Category: Marketing Techniques and Philosophies

By Posted on Posted in Activism, Entrepreneurship, Environment, language, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Mindset, Politics, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice, Talking to the Other Side Tagged with , , , , , , ,

I love this post from the Changemaker Institute, How to Change The World By Meeting People Where They Care. I love it because it approaches social change through a marketing lens. It starts by revisiting the famous Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court Case of 1967, which struck down longstanding bans on marrying across the color line. Pointing out how Richard and Mildred Loving got people to care, the post goes on to ask how to get people to care about what you’re doing–and answers with a business-oriented focus on outcomes of your social change action, which you arrive at through these questions (quoting directly from the post):

  • What does it take to get an investor to believe in your business and invest in your mission?
  • What does it take to get customers to believe in your product or service and invest in it?
  • What does it take to get your employees to believe in your company’s mission and invest time and energy in supporting it?
  • What does it take to get people to support your vision for a better world? [end of quote]
Seet spot and 3 words posters in Shel's office, where he sees them every day
Shel’s inspirational posters describing his “sweet spot” institutional mission and his 2020 and 2021 sets of three words to inspire his year

This intersection is so important to me that on the wall behind my computer monitor, where I see it many times a day, I have a poster that reminds me, “I help businesses find their unique sweet spot where profitability meets environmental and social progress.” It’s important enough that I’ve written four books making the profitability case for business to deeply embrace social change and planetary healing, and have also written about the success lessons activists can take from business. It’s the basis for much of my consulting and speaking.

To take it a step further: I see getting out of the silo, rubbing shoulders with people who are not like you and examining different ideas from different industries or different sectors of the same industry as crucial is testing your own ideas, sharpening them enough to really get inside someone’s head and cause enough discomfort with the status quo to embrace the brighter future you propose. Whether you’re marketing a business or a movement, that’s a pretty important thing to do.

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By Posted on Posted in language, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, People Helping People, Psychology, Talking to the Other Side Tagged with , , , , ,

Guest Post by Sam Horn, author of Tongue Fu and many other books.

Does it feel like you’re talking on eggshells these days? You’re not alone. A report from McKinsey says, “Rudeness is on the rise and incivility is getting worse.”

As one woman said, “It feels like I can’t say anything right. It seems everyone’s on edge. They take offense at the least little thing. What can we do when everyone’s stressed out?”

She has a point, doesn’t she?

The last year and a half has been tough.

People have lost loved ones and jobs. Controversies around masks and vaccinations have put people at odds. Remote work and home-schooling have frayed nerves and tempers.

So, what can we do? We can Tongue Fu!

Tongue Fu! (a trademarked communication – conflict prevention/resolution process) teaches what to say – and not say – in sensitive, stressful situations you face every day.

It’s ironic. We’re taught math, science and history in school, we’re not taught how to deal with difficult people without becoming one ourselves.

And in these tough times, it’s more important than ever to know how to proactively handle complaints, disagreements, and unhappy, upset people.

Fortunately, that’s what Tongue Fu! teaches.

Here are a few challenges you may face at work, at home, online and in public – with tips on how to respond in the moment instead of thinking of the perfect response on the way home.

4 Tongue Fu! Tips for What to Say/Do When Things Go Wrong

Complaints
When people complain, don’t explain. Explanations come across as excuses. They make people angrier because they feel you’re not being accountable. For example, if a host is upset because you’re late for a meeting, don’t explain why, just take the AAA Train:

Agree: “You’re right, Bob, our meeting was supposed to start at 9 am.

Apologize: And I’m sorry I’m late.

Act: AND I’ve got those stats you had requested. Would you like to hear them?”

When you take the AAA Train – Agree, Apologize and Act – instead of belaboring why things went wrong, you advance the conversation instead of anchoring it in an argument.

2. Negative accusation.

Whatever you do, don’t defend or deny untrue accusations. If someone says “You are so emotional!” and you say, “I am not emotional!” now you are! Instead, put the ball back in their court by asking, “What do you mean?” That questions motivates people to reveal the real issue and you can address that instead of reacting to their attack.

Imagine says, “You don’t care about your customers.” Reacting with, “We do care about our customers.” makes them wrong. Instead ask, “Why do you say that?” The client may say “I ordered supplies two weeks ago and still haven’t received them.” Now you know what’s really bothering them and you can fix their problem instead of debating their accusation.

3. Arguments.

If people are upset and you try to talk over them, what will happen? They’ll talk louder. The voice of reason will get drowned out in the commotion.

Instead, make a T with your hands (like a referee would) to cause a pause. Then say these magic words, “Let’s not do this. We could go back and forth for the rest of the afternoon about what should have been done, and it won’t undo what happened. Instead, let’s put a system in place to prevent this from happening again.”

You can also put your hand up like a traffic cop to do a pattern interrupt. Say, “Blaming each other won’t help. Instead, let’s figure out who will be in charge of this in the future so we can trust it will be handled promptly.”

As John F. Kennedy said, “Our goal is not to fix blame for the past, it’s to fix the course for the future.” If people start blaming, remind them, “We’re here to find solutions, not fault.”

4. Have to give bad news.

It’s easy to get defensive if your have to give bad news and say “It’s not my fault,” however that makes people feel you’re brushing them off.

A more empathetic response is to say “I can only imagine” as in ‘I can only imagine how disappointing this is.”

Then turn, “There’s nothing I can do” into “There’s something I can suggest. We have set up a 24 hour job-line with…”

In the real world, things go wrong. And sometimes we can’t fix them. We can at least let people know we care and we’re doing the best we can to help out.

Don Draper said, “If you don’t like what’s being said, change the conversation.”

We can change conversations and outcomes for good by using Tongue Fu! approaches.

Because when we treat people with respect, they’re more likely to treat us with respect.

And that’s a win for everyone.

This post originally appeared in Sam Horn’s newsletter and LinkedIn. Reprinted with permission. Sam’s 3 TEDx talks and 9 books have been featured in NY Times, on NPR, and taught to Intel, Cisco, Boeing, Capital One, NASA, Fidelity and Oracle. Want support completing your creative projects? Check out Sam’s Stop Wishing – Start Writing Community.
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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Business Ethics, Business-general, Consumer Issues, Corporate Social Responsibility, Democracy, Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Environment, Green Business, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, Green Marketing, Greenwashing, Innovation, localism/locavore, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, People Helping People, Politics, Protests and Crackdowns, Talking to the Other Side, Technology Tagged with , , , , ,

While searching “electric lawn service near me,” I found this CNN story from 2000 miles away that describes an eco-village sold down the river by the new owner of the land.

It is very unfortunate that the original developer didn’t get any guarantees that a buyer would maintain the fossil-free commitment written into the sale documents. Nonetheless, I think a creative and skilled attorney could make a number of different legal arguments that could force the developer to honor the agreement. Could the Environmental Defense Fund? perhaps take this on? It would be a great precedent to say that a community developed specifically as an eco-community could not then be put at the mercy of eco-hostile development.

As a non-lawyer, all I can do is speculate about the arguments a lawyer might use to block the conversion of the acquired parcels to fossil fuels (I have no idea if any of these would hold up in court and I am not presenting this as legal advice). Arguments could be made about such harms as

  • Introducing new health risks (especially to children)
  • Negative progress on climate that goes against International, US,Colorado, and neighborhood climate goals
  • Adverse possession (a doctrine that gives rights to squatters in certain circumstances)
  • The deliberate destruction of a cohesive intentional community
  • And of course, about consumers’ rights: this could clearly be seen as bait-and-switch: buying into a community with a stated purpose, and having that purpose violated, even shredded.

After all, a group of children have sued for climate justice, and the US Supreme Court recognized that their suit had validity (there have been many conflicting decisions on this case, however).

But the courts aren’t the only recourse. I do know something about organizing movements, and these neighbors should be organizing a movement. To list a few among many possibilities, they could be:

  • Organizing mass protests outside the developer’s office
  • Saturating the local paper with letters to the editor and op-eds
  • Enlisting allies in powerful environmental organizations, of which Colorado has no shortage
  • Protesting at the capital in Denver that their rights are being taken away
  • Contacting the press ahead of and after all of these events
  • Physically but nonviolently blocking attempts to connect the pipelines (note: this is illegal civil disobedience and participants might be subject to arrest)
  • Researching obscure laws that might provide tools that can successfully block the connection
  • Organizing boycotts and other public shamings of the developer

Plus, I really have to wonder what the developer is thinking. Eco-friendly homes are in high demand, can often sell for more than the price of comparable fossil-powered homes, and prove a skill set that many homeowners want. After all, people moved from other states just to participate in this community. And forcing eco-hostile housing development into an eco-friendly community is a recipe for public relations disaster and a bad, bad reputation.

Why not simply stop, think about the benefits of keeping this community identity, and use it as a marketing tool? That would make so much more sense than risking ongoing hostility, a ruined reputation and possibly much worse.Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Advertising, Copywriting, Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, Eco-friendly, Environment, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, Innovation, language, localism/locavore, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, People Helping People, Politics, Psychology, Talking to the Other Side Tagged with , , , , , , ,

The owner of the Step Into the Spotlight discussion group, Tsufit, asked what kind of marketing could help Canada go smoke-free by 2035. My answer doesn’t fit into LinkedIn’s comment space, so I’m sharing it here:

 

Ooooh, what a wonderful project! If I might make some cross-border observations that an actual Canadian might find lacking, I would, first of all, identify the key attributes of not just each province but each region of each province and target different themes and different platforms that will work will for each. I’d remember the wild successes on my side of the border of “Don’t Mess With Texas”–which started as an anti-littering campaign and became an unofficial state slogan and a core part of Texans’ identity–and the “I Love New York” campaign that helped the Big Apple find its way from near-depression in the 1970s to, once again, the happening place that “everyone” wants to be part of–and then the state successfully expanded the campaign to talk about all the other parts of New York State.

In libertarian rural Alberta, it might be about the personal freedom to enjoy clean, smoke-free air and the desire to keep out of the clutches of National Health Service doctors by staying healthy. For Quebec City, ads (in French, of course) that might make Anglophone Canadians choke but appeal to the sense of separate identity, e.g., “Oui, we are a beautiful capital city–but we also want to be the capital of good health and clean air.” In a more rural part of Quebec, such as the Gaspésie, they might tout the health benefits of the rural lifestyle, fresh food, and clean lungs.

In the Inuit areas, it might focus on communitarianism, tribal values, etc. For the Metro Toronto and Vancouver markets, perhaps an appeal to cosmopolitan sophistication. “Thinking of smoking as cool is SO 1950s. We’re too smart for that now.”

This national effort of a series of hyperlocal campaigns would need people on the ground in each area to really figure out the touchpoints for each audience slice. And it would be across many media, from traditional TV and print and radio to Instagram, TikTok, etc.

AND it would include a significant curriculum component starting around 3rd grade, to build the defenses of rising generations against tobacco industry hype, to inoculate students with the knowledge of health, economic, and pollution/carbon consequences, and to foster development of healthy lifestyles and a different set of pleasures.Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Activism, Branding, Consumer Issues, Corporate Social Responsibility, Democracy, Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Environment, General Commentary, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, Green Marketing, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, People Helping People, Politics, Talking to the Other Side Tagged with , , ,

A lead story in my local paper covers a proposed ordinance banning plastic in local businesses, with special attention to food businesses, in the small city of Northampton, MA (a big restaurant destination).

The sponsoring City Councilor is someone I know, and I wrote her this note:

Thanks for your good work on the plastics ordinance. As you know, I’ve been a green guy for 50 years, write books and give talks on greening business. One of my talks is called “Making Green Sexy.” Thus, the concerns I have with the plastics bill you’re championing are not about the intent. I would like to see potential problems addressed before it becomes law–so we avoid a debacle like the one we just had over the Main Street improvements (which I loved) and their sad, swift demise).

My big concern is that “recyclable” food containers aren’t recyclable, because paper and cardboard with food waste is not recyclable. We already know we’re not supposed to recycle pizza boxes. Any food waste in paper for recycling could cause the whole batch (potentially thousands of pounds) to be landfilled. It would make more sense to 1) require compostable, and 2) provide city composting stations in several neighborhoods as well as multiple ones downtown. It makes no sense to require compostable and do nothing to encourage composting. Many people will eat their food while still downtown and won’t be bothered to bring their compostable containers to their home compost pile or may not have access to composting at home.

Second, on the straw issue [banning plastic drinking straws]. Why not simply make an exemption for people with motor disabilities in their arms or mouth. For most businesses, a box of 100 plastic straws would probably last months.

Please share this note with your committee at today’s meeting.

We see over and over again that good intentions, not thought through, create more problems than they solve. The Main Street issue involved the city making its extremely wide Main Street much friendlier to bicyclists, pedestrians, and patrons of restaurant outdoor dining areas (which, in the pandemic, have increased in number tremendously)—but failing to get buy-in from (or even consult with) affected business owners, who agitated successfully, and the mayor removed all the improvements. This was sad, as a better situation returned to a worse one, wasting significant money in the process.

In my mind, the lesson was to think things through before acting.

I got this response, which shows that the councilors are indeed thinking about these issues:

Hi Shel- thanks for your support and counsel! Straws for those with disabilities are exempt. We are requiring reusable or compostable and are working on composting services and bulk buying.

Which then says to me that they’ve got a marketing challenge. The general public doesn’t know about this exemption. They also had a marketing challenge with the Main Street improvements. Getting affected parties to participate in decisions that affect them is always a good strategy. Putting in improvements only to discover that vested interests will fight them is not. The trick is to win over those vested interests before they dig in their heels.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Business Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility, Diversity, Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Entrepreneurship, Environment, Green Business, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, Innovation, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , ,

If you’re wondering how social entrepreneurship works at a marquis company, try this New York Times interview with Patagonia’s recent CEO, Rose Marcario.

I’ve cited Patagonia many times as an example of a company that gets a lot of things right. Social responsibility is part of its DNA and has been from the very beginning. I was very intersted to learn about some of the initiatives under Marcario’s leadership, and particularly the open embrace of political activism.Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Ethics in Government, Gratitude, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News, People Helping People, Politics, Protests and Crackdowns, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , , , ,
A recent Black Lives Matter protest in Portland, OR, June 4, 2020

Happy Juneteenth. As you probably know by now, June 19th is a Black American holiday celebrating the day the last slaves in a Confederate state finally got the news that slavery had been overturned 2-1/2 years earlier (four Union states still permitted slavery for a few more months, until the 13th Amendment became law).

A recent Black Lives Matter protest in Portland, OR, June 4, 2020
A recent Black Lives Matter protest in Portland, OR, June 4, 2020

You also probably know that the guy in the White House planned to have his first live indoor rally in months today–and rubbing salt in the wounds, it was going to be in Tulsa, site of the worst violence against a black community in the history of the US (in 1921). And of course, you know that the US has been rocked by racial justice protests for weeks, following the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.

The public outcry was so fierce that even a group as tone-deaf as his campaign staff (who apparently knew about both of these events ahead of setting the date), and as deliberately inflammatory and reluctant to admit wrong as the man himself, had to walk it back. The rally will still be in Tulsa, but tomorrow.

Both Bruce Dart, head of Tulsa’s health department, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, the face of the federal response to coronavirus, are very unhappy about this, BTW, as COVID-19 cases have been climbing rapidly there.

Which brings home the point that nonviolent citizen action is effective even against a thuggish, narcissistic, pathological liar and would-be lifetime dictator like this one. Here are five particularly famous examples, among thousands. I have personally participated in dozens of nonviolent events or sustained campaigns that had significant impact, most spectacularly the Seabrook Occupation of 1977 and the year-long Save the Mountain campaign I founded in 1999.

Not coincidentally, black organizers of Tulsa’s annual Juneteenth celebration, who had canceled the event over the virus, uncanceled it and are now expecting 30,000 people (11,000 more than will be at the re-election rally).

How I Will Mark Juneteenth

I’m attending two Juneteenth events today: first, a virtual celebration featuring two black Jewish rabbis who are both musicians at 5 pm ET/2 pm PT, and second, a live candlelight vigil, with distancing and masks, at the site of the Sojourner Truth statue in Florence, Massachusetts, a 20-minute drive from my home.Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Branding, Business-general, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Networking, Publishing, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , , ,

Have you been dithering about starting a blog? Blogging provides several advantages in your marketing, but a lot of people are scared off by the idea.

It’s not that hard. A no-cost tool called WordPress makes it easy.

WordPress dashboard showing the ribbon, file naming, and text-editing window
WordPress dashboard showing the ribbon, file naming, and text-editing window

WordPress is a terrific platform. I have never heard of it not working on a site, though if your host company doesn’t support it, you’d need to do a manual installation (any web designer could help you with that). Most webhosts have one-click WordPress installation in their CPanels.

You do need to know some things about WP before you set up.

  • There is WordPress.com, which is hosted on THEIR servers, and WordPress.org, where your content is hosted on YOUR server (you don’t have to own your server–let your hosting company do that). You want .ORG, so you have full control over the content and cant be held hostage over it. Neither one charges money.
  • WordPress is a very simple shell that uses “themes” to determine the look and feel. There are thousands of themes out there, some at no cost and others for a fee. Find one you like that can incorporate your company branding, but play with it to see how easy it is to work. There are some that nest text inside Java routines as one example) and I have found it’s really tough to find the place I need to be to make minor edits.
  • Editing in WordPress is really easy, assuming you picked a theme that didn’t have the issue I just described. If you turn off the blocks feature, the interface is similar to Microsoft Word or GMail . So you don’t have to learn any HTML. Instead of using angle brackets to e.g. turn your text bold and then back to regular, you just highlight the text and click the B button in the formatting ribbon. You can see that ribbon at the top of the screenshot.
  • Find and install a few key plugins: a backup program so if WP utterly collapses, you still have your content; a file-namer that gives your posts a meaningful name taken from your headline (see where it says “Permalink” on the screenshot?), probably some others.
  • WordPress updates frequently, both to add function and to beef up security. Set yours up to automatically run the updater, but remember to check every now and then to see if you need to update your plugins. Updating is just a few clicks and very intuitive.
  • You have a choice every time you post new content: a post, which goes at the top of your blog (which posts in reverse chronological order so the newest is on top) or a page, which is part of your permanent website structure and can be organized with menus, etc. Posts can also be sorted by category, so your reader can see everything you’ve put in any particular category just by clicking on the category name. I find it very worth the extra few minutes to add categories, keyword tags (which help people find your post), a picture, and an excerpt.
  • Consider having a designer set up the site to begin with, making sure they know you want a theme that’s easy to edit posts, and then posting your own content from there.

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By Posted on Posted in Advertising, Branding, Business Ethics, Consumer Issues, Corporate Social Responsibility, Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Environment, General Commentary, Green Business, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, Green Marketing, Innovation, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Technology Tagged with , ,

We still have a long way to go on eco-friendly packaging. I just finished a box of crackers. I washed out the plastic tray and will add it to the plastics recycling bag when it dries, put the box in the paper recycling bin, and threw away the shrink-wrap around the tray in the actual trash.

cracker box, tray, and inner shrinkwrap
Excess packaging: cracker box, tray, and inner shrink-wrap. Photo by Shel Horowitz

Most people won’t bother to do all this. Designers: this is a profit opportunity for you: create packaging that people only have to put in one place when it’s over, and that can be repurposed later–and remember that today’s compostable “solution” is only an alternative if people have access to an industrial compost facility. Most people don’t.

And businesses: as you adopt truly eco-friendly packaging, you’ve got a branding and marketing opportunity.Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Activism, Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Entrepreneurship, Environment, Ethics in Government, Innovation, language, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, People Helping People, Politics, poverty, Protests and Crackdowns, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice, Talking to the Other Side Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

Erica Chenoweth, nonviolent activism researcher
Erica Chenoweth, nonviolent activism researcher

Yesterday and today, I’ve listened to a bunch of the EarthDayLive2020 conference. It’s exciting to see this intergenerational, intercultural, and very smart group of activists and performers  attracting thousands of viewers over Zoom.

One speaker, Erica Chenowith, tossed off a remark that changed everything I think about the 2020 US presidential election. She said—and this is so clear after all the progressives exited the race—that we get involved with this election not to choose our ally but to choose our adversary (she used the term “enemy,” but I think my term gets her meaning more accurately).

This, to me, might be the secret sauce for getting progressives to come out and vote. In this scenario, Biden migrates from lesser evil to far, far better adversary. With a moderate and relatively honest Democrat in the White House, progressives will have a much easier time moving our agenda forward. Biden will be more pliable on economic issues, on the social safety net, and on the environment. He is no Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren, but he is someone who does listen, and who occasionally changes his mind—as he did on same-sex marriage. In the Bill Clinton era, he supported the horrid DOMA, but he pushed Obama well to the left when marriage equality came to the tipping point.

He is already likely to reinstate the US into the Paris Climate Accord. Once he understands how the Green New Deal will create jobs, put discretionary spending into people’s pockets, and reduce our vulnerability both to foreign oil oligarchs and to runaway multinational corporations—thus reducing the risk of war—I think he would support it or at least not interfere with it.

And while the Obama administration, where he was VP, had a poor record on immigration justice, the cruelty that DT has consistently shown to immigrants and refugees is orders of magnitude worse. I saw this with my own eyes in a week volunteering at the US/Mexico border in February; my wife wrote this piece about it.

In other words, a Biden administration would be a much more welcome adversary. It would be more humane, more willing to work with other countries, interested in preserving rather than destroying the environment—and far more predictable. And it would be a complete rejection of the apparent main goal of the current occupant: to make himself even richer and everyone else be damned. In other words, Biden will be someone who will respond as we would like him to, at least some of the time—and who is unlikely to ever engage in the viciously destructive hate-based politics we see every day.

There’s ample precedent. LBJ, the long-time Southern politician, not JFK, the liberal icon, was the one who signed several pieces of civil rights legislation and declared war on poverty. Richard Nixon, a Republican and anticommunist extremist, was probably the president who did the most to protect the  environment other than perhaps Obama–not because he believed in the cause, but because public outcry left him no other choice. (Of course, the good work Johnson and Nixon did on these issues in no way gives them a pass around the Vietnam war, domestic repression, etc.)

I’d love to hear from progressives who take electoral politics seriously—is this the way we attract young disillusioned progressives who are ready to sit out the election because we are once again stuck with a centrist candidate who doesn’t really represent us? Please weigh inFacebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail