Lately, my inbox is full of courses to market via Facebook Messenger.
I actually hit reply to one that began, “What if you could use FB Messenger to make up to $2,500 a week… in your spare time?”:
What if we could have ONE communication channel that doesn’t get polluted by marketers trying to hijack it? There is no refuge anymore! I remember when the only things in my inbox were things I wanted. I remember when I didn’t get blasted with texts from companies that don’t even know me. I am a marketer, and I understand the need to reach out. But damn it, we need some spaces where we’re not getting marketed to.
I do get it. Every time someone invents a great new communication tool, someone else invents a way to sneak marketing messages past the gatekeeper. And then someone else invents some protection. And usually, someone else invents a way to overcome that block.
Postal mail begat bulk mail, which begat opening mail over the recycle bin, which begat postcards and envelope teasers. Telephones begat outbound call centers, which begat caller ID, which begat robocalls with spoofed IDs. Email begat spam, which begat spam filters, which begat messages crafted to go around them, which begat Google’s Promotions and Social folders (which severely impacted legitimate newsletter publishers and didn’t seem to hurt the spammers much).
It’s an arms race. The Cold War in all your inboxes. Ads in toilet stalls. Digital ads on billboards changing every few seconds. Ads on the frame around the taxi rates placard on the divider between the front and back seats in a cab.
But here’s the thing: all of these intrusive methods are dinosaur-marketing. Seth Godin told us 20 years ago about permission marketing.
Seth Godin. Photo by Jill Greenberg. Courtesy of Seth Godin.
Seth has permission to be in MY mailbox. His daily blog shows up every day. I actually open and read every column for his useful information and fresh perspectives. Often, he offers a program or product—but it’s in context .
Seth walks his talk. And I buy from him occasionally. (I also sometimes share or email him comments. That, plus writing a great book, got him to endorse my 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World.)
You don’t win customers by shouting louder; you win them by being relevant and helpful, and using the technology intelligently:
Instead of random texting, text your own customers who’ve given you their mobile numbers as they show up within a mile of you, with friendly, helpful information about today’s cool event (yes, geotexting exists)
Instead of using robocalls to make deceptive offers, use them to notify your customer base of important news, like a weather-related school closing or a construction delay on a major artery
If your Facebook page uses the automated FB Messenger feature, send links to your FAQ and three most popular or useful pages on your own website—but also make sure you have a human being reading the inbound messages and responding quickly. And figure out a way to only send that autoresponder the first time you get a PM from any specific person.
So here’s MY soft-sell pitch at the end of this useful (I hope) content: if you need help developing non-intrusive, welcomed marketing, drop me a line or give me a call. Especially if your business or product/service/idea contributes to environmental and social good.
I’m a big fan of Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. She’s been my Senator for more than six years, and I was aware of her consumer advocacy for several years before that. In the crowded field of Democrats seeking the presidency, she’s my top choice.
I’ve been puzzling about this for almost two weeks, looking for something fresh to say that hasn’t been said before, as in this article by Megan Day:
In Warren’s scenario, Fox News’s politics will be defeated by a few principled liberal politicians engaging in a media blackout. In [Bernie] Sanders’s, Fox News’s politics will be defeated when the Left convinces a significant portion of the Right’s working-class base that they’ve been duped, and that the pro-worker left best represents their political interests...
By refusing to go on Fox News, Warren has demonstrated that she doesn’t take this task as seriously as she ought to. As Sanders has plainly stated, the power of the capitalist class is so formidable that it will take a huge movement of millions of united workers to actually overcome it in reality. Warren’s policy ideas are frequently excellent, but without a fundamental orientation toward the very people who stand to benefit from them, they stand little chance of materializing.
I agree with Day. Warren’s better policy initiatives are not enough if she’s going to rely on the liberal elite to make them a reality.
And she should know this. She’s a born organizer, and her speeches are very approachable. Like that guy in the White House, she understands how to talk to ordinary people with in some cases limited education, to make them feel excited by (and ownership of) her ideas.
Yes, Fox is toxic. But when people have swallowed poison, you go in and pump their stomachs. The argument she makes that she doesn’t want to enrich the network or legitimize it seems spurious. After all, Bernie Sanders attacked Fox during the Town Hall they gave him and televised.
And then it hit me that my own start in journalism was very relevant.
In 1972, as a 15-year-old junior at Bronx High School of Science, I got my first article bylines–covering peace demonstrations and other progressive events. I didn’t get them in the official school newspaper; writing for Science Survey was only an option for the students in the honors journalism English class.
I got them in one of the school’s underground papers. A paper called Insight, published by a small group of right-wingers who identified as libertarians. They ran my stuff with disclaimers: “the following article does not reflect the views of the management,” etc.
But they ran my stuff! I was able to share my viewpoint, encourage the peace and environmental agendas of groups I was involved with, and build a publication portfolio that led to a 45-year writing career and the authorship of 10 books and thousands of articles.
And even at the time, I felt that maybe the best part was that they put me in front of an audience that was skeptical of my views. They gave me a forum to reach people who disagreed with me. I have no idea if I changed anyone’s mind, but I was given that chance.
“In a world that seems like chaos, your reflections are rebellious, daring and needed.”
My birthday sparked a lovely exchange with a devoted fan of the daily Gratitude Journal I’ve been posting on Facebook since March (and plan to turn into a book). She gave permission to post her comments, but not her identity. Hers are in regular type, and my responses are in italic:
Happy Happy Birthday! And I love all the gratitude and aha moments that you share. That level of reflection is an art unto itself. Sometimes being present is the best present we give to ourselves and others. HAPPY BIRTHDAY! Celebrate well!
Thanks for your sweet and thoughtful message. It means a lot that the work I do here is appreciated by you and others.
It really is. And what a journal to capture the rollercoaster that is that life-is-so-daily, so stand up for what you believe in, get outside to appreciate the places around you, love your people and carpe diem.
You teach us and re-affirm that with every post. In a world that seems like chaos, your reflections are rebellious, daring and needed. Your posts remind all your readers that little moments matter, that meals matter, that who we spend time helping matters, that community is important. All those messages are needed in the cacophony of today’s world.
And that’s exactly why I do it! I believe that modeling the world I want to live in actually does help create that world. I try not to attack people personally even as I vehemently disagree with them (though some in the current administration, as well as some of the trolls, make that very challenging). I try to share more posts about people repairing the world than destroying.
We hear lots of talk about being customer-centric—but then we see far too many examples of companies that DON’T walk their talk. I still remember seeing a sign inside a Blockbuster Video store, maybe 20 years ago, talking about their empowered employees. I went up to the counter clerk and asked permission to snap a picture of the sign; I wanted to use it as a positive example in the customer service section of the marketing book I was writing—and the clerk said I’d have to call corporate headquarters. What kind of empowered employee is that? I was so disgusted I never set foot in another Blockbuster.
Most companies will need to make three shifts at the same time to become truly customer-centric. All three are challenging but bring very big returns.
Create a culture where employees feel valued and listened to—where what they do makes a difference. Empower them not just to fix customers’ problems but to harness their own creativity to create preemptive change. IN the trenches every day, employees often have the best ideas for improving things. But they will only share those ideas if they think management will pay attention and that they won’t get punished in any way. No matter how crazy an idea may seem, give it a full airing. Often, you can modify it to be practical, and implement those pieces. Consider implementing a reward system for any idea. The reward doesn’t have to be monetary. It could be as simple as naming the employee with the best idea, or with the most ideas, Employee of the Month. However, if the idea saves or makes the company a big pile, the originator should get a money reward too. For hierarchical companies, this means letting go of command-and-control and making line employees feel that management really wants their ideas—which can be discussed in public meetings/assigned to study/IMPLEMENTATION committees and NEVER dismissed out-of-hand by a manager either 1:1 or in public. This takes training, of course.
Really listen to your customers. Don’t just wait for them to complain. Go out and ask them what they love about working with you, and what they’d like you to improve—and why.
A woman on a customer service call, taking handwritten notes
Treat this seriously and publicize the way their suggestions become innovations (including honoring them by name, if they consent). Not only will this show how responsive you are, it encourages more people to jump in with their own ideas.
Align your company with a higher purpose. If people feel that you’re making both a difference and a profit, they will become much more enthusiastic Employee turnover drops while productivity goes up, customer retention increases, and you might even become a media darling. For instance, can you identify, develop, and market a profitable product or service that actually helps turn hunger and poverty into abundance, war into peace, or catastrophic climate change into planetary balance?
Bonus tip, because I like to overdeliver: shift from a scarcity to an abundance mindset. Replace “yes, but” with “yes, and”: expand the possibilities, build off that suggestions until you’ve co-created something wonderful. Then go implement it!
Need help? This is what I do in my consulting, writing, and speaking. I’m really good at finding opportunities for almost any company to “do well by doing good” (old Quaker saying): to find profitable niches that make the world better, and to create the products and services to fill those niches. Here’s my contact info. Want to learn more? Drop by https://goingbeyondsustainability.com/ and have an explore.
Never Under-Estimate the Immune System | John Hagel warns us of the almost reflex rejection of new ideas by the innately conservative culture of organizations, and which may be the central weakness of organizations to the world of today:
Every large and successful institution has an immune system– a collection of individuals who are prepared to mobilize at the slightest sign of any “outside” ideas or people in order to ensure that these foreign bodies are neutralized and that the existing institution survives intact and can continue on course. Just like the immune system all organisms have, this institutional immune system is adept at recognizing foreign bodies as soon as they appear and very effective at protecting the institution from infection. It is in fact what has helped large institutions to survive – they are in fact “built to last.”
But here’s the paradox: the immune system that has given large institutions extraordinary resilience in the past may be the very thing that makes these institutions so vulnerable today.
I clicked through to the original article. Hagel continues:
In more stable times, institutional immune systems are very effective at keeping institutions focused and on course, resistant to the distractions that might lead to their downfall. In more rapidly changing and volatile signs, this same immune system can become deadly by resisting the very changes that are required for the survival of the institution…
I’ve been involved in large scale transformation efforts for decades now and there’s only one lesson that I really have to share from all that experience: never, ever under-estimate the power of the immune system of a large existing institution…
[W]e need to craft approaches to transformation that have the ability to respect the power of the immune system and find ways to minimize the risk that the immune system will mobilize to crush the transformation effort. [emphasis in original]
Pointing out that threat-based change increases resistance, Hagel lays out a detailed transformational change action map that positions change as an opportunity. It’s worth reading.
Progressives and environmentalists often try to motivate negatively: through guilt, shame, and fear. And as I think about it, I realize the Right also uses negative motivations, notably fear and greed. Both sides are Chicken Littles, screaming that the world will end. So the far-Left gets people sunk and worried that the world will end, while the far-Right gets people on a treadmill of hatred, xenophobia, etc.
Neither of these approaches create positive social change. But Hagel’s focus on showing the opportunities does.
Boyd focuses on workforce issues, Hagel apparently on organizational transformation. My own focus is on opportunities for transformational social/environmental change to intersect and overlap with business profitability. In my own work, I often talk about the need to motivate positively. I’ve spent the last five years demonstrating those opportunities. I show business how to identify/create/market profitable offerings that turn hunger and poverty into abundance, war into peace, and catastrophic climate change into planetary balance–not through guilt, shame, and fear, but through enlightened organizational and personal self-interest. Thus, my speaking and writing focuses on building profitability through those social and environmental change products and services. A successful initiative:
Finds money in making the world better
Creates brand loyalty leading to repeat and ever-larger purchases
Encourages customers to spread the word about your good work, inspiring an army of unpaid brand ambassadors
Reduces operating costs and internal resource consumption (in keeping with Hagel’s challenge to avoid igniting the corporate immune system by minimizing new initiative’s need for resources )
And of course, actually does improve things for those suffering the consequences of crises like hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change
As the primary author of two books in the Guerrilla Marketing series (Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World and Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green) and a speaker at the recent Guerrilla Marketing Summit, I was very interested in how the digital marketing pioneer Hubspot views the whole Guerrilla Marketing concept and brand.
In their seven examples, I was particularly thrilled that they included UNICEF’s super-successful Dirty Water campaign.
Screenshot of a still from the UNICEF “Dirty Water” video
After all, my two Guerrilla books are the ones that extend the Guerrilla Marketing concepts to the worlds of social change of environmentalism. This was a bit of a gamble for UNICEF; there were obviously significant costs in everything from developing the branding to shipping the filthy water. I hope they’re replicating the campaign in other cities, and creating strong follow-up messaging targeted specifically to those touched by this campaign, to keep them donating into the future.
My definition of Guerrilla Marketing is a lot broader than Hubspot’s. To me, Guerrilla Marketing has three main parts:
Being nimble in our thinking and actions, seizing opportunities quickly, including news tie-ins
Going outside and beyond conventional thinking patterns–disrupting the mental flow to get noticed, to move people to action, but in ways that don’t feel obnoxiously intrusive
Focusing not on how great your brand is (the mistake I see so many marketers make. I call it “we, we, we all the way home) but on the results: the benefits, the problems solved, the pain relieved, the wants and needs met or exceeded–whether for the individual customer or for the planet and the species that live on it.
Hubspot’s choice of the Bounty sculpture is a beautiful example.
Ideally, Guerrilla Marketing will be done at little cost, too. But, as the UNICEF and Grammy examples show, there are plenty of Guerrilla Marketing opportunities that aren’t necessarily cheap.
Let’s look at those two more closely, because they offer us very different lessons. It will take you exactly three minutes and 40 seconds to watch the two videos. Go ahead; I’ll wait.
UNICEF
This elaborate campaign involved creating a brand, bottling filthy brown water, and offering it on the streets of New York. The goal: to increase awareness that the clean, drinkable water we take for granted in most of the US (and the developed world generally) is unimaginable luxury for people at the margins in developing countries. Many have to drink filthy, disease-causing water, and many get very sick. The campaign encouraged people to use the money they currently spend on bottled water to provide clean water for those who don’t have it. Each dollar could supply a thirsty child for 40 days. The video documents the whole campaign, in a fast-paced three minutes.
I found this very effective. I love the way they were able to not just raise awareness, but funds. The negative branding is definitely a Guerrilla tactic, and the results are clearly positive. Bravo!
Grammy Ad
This was an expensive missed opportunity. Maybe it’s a generational thing, but this one really didn’t work for me. Great concept, but terrible execution. I want the protagonist be moved and touched by what he’s seeing, but he strolls through the talking posters, blithe and indifferent. He’s not even glancing at the posters! What’s going on in HIS head? We don’t even get a hint. Have the talking portraits of Harry Potter and the constant animations of things people didn’t animate in the past made a talking poster no-longer-special? And while my wife frequently accuses me of ADD, I found that I hadn’t even processed and recognized one song before it switched after a few seconds to something else. (And OK, I confess, this was not music I’m familiar with anyway). Some of the problem was that the songs all sounded so similar and all seemed to have the exact same beat.
I also think the choice of having multiple copies of each poster was unfortunate. Yes, I recognize that’s a common way to display posters in urban environments. It has NEVER worked for me. I’ve studied some of the advertising masters like David Ogilvy, and they taught me the importance of white space: of having one central object (or person, animal, tree…) able to stand out from what’s around it, because of that empty space around it. If I were buying billboards, instead of, say, 9 medium-sized repeated pictures, I’d use the space for one much larger version of the image. I’d use that white space and not add to the clutter.
Imagine walking down the street and seeing a 20-foot billboard suddenly start to sing with its one and only mouth! Imagine hearing snippets of three or four songs that each have a clear identity, in a true medley, each sung by one giant poster of an artist you recognize instantly. Would you be as blase as the protagonist? I doubt it!
So maybe the commercial would need a full minute instead of 39 seconds. That’s OK. In print copywriting, it’s perfectly OK to take as much time as you need to tell the story; I’ve seen emails with links to 40-page sales letters. Even in broadcast, even though airtime is expensive, we’ve seen many successful commercials that ran an hour (they’re called infomercials and they run on shopping channels). The UNICEF video was three entire minutes and I watched without multitasking, because I was interested both in their message and how they promoted it. If you can’t get it done in less than a minute, either buy more airtime, or script a commercial that CAN get it done in the time you bought.
Everyone should read this article on why Democrats should abandon wimpy centrism. The link is in the first paragraph of the post.
Here’s an essay I wish I had written: Why do Democrats love limp dishrag centrism?, by Ryan Cooper. It eloquently expresses a lot of things I’ve been saying for a long time. Spend a few minutes reading it, then please come back here for some deeper context and a longer, more historical perspective. The link will open a new tab, so this one will still be up on a computer screen (not true from a phone, but you should have a Back arrow)
Consider these tidbits:
The last non-incumbent Democrat who won the presidency as an obvious centrist without a third-party candidate siphoning off significant votes from the Republicans was Jimmy Carter; the one before was John F. Kennedy. Bill
Clinton had help from the third-party campaign of H. Ross Perot. Obama ran on a platform of “Hope and Change” that looked pretty progressive if you didn’t look too closely. LBJ was already an incumbent in 1964, and withdrew his bid in 1968 in the face of progressive challenges from Bobby Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy. Centrists Carter (running for re-election in 1980), Mondale (1984), and Dukakis (1988) lost honestly. Gore (2000), Kerry (2004), and Hillary Clinton (2016) chose not to seriously contest highly suspicious election results.
It is true that the only progressive nominated in my lifetime to head the ticket of a major party, George McGovern, was badly defeated. However, there were a number of factors besides his agenda: He threw his running mate under the bus after saying he’d stand behind him “1000 percent.” He was an incredibly uncharismatic campaigner (at age 15, I witnessed one of his pathetic rallies). And he couldn’t count on his greatest constituency–antiwar youth–because 18-to-20 year olds didn’t get the right to vote until 1971. And, just like Howard Dean, Dennis Kucinich, and Bernie Sanders in more recent years, he got basically no support–let’s state the truth: active hostility–from the Democratic Party establishment. As that same NPR piece that reported on McGovern’s VP fiasco notes,
The post-election reforms instituted by Sen. George McGovern (D-SD) made sure that, starting in 1972, delegates would be decided in primaries, not backroom deals, and that primaries — not smoke-filled rooms — would determine the nominee. The fact that McGovern, a strong opponent of the war, would win the nomination — helping, along the way, to curtail the power of such longtime Democratic leaders/bosses like Daley — was one reason why many in the Democratic Old Guard refused to unite behind their presidential candidate.
Interestingly, that same NPR link also shows that people respect and support candidates who actually have the guts to stand up and fight. In response to a reader question lower on the page, writer Ken Rudin points out that only one of the 126 Democrats who voted against the Iraq war in 2002 lost that November. I know that in my own district, I felt that his vote against the war was important enough that I voted for Richie Neal for the first and only time. My town has since been moved to an adjoining district, but I’m actively supporting and advising Neal’s progressive opponent, Tahirah Amatul-Wadud.
The Democrats need to realize that they are sabotaging themselves when the sabotage progressive candidates and refuse to fight against the continuous Republican encroachments. They need to stand up and fight back when the Mitch McConnells of this country undermine the people’s agenda. They need to give active support to candidates who inspire, and can win. The same old same old doesn’t cut it anymore. Cooper’s “dishrag centrists” won’t win a majority in Congress, and those elected won’t be a force for change. They need to recognize that even many of the votes for DT were votes for change, and that they could harness that momentum for a progressive agenda.
It’s time to change that. Run good candidates. Take back the House and maybe the Senate. Push the people’s agenda. Call out the Republican traitors, saboteurs, and liars; oppose them at every turn. And run someone who has skills, experiences, AND an agenda to lead the ticket in 2020. Fighting the slide toward fascism is not enough. The Dems must be for a positive agenda as well as against their opponent’s agenda. This a point even made in this New York Times “report” on DT’s hypothetical 2020 re-election. While the author’s intent was to warn against a slate that’s too progressive, to me the message to the Democrats is not that at all, but to make sure that any progressive slate has a powerful agenda that helps ordinary people.
Why This Matters: A Metaphor for Something Much Deeper
Why am I going on about this? Why does it matter? Isn’t it just some people having fun making a feel-good film?
Answer: I do marketing and strategic profitability consulting for green and social change organizations, as well as for authors and publishers–and I’m also a lifelong activist. This combination of activism and marketing gives me another set of lenses to filter things, as well as a magnificent toolkit to make the world better. My activism also brings a strong sense of ethics into the marketing side.
Both as a marketer and an activist, I pay careful attention to how we motivate people to take action–to the psychology of messaging, One category for this post is psychology; click on that category to get posts going back many years. I worry deeply about our tendency as a society to crowd out facts with emotions. (I also worry about another tendency, to crowd out emotions with facts, but that’s a different post.)
And this is an example of crowding out facts with emotion. While this particular instance is innocuous as far as I can tell, we see examples of overreach on both the left and right, and they work to push us apart from each other, talk at each other instead of seeking common ground, and push real solutions farther and farther out of reach.
My inbox is full of scare-tactic emails from progressive, environmental, or Democratic Party organizations. Because I’m in the biz and understand what they’re doing, I leave most of them unopened. I just searched my unread emails for subject lines that contain the word “Breaking” and came with hundreds, including this one from a group called Win Without War:
An unarmed man with a small flag stops four Chinese tanks in Tiannanmen Square, Beijing,
It’s a clear attempt to generate hysteria, to have people perceiving tanks in the streets with their guns pointed at dissenters.
Only in the body of the email do we find out what’s really going on:
Shel —
Last night, the Washington Post broke the story that Donald Trump has ordered a giant military parade with tanks, guns, and troops taking over the streets of our nation’s capital. [1] This is the kind of parade that dictators around the world use to intimidate their enemies and, more importantly, their own citizens.
This is what authoritarian dictatorships look like.
But Trump can’t change the fact that we still live in a democracy — which means Washington, D.C.’s local government gets to have a say before Donald Trump’s tanks roll down its streets.
Note the use of mail merge software to appear personal. Does that really fool anybody anymore? But OK, even when you know it’s a mail merge, it still generates at least a small warm fuzzy.
More importantly, note that the actual content is totally different from the expectation in the headline. We can argue the foolishness of Trump wanting a military parade (I think it’s foolish, and an expensive attempt to stroke his ego)–but in no way is this the same as attacking demonstrators in the streets of Washington, DC.
The right wing is at least as bad. I don’t subscribe to their e-blasts, but I found this juicy example (with an introduction and then a rebuttal by the site hosting this post) in about ten seconds of searching.
And then there are DT’s own Tweets, news conferences, and speeches, both during the campaign and since he took the oath to uphold the constitution as President of the United States (an oath he has been in violation of every single day of his term). They are full of lies, misrepresentations, name-calling, bullying, and fear-mongering. They are hate speech. I will not give them legitimacy by quoting them here; they’re easy enough to find.
As a country, we are better than this..
How You Can “Vaccinate” Yourself Against Sensationalist Fear-mongering
Before sharing any news story or meme, run through a series of questions to help you identify if it’s real.And if it passes that test, pop on rumor-checking site Snopes and check its status. For that matter, go through a similar questions for advertising claims.
The questions will vary by the situation. Here are a few to get you started:
Does the post link to documentation? Are most of the linked sites reputable? If they advance a specific agenda, does the post disclose this? (Note that THIS post links to several reputable sites, including NPR, New York Times, history.com, Wikipedia, Youtube, Google, CNN, Snopes, and my own goingbeyondsustainability.com and greenandprofitable.com. Yes, I am aware of the issues in using Wikipedia or Youtube as the only source. I am also aware that Google gives them a tremendous amount of “link juice” because on the whole, they are considered authoritative. For both those citations, I had plenty of documentation from major news sites.) Strong documentation linking to known and respected sources is a sign to take the post seriously.
Does the post name-drop without specifics? See how the Win Without War letter mentions the Washington Post but leaves out the link? Remember that ancient email hoax citing longtime NPR reporter Nina Totenberg? Name-dropping to buy unsusbstantiated respect is not a good sign.
Are the language and tone calm and rational, or screaming and sensationalist or even salacious?
Is the post attributed? Can you easily contact the creator?
And last but far from least, the most important question: Who benefits from the post’s point of view ? What are their relationships to the post’s creator? (Hello, Russian trollbots!). Don’t just follow the money. Follow the power dynamics, too.
I could go on but you get the idea. Please share your reactions in the comments.
Back in 1995, I cast a vote that had long-lasting consequences. We all did.
I’m speaking, of course, of the vote to add the color blue to M&Ms. Looking back, I realize now that it was the Brexit of candy votes.
But let me back up. For most of my childhood, M&Ms were as colorfully bland and reassuring as a 1970s kitchen.
Just dark brown, tan, orange, yellow and green. No red. Those caused cancer.
But by the time the 90s rolled around, America was in full 70s rejection mode, and M&Ms decided it was time to add a new color to the fabled mix.
And we got to vote on what it would be: pink, purple, or blue.
It wasn’t much of a decision, really: pink or purple clearly didn’t “go” with the rest of that harvest goal palette. I mean, really.
And so blue won in a landslide.
But the day they made that announcement, they told us something they hadn’t told us before: this “new color” was going to… replace… TAN.
And all of a sudden, this silly little vote had real consequences (as far as candy colors go, at least). And I didn’t like those consequences.
And I really didn’t like that I didn’t know about this whole “sacrificial tan” thing ahead of time.
I have no idea what the real reason was for M&M’s leadership to sacrifice tan. But whatever the reason, apparently it was a decision they made BEFORE they announced the results of the vote… and likely before they even decided to have a vote at all… because they had already decided to get rid of tan.
And yes, one of the truths of leadership is that sometimes there are these binary either/or choices we have to make in order to make a successful change. Opening a new office here means not opening one there. Hiring this person means not hiring that one.
But binary choices aren’t the problem. The real problem is when a binary choice isn’t presented as one. When we don’t give people full information about the change they’re about to make.
Why? Because we — all of us — are not rational decision makers, we are rationalizing decision makers.
We make decisions based on how we feel in the moment… and then we go back and think about them.
Which means, no matter how good you may make a decision feel in the moment, once people start really thinking about it, those once-happy, once-accepting people… aren’t.
Because they’ll feel manipulated, not led. And every time they do, they’ll be just a little less willing to trust the next change you put in front of them.
Do it enough? And you’ve lost your ability to lead change entirely.
So what can we do?
In the case of M&Ms, one single line might have made the difference between me happily eating blue M&Ms and my carrying the torch for tan all these years…
Here it is: “We’ve decided it’s time to replace tan…but, now you can help us decide what color we add next.” It’s a small addition, but a critical one, because it shows both sides of the choice. And we can only fully embrace change when we fully understand it.
So, if you’re a leader or manager, don’t shy away from the truth. Tell it. And where possible, give people real options to choose from. I know the “real options” part isn’t always possible — that’s back to the hard truths of leadership.
But even telling people that helps them better understand a change, because they’ll better understand where you’re coming from. Either way, the change will be more successful as a result.
Social-good products like this solar-powered LED lamp make a difference AND a profit
Too often, businesses think of sustainability as a “have to” instead of a “delighted to.” Let’s change that attitude! Here are three among many reasons why business leaders should be thrilled to embrace deep sustainability:
The powerful business case. More and more stakeholders are demanding that the companies they patronize address wider environmental and social issues; those who fail to do this are starting to lose market share. Not only that, but going green the RIGHT way can substantially lower costs of energy, raw materials, and other goods while building in customer loyalty and tolerance for higher prices. To say it another way, greening your company can significantly up profitability! Companies in the Fortune 500 figured this out some years ago. Pretty much all of them have sustainability departments (under various names) and have made huge progress in the past decade. Of course, we still have a long way to go. But many smaller companies are resistant. Because they see expenses, not income streams, they dig in with their old, inefficient ways. But certainly, the low-hanging fruit–taking the steps with quick payback–increases profitability directly, by raising income and lowering costs.
The ability to market sustainable goods, services, and processes to three different types of consumer: the Deep Green, who makes purchasing decisions contingent on social responsibility; the Lazy Green, who will do the right thing if it’s convenient; and the Nongreen, who is indifferent or even hostile to a sustainability agenda, but who will happily buy green products and services if they are positioned as superior (more comfortable, more durable, less toxic, etc.). Of course, these three kinds of customers need three different sets of marketing messages–something many green companies don’t understand, and thus leave a lot of money on the table.
The power of business to go beyond sustainability—to regenerativity. To actually make things better: identify/create/market *profitable* offerings that turn hunger and poverty into abundance, war into peace, and catastrophic climate change into planetary balance. Lifting people out of poverty (and creating new markets), ending war, solving climate change as ways to make money: how cool is that?
I’ve spent the last several years studying this trend and have written an award-winning book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, that shows how in detail. It’s been endorsed by over 50 business and environmental leaders, including Seth Godin and Chicken Soup for the Soul’s Jack Canfield. You can learn more at the Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World page at GoingBeyondSustainability.com (I think it’s by far the best of my 10 books, several of which have won awards or been translated and republished in other countries).
