For the past 3-1/2 years, I’ve been not just thinking but taking steps to change the entire direction of my business from basic marketing consulting for green businesses to shaping profitable ventures that directly turn hunger and poverty into sufficiency, war into peace, and catastrophic climate change into planetary balance. In other words, showing how social entrepreneurship is a business success strategy that increases revenues and decreases costs. Obviously, more revenue plus lower expenses = higher profits.
Yeah, thinking big. Big enough so it took some serious time to get ready (far more than I thought it would. Here are some of the steps I’ve taken:
Hired a remarkable business coach, Oshana Himot, who helped me see that I didn’t have to wait until certain metrics were in place before dong this work that’s been in my heart for decades—and that if I did wait, I’d never get there. She has also worked with me on role-playing sales conversations, etc., to the point where now I really am ready.
Launched several new talk topics, including “‘Impossible’ is a Dare”—which I first gave as a TEDx in 2014; I’ve done it several times since, in longer (and once, shorter) formats. You can get a nice taste of it in my 4-minute demo video, if you’re interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tooSVbHQ5Ik&feature=youtu.be
Wrote and found a publisher for my 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, and went to press (a year ago) with about 50 endorsements, Chris among them—alongside Seth Godin, Jack Canfield, and guest essayists Cynthia Kersey (“Unstoppable”) and Frances Moore Lappé (Diet for a Small Planet). The book has won two small awards so far.
Cover of Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World by Jay Conrad Levinson and Shel Horowitz
Organized a very ambitious telesummit (also in 2014) that flopped utterly and made me realize I was NOT ready to go after clients in this new niche—and began to do more work to get myself ready.
Determined that small businesses were probably my most likely clients, but that they were not likely to have the budget freedom. Thus, I chose to go after larger companies who might sponsor me to work with their clients, suppliers, NGO partners, etc. Bought a program on how to get sponsors and created a fabulous proposal, driven by benefits to the sponsoring company, that (hopefully) will get my hired to speak and consult.
Created a list of ~200 companies I mention favorably in the book and hired someone to research the contact info.
Hired a designer to develop a log.
And now I’m finally at the point where it makes sense to reach out to those companies and see if I can get traction. I only need about three to say yes to a medium-to-large project to have a full pipeline.
To me, this is true sustainability; business has to survive—and thrive—in order to make that difference. But the business world often defines sustainability much more narrowly: as simply going green. In positioning my services, I wanted to make a statement that “sustainability,” under that definition, is not enough. It’s keeping things from getting worse, where I think we can make things better. Thus, the name, “Going Beyond Sustainability. And this logo:
Going Beyond Sustainability logo and tagline
This, I believe, is the future of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR): fundamentally reinventing society to better serve the needs of its planet and its people, self-funding through profitable products and services.
Why do we continue to let ourselves get bound up in thinking that we can’t do anything about the biggest challenges of our time?
I say in my “Impossible is a Dare” talks that we have enough abundance for all, but big kinks in the distribution—which we can fix. Hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change are all resource issues. And when we see them that way, they are all fixable.
Hunger and poverty about not having enough to cover basic necessities; the resource issues are obvious
Wars usually start because of a chain of events that begins with one country’s perception that a different country is taking something that belongs to the first country: land, water, energy sources, minerals, labor ,shipping access, etc. Even religious and ethnic wars trace back to resource conflicts, if we go deep enough.
Catastrophic climate change is a bit different, but it’s still about resources. Instead of being about one country having too much or too little, it’s about using the wrong kinds of resources, or using them in environmentally destructive, socially harmful ways.
In fact, climate solutions require solutions based in abundance. We have to shift from finite, expensive, polluting energy sources such as petroleum products and uranium—whose extraction and refining as well as burning for fuel cause environmental destruction—to infinite, inexpensive, and clean sources such as solar, wind, small-scale hydro, magnetic, geothermal, and designing for conservation, deployed at or near the point of use. When we allow ourselves to think abundantly, problems have a way of turning into solutions. Turn loose the socially conscious, environmentally aware engineers!
When companies start thinking about solutions based in abundance, they have even greater incentive to solve these problems—because they can see the profit in it. But too often, we “should” them with guilt and shame—very ineffective tools. Instead of nagging them about how the world is suffering because of their actions, let’s show them how acting differently can address these problems not out of guilt and shame but in creating and marketing profitable products and services.
The creativity of business can create markets where none existed, using technologies we’ve never harvested. Think about how a small-space indoor vertical garden can provide fresh veggies in urban food deserts…how green lighting options such as solar-powered LEDs that replace toxic and flammable kerosene can better the environment, health, safety, and the local economy all at once…how studying nature’s amazing engineering—”biomimimcry”—can create new products like adhesives modeled after gecko feet or a fuel-sipping plane designed to mimic the most aerodynamic birds.
Yesterday, I posted something on Facebook about reaching a real, and sympathetic, human being on the White House Comment Line. Since the US election last November, I’ve called my elected officials a lot more than in the past. Someone wrote back, saying I was “like the Energizer Bunny” with my consistent activism.
My reply revealed the secret:
Actually, [his name], it’s less Energizer Bunny and more a matter of what I call “the fulcrum principle”: doing not all that much but doing in ways that leverage and multiply the impact…I use my time strategically so the 10 to 15 hours or so I spend on activism per week has a big ripple. Of course I never know when a meeting or demonstration is going to be worthwhile and when it will be a waste of time. I have guessed wrong on a few meetings lately—but then I go to one that’s so energizing and activating and inspiring that it actually recharges me. I went to one like that Saturday and hope the ones I plan to attend Wednesday and Thursday (and the socially responsible business conference next week where I’m MCing two sessions) will be just as awesome.
Three men on river structures with ladders and levers ” New York Public Library Digital Collection.
I’ve played with this metaphor for a long time. I was able to find rejection letters I received for my original The Fulcrum Principle: Practical Tools for Social Change, Community Building, and Restructuring Society book proposal as far back as 1992—and a printout of the proposal itself, though not the electronic file.
Looking at this proposal 25 years later, it would have been a big, ambitious, world-changing book. And other than
Adding in recent developments such as the Arab Spring, Climate Change activism, Black Lives Matter, and of course the massive resistance to the new US president, and
Technology shifts including the Internet and social media, smartphones, 3D printing, and the amazing breakthroughs in green design,
The proposal is still remarkably relevant. Let me share a few highlights:
The Fulcrum Principle lets us “achieve the greatest result with the least amount of effort,” including finding others to do some of the work
Change happens as fast as possible, but as slow as necessary
Why we need both “shock troops” and “put-it-back-togethers”
We build momentum for change by presenting the possibility (and manageability) of positive change, finding points of agreement with our opponents—and then expanding those points, changing enemies into allies
This momentum can change the world—and it has, many times
It’s accomplished more easily when you remember to have fun
Grassroots organizers can learn a lot from business (and with 25 years of hindsight, I’d add that business can learn a lot from grassroots organizers); similarly, Left and Right activists have lessons to share with each other
Economic and environmental goals can work in tandem (did I really understand that all the way back in 1992? I’ve gone on to write five books that explore this idea)
Organizers have quietly developed lots of tools we can harness to make this journey easier: new approaches to everything from how to facilitate productive meetings to how to get the most information in the least time by dividing up a book among different readers who report their insights
The proposal also touched on a raft of social issues, among them:
Nonviolent alternatives to the military
The role of multinational corporations
True democracy going far beyond elections
Does it even make sense for change organizations to chase after funding?
New ways of looking at drugs and crime, housing, healthcare, transportation, parenting, world distribution of resources, and even sexuality
Interestingly, without revisiting this proposal, I essentially put it into practice when I founded the movement that saved our local mountain in 1999-2000. And I think that’s a lot of why we won in 13 months flat. The “experts” thought we couldn’t win at all. I felt sure that we would succeed, but even I thought it would take five years. I didn’t realize at the time that I had already created the roadmap years earlier.
Perhaps I should dust off this proposal, update, and resubmit.
During a trip to Thailand, I kept my radar up to see how this small but sophisticated country deals with a number of environmental issues.
Disclaimer: This is not intended to be an in-depth look. It’s based on just two weeks in the country, much of it with an escorted tour—so I’m not pretending to be an authority. But still, I’m trained as a journalist, and with a combination of observations and interviews, I was able to get a pretty good sense of both the good and the bad. Here they are, in no particular order.
Forest Conservation and Biodiversity
The Thai government was a pioneer in forest conservation, outlawing the harvest of most teak all the way back in 1938, when the US and Europe hadn’t given the matter much thought at all. And even though much of the land has been cleared either for rice paddies and other agriculture or for construction, I didn’t see a single commercial lumber truck. I did see one pickup filled with thin branches (no trunks), but that might well have belonged to a tree pruner.
The older teak houses and temples show some signs of deterioration, and there are apparently some ways around the harvest prohibition. We met with the owners of a teak mansion built in 1999, now housing a cooking school as well as several family members. They told us that the house used new wood, legally obtained; they had purchased licenses for each individual teak tree in the project.
Quite a bit of rainforest habitat remains, with its wonderful biodiversity of palms, bananas, fruit trees (especially mangos), strangler figs, and epiphytes, and birds happily enjoy this ecosystem. Much of this is part of the various national parks, one of which we visited (and had a great hike).
Most farms are small. Some are quite diverse, with many types of fruits, vegetables, and staples like tapioca and sugar cane. However, monocropping of rice (and sometimes other crops) across multiple neighboring fields is common. In rural areas, it’s more common to see homes built of natural materials such as bamboo and thatch.
Roof made of traditional bamboo and thatch in the multi-tribe hill village. Photo by Shel Horowitz.
Smog and Noise
Thailand gets a C+ here, and Bangkok gets an F. Many areas are choked with traffic and with fumes spewing untreated from two-stroke motorbikes and tuk-tuks. Four-stroke gasoline-powered cars and diesel truck and bus engines run cleaner, but not clean enough. Many “long tail” tourist boats are powered by old V8 automotive engines with neither smog control nor muffler. Thailand’s cities have very poor air quality, and they are LOUD. Hybrid vehicles are relatively rare, though they do exist. While not nearly as common as Beijing or Shanghai, many people wear surgical masks when they’re out and about (and in Bangkok, we wished we had them—though everyplace else we went, even the metropolis of Chiang Mai, smog was not a noticeable problem).
In Bangkok, smoking is common, which doesn’t help the air quality; smoking was much less popular in the north. We didn’t pass many factories, but those we did encounter seemed relatively clean. I can’t remember seeing any belching smokestacks.
Still, there’s a lot more work to be done. Pollution control on the two-stroke engines would be an excellent place to start.
Organic Agriculture, Crafts, and Natural Foods
To our surprise and delight, there seems to be a substantial movement toward organic agriculture, some of it driven by the late King Rama IX. Several of the rural hotels we stayed at grew many of their own vegetables, all of them organic. In the cities, it’s easy to find organic food in the larger supermarkets. In the north, we ate at several organic restaurants out in the country, some part of resorts and others all by themselves. Thailand has a rich and diverse cuisine that we’ve been enjoying since the 1970s, and Thais put enormous value on freshness. This trip was the first time I’ve ever experienced bamboo shoots or baby corn fresh. In the US, they’re usually canned (and awful), though I’ve occasionally found dried or pickled bamboo shoots.
Most restaurants were willing to accommodate vegetarians and many offered vegan options. When our tour stopped to eat as a group, our tour leader would always make arrangements and the restaurant would prepare close equivalents to the food everyone else was eating—even special soups with vegan bases. Much of Thai cuisine, including several wonderful curries, is based on rice and noodles (made from wheat, rice, or beans) with fish sauce, meat or fish, and vegetables added, so it was easy enough for restaurants to pull some aside before adding the parts we didn’t want.
When we were on our own, though, we avoided the curries unless we were in vegetarian restaurants, since pretty much any prepackaged curry paste is going to contain fish sauce. But we were able to find choices both at sit-down restaurants and in the stalls lining the alleys of the local markets, where we easily found healthy snacks like buns filled with taro, pumpkin, or sweet potato…coconut pancakes…terrific fresh fruits and smoothies…tofu dishes…and quite a bit more.
Local crafters are everywhere, though it takes an experienced eye to steer visitors to the right places. Our tour leader was very good at this, and took us to many crafters, including an organic coconut farm, a 76-year-old woman who showed us how to dye fabric naturally with indigo (she sells to Japan Air Lines’ duty-free stores), and various other cottage industries. Our leader also let us sample many of the local snacks, including a stop at a shop that sold about two dozen varieties of banana, taro, and sweet potato chips.
As a visitor, I feel some obligation to support these types of places as much as possible, and not buy much from the big malls that are beginning to crowd out the independents. And as a shopper, I found the prices low and the quality high. So everybody wins.
Water Conservation
Although water is ample (sometimes too ample, as flooding is a problem in many areas), Thais seem to have high awareness of just how precious water is. Many toilets are dual flush, taps are designed to be workable with low flow, and water-saving showerheads were very much in evidence. One four-star hotel not only displayed the usual sign about washing sheets and towels but another one explaining that water is precious and suggesting turning the water off while shaving and brushing teeth—yay!
Energy
Thailand has 22 operating hydroelectric plants with capacities ranging from 0.13 to 749 megawatts —four of them 500 MW or above (and several more in the planning stages). I saw almost no solar or wind. The solar I saw was all very decentralized, powering one building or part of one. I may have seen one wind farm but it could have been something else. Interestingly, one area that did use more solar was the village in far-northern Thailand where members of several different hill tribes live together and sell beautiful crafts to travelers. This is one of the late king’s numerous social betterment projects, and features running water and other amenities, while allowing the tribespeople to live a more traditional life than they could in a city.
I understand that commercial solar panels are expensive. But given Thailand’s subtropical to tropical climate, solar would be a natural, and some technologies (including solar water heating) can be done quite cheaply. Insulating more of those cheap houses and stores might be another good step. It wouldn’t make much of a difference in the energy picture because most of those homes, at least, aren’t air conditioned. But it would make a lot of difference in people’s comfort.
Despite the paucity of hybrid cars (I think I saw three Priuses and one Honda Insight), the vehicle fleet is dominated by small, high-MPG cars. As in much of Europe and Latin America, most of the trucks are also much smaller than the US fleet. However, there’s clearly an influx of new money, and one of the ways it shows is the rapidly increasing number of luxury and sports cars. I noticed several BMWs, a couple of Porsches, one Ferrari, and lots of Lexuses, as well as quite a number of Japanese-made SUVs and minivans. But the vast majority were small or mid-size Japanese and Korean sedans.
Bangkok has two separate rapid transit systems plus several kinds of city buses. Everywhere else, we saw no buses at all, just collective taxis: either converted pickup trucks with a bench along each side and one up the middle (called song thaew), or tuk-tuk minivans, called etans. We saw bus stops in Chiang Mai, but never saw a bus. Of course, there were thousands of regular tuk-tuks (which hold three passengers if you squeeze) and hundreds of metered taxis.
Trash and Recycling
Separation stations for glass and plastic bottles show up occasionally, but aren’t widespread. We saw no paper recycling at all—but we did see employees hand-sorting trash and removing and crushing plastic bottles, several times. Many of the farmers and gardeners compost, and we even visited an elephant refuge that collected the poop not only on land, but even while the animals were bathing in the river—crew members were stationed a hundred yards downstream, with nets and pails. They sold some of it as fertilizer and used some to manufacture paper. The fiber content is high enough, and the paper doesn’t smell. I actually know someone in the US who sells a line of specialty gift papers made largely of elephant poop, and they’re lovely.
Litter exists and in some areas is considerable, but much less than in many other countries we’ve traveled through.
Urban Oases
Every city we visited had plenty of parks, some of them stunningly beautiful. But even more than the parks, many of the thousands of Buddhist temples are urban oases, places where you can relax, distress, and meditate in front of the Buddha. Sometimes the plazas inside the gates are lively and noisy, but always, the temple interiors provide respite. And often the courtyards and gardens do as well.
Other Urban Planning
If Thailand has zoning, it doesn’t seem to be much enforced. Towns and cities grow in a tangled sprawl, using cheap construction materials and without regard for infrastructure. This leads to massively overcrowded roads and a sense of loss as the very beautiful indigenous architecture gives way to “anywhere” buildings.
As an example, during World War II, the area around Kanchanaburi—where the bridge over the River Kwai was built—was jungle wilderness. Now the main road is strip mall central, all the way from Bangkok.
In this profile in Ethical Corporation magazine—which calls him “CSR’s leading thinker”—Elkington restates his view that regenerative business models could create at least $12 trillion in opportunity and add up to 380 million jobs by 2030.
John Elkington, CSR thought leader
Elkington has some very cogent things to say about the shocking changes in geopolitics last year, from the Brexit vote to today’s change of US president.
But maybe the most intriguing thing is this little snippet:
…He is travelling to Germany to meet with Covestro, a spin-out from the German chemicals giant Bayer, which has just opened a plant using CO2 in place of polymers in mattresses and upholstered furniture.
So why not turn carbon dioxide into a salable product?
Insatiable curiosity about the world has always powered my writing and speaking. I wanted to know more about this. A few seconds of searching led me to Covestro’s page about this technological and environmental breakthrough. While the writing shows distinct signs of a non-nartive-speaking author, the information is quite cool.
Stumbling across this article on bicycle-powered-everythings (bicimaquinas) in Guatemala—grain mills, water pumps, nut-shellers, blenders, and more—I’m reminded once again of the key question to ask if you want to spark innovation while keeping an eco-friendly focus on using fewer resources.
Too often, we focus on the tool: asking questions like “how do I get a new tractor?” But what is a tool? It’s a means of accomplishing a task! So the real focus should be on the task: “How can I get this done?” Asking “how can I get harvestable plants” might lead to plowing with draft animals—or to no-till farming techniques.
Green entrepreneurs (or frugal ones) refine that question. It morphs into “How can I accomplish this with the fewest resources?” Money and time are resources. So are raw materials, energy, water, plant seeds, animals, and so forth.
The people at Maya Pedal, the organization profiled in the bicimaquinaarticle, understood this. They looked around and realized there were a lot of junk bikes out there that could still do plenty of useful work, just not as transportation. They’ve come up with 19 different models so far.
Bicycle technology is cheap, accessible, understandable, and versatile. In fact, my latest book Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World mentions a number of creative bike technology uses, even including a bike-powered trash hauling company. I also know of a fitness center that harnesses the energy of their bike-pumping clients to light the room.
We can ask this question in many situations—and it creates abundance. Asking “how can I power my electronic devices easily and cheaply without negative environmental consequences” might lead to developing something like the amazing Blue Freedom frisbee-sized hydroelectric plant (no dam required).
This blender is one of 19 different types of bicimaquinas—bike-powered equipment—developed by Maya Pedal in San Andrés Itzapa, Guatemala
Back when laser printers were retailing for $7000 and I had only a dot matrix, I asked myself how I could offer laser quality to my clients without spending that kind of money. That led me first to rent time on a nearby laser printer for a dollar a page, and later—when I spotted a remaindered model for $2500—to organize a co-op of four local business owners who chipped in $700 each to buy the printer and a sturdy stand for that very heavy machine. Since I organized the co-op, the printer lived in my office.
Amory Lovins, founder of Rocky Mountain Institute, asked himself how to build a really energy-efficient house that could fund the energy improvements out of capital savings. All the way back in 1983, he built a near-net-zero-energy luxury home that didn’t need a furnace or an air conditioner (in the snowbelt outside Aspen, Colorado, where the biggest industry is skiing). I have a detailed study of Lovins’ work in Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, by the way—including the energy retrofit of the Empire State Building that saves $4.4 million per year in that building’s energy bills.
What’s the second question you might ask? How has nature already accomplished this task? But that’s an exploration for another time.
Thanks Heath Dannis, @dannis_heath for sharing the great story about bicimaquinas.
NOTE: You’ll find several action steps at the bottom of this post. If you don’t want to read the whole thing, please scroll down to that section and take action before leaving this page.
Watch this video made by Standing Rock Water Protector Candida Rodriguez Kingbird on November 14.
Read a transcript by clicking this link. She claims that a crop duster was spraying the encampment, and only the encampment. Kingbird’s video, or commentary on it, has appeared on many progressive sites and social media profiles.
We know the level of repression against Standing Rock Water Protectors has been consistently shockingly high. There are numerous reports of the authorities using water cannons, tear gas, and even rubber bullets against this peaceful group of Native people fighting nonviolently to protect their water—from a project that was originally to go very close to Bismark, but was rerouted because of worries about what it would do to the water supply.
The link in the paragraph above is to a Christian Science Monitor story with video. The Monitor is a respected mainstream news outlet known for its good journalism over many decades.
Although a search for “chemical weapons standing rock” didn’t turn up any video of the spraying or any reportage based on a claim by someone else—or coverage in mainstream media, I find Kingbird’s testimony thoroughly believable. I found her a credible witness, someone clearly not used to being a public figure. I didn’t feel she was acting, just reporting—and speaking from the heart.
There is the (faint, IMHO) hope that Obama will protect the area either by revoking the DAP permit or protecting the land as a National Monument in his final weeks, but I am personally not optimistic that either will happen, or that it will survive a near-certain overturn attempt form the new administration.
Actions You Can Take
Petitions (click the marked text to sign, then share them widely):
I have noticed that many successful startups are advertising that they donate x% of their profit to someone in need or they help someone have a better life,etc. What do you think is the importance of such messages to gain initial traction and how does it help grow the company?
By the time I saw the post, several other people had jumped in to tell him that social entrepreneurship isn’t just a marketing trick. It must be genuine.
How some people view the world—Opportunity for businesses that genuinely care
I agree, but there’s more. Here’s what I wrote:
Yes, social giving has to be genuine–motivated not by marketing but by sincerely helping the world–but if you’re doing that, you gain huge marketing advantage if you handle it right.
Keep in mind: charitable give-backs are NOT the only model. I’m rather a fan of creating products, services, and business cultures that directly *and profitably* turn hunger and poverty into sufficiency, war into peace, and catastrophic climate change into planetary balance. In fact, in my latest book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World–which is focused on this aspect–charity givebacks account for part of one chapter out of 22 chapters. In my speaking and consulting, I help companies actually develop these kinds of approaches. You can get a very quick early-stage introduction by spending 15 minutes with my TEDx talk, “Impossible is a Dare” https://www.ted.com/tedx/events/11809 (click on “event videos”)–but recognize that this was 2 years ago and the work has evolved a lot since then.
All other things (such as price, quality, convenience) being comparable, consumers “vote with their feet” to support ethical, green, socially conscious companies. So you, as a startup, have the chance to look at the skills, interests, and wider goals within your company…create products and services that match these skills, interests, and goals with wider goals like the Big Four I mentioned at the beginning…and market them effectively to both green and nongreen markets (which has to be done differently, as I discuss in the book). But please, do it with good intentions! (I can help, BTW.)
The Washington Post reports that the never-finished, never-operated Bellefonte Nuclear Power Plant, in Hollywood, Alabama is for sale at the bargain-basement price of $36.4 million. It has cost more than $5 billion to build as much of it as Tennessee Valley Authority managed to complete, so this isn’t just pennies on the dollar. Each penny of the purchase price leverages $137.36 of construction investment—which, if my math is right, works out to a pretty incredible 1,373,626.37 percent return on investment (ROI), if the plant could be amortized that way. Kind of like getting a Ferrari for the price of a Matchbox car (little toys about two inches long).
The unfinished Bellefonte nuke in Alabama is for sale. Let’s have some fun figuring out what to do with it.
Of course, the plant can’t be amortized that way. It was built to turn atoms into smaller atoms and electricity (and, by the way, tremendous waste heat and a whole soup of poisonous and radioactive waste). In all likelihood, the plant will never fulfill its intended purpose. And that’s a good thing!
I want your outlandish AND your practical ideas. Please submit one of each as a comment on this page, in this format: Outlandish: (describe your idea in one to three sentences). Practical: (describe your idea in one to three sentences). Also please tell me how you learned about the contest so I know whom to thank. If you wish, you may link to a page giving more details. Each entry must include both categories (and the link to your posting address or Facebook screen name must function, so I can contact you if you win).
Oh, and comments are moderated, so don’t even bother posting racist, sexist crap or unrelated commercial spam. It won’t get posted and it WILL get you reported and blacklisted.
All entries must be received by 11:59 PM Eastern Time, Thursday, October 20, a bit over a month from the day I post this.
Want to be a winner? Make your Outlandish entry very humorous but not offensive. And make your Practical entry eco-friendly and specific. For instance, it’s not enough to say “a renewable energy project.” I want to know the type and why it’ll work there.
The winner in each category will get a 30-minute consultation with me to discuss any aspect of marketing, green/social entrepreneurship business profitability, book publishing, or green living–and a copy of my latest book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (acclaimed by Jack Canfield, Seth Godin, and others) as well as my ebook, Painless Green: 111 Tips to Help the Environment, Lower Your Carbon Footprint, Cut Your Budget, and Improve Your Quality of Life—With No Negative Impact on Your Lifestyle. Total value of the prize is $135, which is as close as I can come to the amount of construction cost each penny covers. And you’ll be in a press release I’ll send out announcing the winners.
I am the judge, and I’m not responsible for lost or misdirected entries, I assume no liability, blah blah blah (standard contest disclaimers).
Last night, I signed a petition created by Rep. Joe Kennedy about gun control. The page gave me the option to share on Facebook, and I did. Then I went to bed.
I was pretty horrified to check my page this morning and see my share that said “Stand With Rep. Joe Kennedy” and had a huge picture of him. Not a word about gun control showed up in the Facebook preview.
So I took it down and posted this note:
To those who might have wondered why there was a huge campaign ad for Rep. Joe Kennedy on my page last night. I had just signed a petition he originated on gun control, and wanted to share it. I didn’t check how it posted on FB. I felt tricked and betrayed enough to take the entire post down. Let him get signatures some other way.
This was a classic bait-and-switch. In fairness, Kennedy probably delegated this to some social media intern and most likely wasn’t personally involved. But if I lived in his district, this would make me look for someone else to vote for, because I don’t like being manipulated and cheated.
Only after I took it down did I think about blogging about this feeling of betrayal. If I’d decided to blog before I instinctively took it down, I would have grabbed a screenshot to post here. Instead, you get the logo of the ultimate-bait-and-switcher: Volkswagen.
Aging Volkswagen showing VW logo. Photo by Daria Schulte.
VW, of course, preyed upon environmentalist car owners to sell them a low-emission vehicle—but fudged the test results and was really selling highly polluting cars. This is costing the company billions, and it isn’t over yet. The state of Vermont just filed suit against VW two days ago. Vermont, tiny as it is, has the second-highest per-capita concentration of VWs in the country (after Oregon)—precisely because environmental consciousness is extremely high among its residents. In fact, a year ago, a group of those Vermont residents already filed a class-action suit against Volkswagen.
I used to think my parents and in-laws were overreacting with their continuing pledge never to buy Volkswagen s because of the company’s involvement with the Holocaust. After all, the people who made those brutal decisions are long dead or in nursing homes. But after this scandal, I can’t think of any reason why I would ever trust the company again.
Bottom line: in business and in politics, bait-and-switch has no place in ethical marketing.
