 1940s) and Fahrenheit 451 (1950s). The Internet was not even a dream yet.

Although I didn’t go with a press pass this time, I did take extensive notes. Over the next few weeks, I’ll try to pull out some highlights and share them

Shel Horowitz’s latest book is Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green. He writes the Green And Profitable and Green And Practical monthly columns, https://greenandprofitable.com. Permission granted to reprint this post as long as this bio is included and any edits are approved by the author.

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By Posted on Posted in censorship, Demographics/Psychographics, Protests and Crackdowns, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with

It is now illegal in france to hide your face in a public place—a clear assault on very religious Muslims. Freedom of religion often involves particular manners of dress or hair, and prohibiting them is an act of bigotry. (There is one good thing in the law that I do support: it is now illegal to force someone else to veil herself).

The solution to religious fundamentalism is not religious bigotry. Would there be a protest about banning yarmulkas (the skullcaps Orthodox Jews wear) or crucifix necklaces?

I hope some non-Muslim French citizens organize massive solidarity actions with hundreds or thousands wearing a veil in public—kind of like the King of Denmark donning a yellow star during the Nazi occupation.

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By Posted on Posted in Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, Energy & Sustainability, People Helping People, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , , , , , ,

I have lived in a housing project of 55,000 people in New York City—so insignificant in the city’s eyes that we didn’t even have a subway stop; we had to bus or walk a mile to one of two different trains, one of which could have easily been extended a mile over Interstate 95. In all, I lived in New York City for about 20 years, including birth to 16. In my early 20s, I lived in four of the five boroughs: Bronx, Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn.

At the other extreme, for the past 12+ years, I’ve lived on a working farm in a village of about 200 within Hadley, Massachusetts—a town of 4753 people—part of Hampshire County, whose 20 “cities” and towns within 545 square miles increased over the past decade to 152,251. (City, as Massachusetts defines it, refers to a municipality administered by a mayor and council rather than Selectboard and Town Meeting, and has nothing to do with population.) And I actually serve on an official town land-use committee, where we wrestle constantly with shaping the future of our town.

New York City’s five densely populated boroughs comprise just under 305 square miles, and hold 8,391,881 residents. You could move NYC to my county and still have almost half the land area left —maybe to grow enough food for all those residents. My county has 1/55 as many people as NYC, spread out over 1.78 times as much land.

Between the time I first lived outside of New York, in 1973, and settled in Hampshire County, in 1981, I lived in various cities and towns ranging from under 5000 to 1,688,210. All of these communities can offer sustainability wisdom from which other places can learn—either by doing it right, or by doing it wrong (so much so that I could write a book on this—maybe I will, some day). Here are a few of the insights:

  • Vibrant neighborhoods require mixed use. In every city I’ve ever lived in, the exciting neighborhoods are those where people live, work, play, and shop in close proximity. The best US examples I know are Northampton and Amherst, MA, New York’s Upper West Side and Park Slope, and the Fox Point area of Providence. Much of Europe uses this model, and European cities are highly livable.
  • Car-centered cultures adversely affect quality of life. Strong mass transit usually enhances it. In New York City (where a car is a liability), commuting time on public transit is productive. People read, write, get through their e-mail, walk a few blocks to their destination, and don’t feel like they’ve wasted the time. Sometimes they even build friendships with the people they see every day on their commute. In Hadley, the shopping district is suburban-style, with big malls and strip malls along a state highway. Almost no one lives on that road, and it’s not a place for cultural events, other than movies. While the largest food stores actually do provide chances to hang out a bit with neighbors (all arriving in separate cars), having a brief chat with an acquaintance you run into in the produce aisle is not the same kind of community building as you can get in a cafe or a bookstore.
  • A corollary: planning must take into account the existing transportation patterns. Mass-transit thinking can’t just be grafted onto a car-oriented culture, and car-oriented thinking won’t work in crowded urban areas. Those patterns can change over time, but it’s a slow process.
  • A real community transcends ethnic and cultural differences. My current neighborhood of Hockanum  Village has a number of families that have been on the same land for 200 years or more. Some of them trace their lineage to the Mayflower. The whole neighborhood gets together every year for a Christmas party that attracts former residents from as far as Florida, and sometimes a summer picnic along the river. A few neighbors gather at the local coffee shop for breakfast once a week. I could knock on any door in the neighborhood with a request, and people would try to help me.
  • Cities lend themselves well to centralized renewable energy collection—but this potential to make a big difference in climate change and oil dependency has barely been tapped. Instead, many centrally heated buildings in New York are overheated to the point where tenants need to open windows on cold winter days, and that’s crazy.
  • Cities could supply a significant portion of their own food, but again, this potential is not tapped much.
  • Farmers and gardeners understand the food cycle. They know what it’s like to grow food for themselves, their families, and their livestock. They’ve seen crop failure. They pay close attention to weather patterns. Localism is not a theoretical construct; it’s an everyday reality.
  • Homeowners and farmers notice details and patterns, so, for instance, they anticipate and address maintenance issues before they become failures. They don’t expect anyone else to do things for them, though they might ask for help on a big project. Tenants (especially in urban areas) are much less likely to have this attitude.
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By Posted on Posted in Arts & Entertainment, Demographics/Psychographics, Frugality/Frugal Fun, People Helping People, Shel's Personal Life, Web 2.0/Social Media

flashmob:“a large group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual act for a brief time, then disperse.” (Wikipedia)

For the year or so that I’ve been watching the occasional video of flashmobs gathering in public places to perform, I’ve wished I could be part of one. But I didn’t wish strongly enough to organize one.

All the videos I’ve been sent took places in major cities like Amsterdam and Philadelphia. I live in a very rural area whose biggest city (Springfield, MA) has a population of only 155,629. And yet, to make a flashmob, you only need a dozen or so people.

I think a lot of the allure of flashmobs is that for the most part, we live in a society where entertainment is provided, prepackaged. Until 1877 when Edison invented the phonograph, if you wanted to hear music, you gathered some friends with instruments and songbooks and made some. If you wanted a theater experience, you played charades. Public concerts outside of major cities were few and far between. Now, every tiny town has live music 20 or 30 nights a year, and many have music every weekend night all year long. We are, for the most part, deprived of the opportunity to not only make our own entertainment but perform it for others. The flashmob at the Holyoke Mall had one day’s notice, no rehearsal. Singers were to wear a solid color indicating their part (my alto wife wore green, other parts wore red or white)—and of course, many people who just happened to be there joined in the singing.

Thursday, I received an e-mail from the organizer of a local folk music sing-along: a flashmob would gather the following day to sing Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus at the food court of the largest shopping mall near us, the Holyoke Mall (halfway between our house and Springfield, in a town of 40,005). On a Friday night just before Christmas, it would certainly have an audience. Better still, it was organized by the local opera company; the singing would be worth hearing.

The next morning, my wife, D. Dina Friedman, who sings in a community chorus, got an e-mail about the event that went out to all the chorus members. This was looking better and better. And the timing was perfect; we could drop our son off for the final rehearsal of his school’s winter show, go sing, and be back at school in plenty of time to watch him perform.

The singing was magical. Sound coming from every corner of the large and crowded food court, and a few stunningly stellar voices rising above the crowd. It reminded me of the time more than 30 years ago that I happened to be out on a lawn at my college while the chorus was rehearsing for their upcoming tour, and they invited me to stand within their circle and be surrounded by beautiful sound.

What amazed me the most, though, was not the event, but the aftermath. By the time we returned home after Rafael’s show, when I went to post something on Twitter, I found links to at least two different videos, including this very high quality one posted on the Springfield newspaper’s site.

I sent the link around, and got a couple of “wish I was there” or “how did you find out?” responses. And then last night, I went to a different performance, more than 40 miles away from the shopping mall at a retreat center in a really remote area (it happens to be the most beautiful house I know, one I love to visit for this annual storytelling concert)—and at intermission, I heard people talking about the flashmob and wishing they had known ahead.

In other words, even without a big-city backdrop, this flashmob had an impact well beyond the borders of the food court. E-mail made the event possible; social media gave it permanent life. “And I say to myself/What a wonderful world.”

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By Posted on Posted in Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, Energy & Sustainability, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies Tagged with , , , , ,

Would you use the same marketing strategy to sell a Lexus and a Smart car? I certainly hope not! Market segmentation, and then marketing differently to those different segments, is a pillar of marketing strategy and has been for more than 100 years. And in our technological era, it’s so easy to do, you’d be a fool to try any kind of one-size-fits-all marketing.

This is equally true in any sector of the Green market. Example: the affluent suburbanite who shops at Whole Foods is going to have different wants and needs than a just-getting-by urbanite who’s a member of a food co-op for economic reasons…or the rural farmstand shopper who values the freshness and health benefits of just-picked organic produce. And with each of those slices, you want to slice again: a parent of young children needs a different approach than an elder living alone. Market to them differently, or fail to market.

Just as in B2C (Business To Consumer) marketing, in the B2B world, you have to understand not only your own motivations, but those of your clients. Are they motivated by a desire to lower carbon footprint, a desire to reach the Green market themselves, an EPA mandate to clean up their act, or simply a desire to shave 30 percent off their energy bill?

There’s a good article on the Strategic Sustainability Consulting blog on this, which I found through Carolyn Parrs’ blog.

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By Posted on Posted in Demographics/Psychographics, Marketing Trends/News, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , , , ,

I just read a “sleeper” article that may be one of the most important trend pieces of the year. If you have any interest in future trends in marketing, demographics, consumer culture, advertising, or where our society might be headed in a few years, go and read “Is Starbucks the Most Dangerous Competitor to Facebook?” by Jay Baer and Clinton Bonner. Appropriately enough, I found this article via a Tweet, from Olivier Blanchard, a/k/a @TheBrandBuilder.

The article posits that Starbucks is working to reposition itself as an in-store information portal, with all sorts of goodies available to those who go to the stores and log on to its network—and that ads on this network could become the premier place to reach certain consumers, as well as the favored online community that could displace Facebook in our affections…

I’m not sure it’s going to unfold exactly as they see it, but I suspect pieces of it will play out that way. That’s a future that leaves me with more than a little discomfort. It’s like a vertical and horizontal integration of the mind similar to, say, General Motors’ vertical and horizontal integration of the car market starting at least in the 1930s. I don’t like to see so much energy concentrated in one company, whether it’s GM, Google, or Starbucks.

Of course, competitors can arise. But it won’t be easy.

What do you think?

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By Posted on Posted in Demographics/Psychographics, Energy & Sustainability, Shel's Personal Life, travel Tagged with , , , , ,

Yesterday’s postal mail brought an invitation by the Massachusetts Department of Transportation to survey our driving habits.

I live in a rural area, along a state highway but between two college towns. Green as I’d love to be, I go most places by car. Occasionally, I’ll have enough time to bike to Northampton or Amherst, but it’s about 50 minutes each direction, and that’s a big chunk out of my day. It’s also not a very pleasant ride, along a busy, very hilly highway with lots of curves and potholes and big stretches without a shoulder.

I’m a lifelong fan and USER of public transportation. Growing up in New York City, I was eight years old when I switched from the school bus to the public bus—and that was with a transfer. I’ll often take buses instead of driving to Boston or New York (and I’ve actually booked Amtrak for my next trip to Washington). When I travel out of my area, I rarely rent a car unless the destination city is the start of an extended driving trip. If I’m just staying locally, I use buses, trams and subways (and the occasional taxi.

There’s a local bus that runs past my house. But even though I’m a public transit guy, I’ve lived here 12 years and have never taken it. Why? Because it’s set up to fail. The local transit authority, in its wisdom, runs full-size coaches three times a day in from Northampton to South Hadley and twice a day back to Northampton. I have lots of reasons to go to Northampton, but I can’t do it on the bus. The first trip to Northampton that passes my house arrives at 5:30; the last bus back departs Northampton at 5:35. So that leaves five minutes, after business hours, to do my business. Ha, ha.

If I happened to want to go the other way, I could have a whole hour in South Hadley, between 5:05 and 6:05 p.m. Whoopie! Oh yeah, I could also arrive at Mount Holyoke at 8 a.m., and if I happened to somehow discover nine hours of things to do in sleepy South Hadley, I could catch the 5:05 back home. Thanks a lot.

I can see these rare buses go by my house, and they’re usually very uncrowded. What a surprise! Set up a bus service to fail, and then complain that nobody takes the bus.

But how’s this: what if instead of a 40-passenger coach scheduled as to be unusable, there was a 10-passenger van or minibus, going, say, every two hours. Labor cost would be higher, as a driver would have to be diverted from a more popular route. But the other costs of operation, such as fuel, would be sharply less for each run. And my whole family would probably use the bus several times a week, especially if the route were extended three miles past Mount Holyoke to the high school my son attends, at the beginning and end of the school day. Probably so would a number of other people. Maybe enough to make the route viable.

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By Posted on Posted in Advertising, Corporate Social Responsibility, Demographics/Psychographics, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, People Helping People, poverty, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , ,

Editor’s note: I like to say that my blog “covers the intersections of ethics, politics, media, marketing, and sustainability.” But I think this may be the first post in six years of blogging that touches on all five.

Levi’s “Go Forth” Ad

Chris Brogan’s blog brought my attention to a Levi’s ad called “Go Forth”—one of the most thought-provoking ads I’ve ever seen.

“A long time ago, things got broken here. People got sad, and left. Maybe the world breaks on purpose—so we can have work to do.” The young girl narrator says this, and a bunch of stuff about the pioneer/frontier spirit.

The ad shows a lot of images of a distressed town, Braddock, Pennsylvania—but also images and especially narration of hope and achievement. The people in the ad are not professional actors, but Braddock residents, apparently.

How I reacted

To, me this ad was about a company wanting to make a difference in a town. Yes, I noticed everyone was wearing Levi’s—but I didn’t pick up a message that I should buy its blue jeans. I got the message that it’s my job to make a difference in the world, no matter what I happen to wear.

Now, I confess—As an entrepreneur motivated more by creating social and environmental change than by making a monetary fortune, I am exactly who this ad is directed at. And I was fascinated. I took the rare step of typing in the link that was displayed on the video to find out more: Levisgoforth.com.

[Side note: In my book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green, I attack the conventional wisdom that you need seven or more touchpoints to create action. I argue instead that if you match message to market exactly, even a single impression may be enough. In this case, I took action immediately, on my first exposure.]

The Shocking Call to Action

Fully expecting a corporate rah-rah site about how Levi was helping communities, I was rather shocked to find a third-party site about the project, and one that was fairly critical of the company (click on the Go Forth and Facts pages). The site is anonymous, though there is a contact-the-site-creator link, which brings up an e-mail address for someone named Brett. Obviously, this link was added later, and not by Levi’s.

Apparently, Levi’s made a one-time million-dollar investment in the community, which is being put to good use creating artist spaces and the like. The effort has the active support of the mayor, but apparently is somewhat controversial in town. But the site attacks Levi’s for treatment of workers, shipping all its manufacturing jobs overseas, and environmental violations, as well as for trying to make the problems go away with a one-time infusion of cash. It says, “We all want to see Braddock Prosper we just have different solutions” (punctuation and capitalization are from the original).

What’s really odd to me is that this third-party intervention is the only call to action. Why didn’t Levi’s have one of its own? They get me all worked up with a feel-good surge of “I can do something,” and then utterly drop the ball.

If you’ve followed my work, you’ll know I’m not usually a fan of image-only advertising (though I’ve seen it serve some powerful purposes, even on campaigns I’ve been involved with). I believe strongly in having a call to action. That is particularly true when you use such deep emotional hooks as this ad does. Why leave people with no place to go? Why not harness that energy?

A Different Reaction

I asked my wife, novelist Dina Friedman, to view the ad. Although she teaches in a business school, she’s not an entrepreneur. But like me, she is an activist. Her reaction was quite negative: “They’re trying to tell me that their blue jeans are a way out of poverty. If they want to show corporate responsibility, why not run an ad highlighting what they’re doing for this community.”

How About You?

View the video. visit the go forth site. And tell me what you think. Please post your comment below.

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By Posted on Posted in Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , ,

This post is part of today’s worldwide BloggersUnite event, Empowering People With Disabilities.

As my Boomer generation ages, and as our parents move well into the elder category, I reflect often on something I learned as a young organizer with the Gray Panthers (1979-80): the idea that society had best learn how to incorporate people with disabilities into active daily life, because most of us were going to grow into that category sooner or later. Accidents, injuries, degenerative diseases, and the general aging process mean that most of us can’t physically do some of what we used to do.

But it certainly doesn’t mean we can’t be useful and productive. Role models are all around us. My Gray Panther chapter leader was a woman in her 70s who could barely see or hear and had some walking disabilities. She could still give fiery speeches once I brought her to the senior center we’d be speaking at that day–and at age 70, she’d taken up yoga and become a vegetarian.

In fact, long before there was consciousness about disability rights, I was raised reading about some of the intellectual and artistic superstars with disabilities. Helen Keller is the most famous, a widely respected author, speaker, and thinker who could neither see nor hear. Also, the inventor and scientist Charles Steinmetz and President Franklin Roosevelt, among others. Grandma Moses, one of America’s most famous painters, never picked up a brush until age 76–and that left a 25-year career as an artist before her death at 101.In our own era, physicist Stephen Hawking comes to mind.

Now, with disability activism and a much greater visibility following the 1988 Americans with Disabilities Act, we see over and over again the talent and resources we had lost by shutting people with disabilities away and out of the mainstream. We’re a long way from full equality, but we’ve sure made progress.

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