Guest post from former Florida Congressman Alan Grayson. This originally ran in his email newsletter. I’m including all his original links and reprinting with his permission. I especially love this quote: “if you are a useless lout who has done nothing good for The People, but you still aspire to public office, then negative ads really are your only alternative.”
My son is doing a science experiment on politics and negative advertising. And the results are in. But first, a few words on negative ads.
They are pervasive. Back in 2012, virtually every dollar that the national parties spent on Congressional campaigns was spent on negative advertising. (Expenditures for and against candidates are reported to the FEC separately, so you can look it up.) It’s gotten a little better since then, but more than 90% of party and PAC advertising remains negative.
Belief in negative advertising is also pervasive. I can’t think of a single political leader or political consultant who would tell you that “positives” are more effective than “negatives.” We had an interesting example of this a few months ago. When GOP Senate Leader Mitch McConnell tried to elevate Luther Strange above Roy Moore and Mo Brooks in the Alabama Senate GOP Primary, he didn’t say anything good about Strange (apparently, a hopeless task). Instead, McConnell dumped $7 million of party money going negative on Moore and Brooks, which backfired when Moore got the GOP nomination. (And the rest . . . is history.)
Which proves that if you are a useless lout who has done nothing good for The People, but you still aspire to public office, then negative ads really are your only alternative.
So anyway, my son Stone, a 7th grader, came up with the idea that for his science project, he would try to measure the effectiveness of positive and negative ads. (He really came up with this himself. Smart kid.)
He created four positive ad posters for candidate Johnson, with suitable imagery:
JOHNSON FOR CLEAN AIR AND WATER!
JOHNSON STANDS FOR EQUALITY!
JOHNSON WILL IMPROVE EDUCATION!
JOHNSON WILL RAISE YOUR SALARY!
Each ended with the tag line “Vote for Johnson.”
Then he came up with four negative ad posters for Johnson’s opponent, Smith. They read this way:
JOHNSON IS A CROOK!
JOHNSON WILL RUIN THE ECONOMY!
JOHNSON WILL RAISE TAXES!
And the inevitable:
JOHNSON IS A COMMIE! (featuring a picture of Marx, Lenin and Mao).
Each ended with the tag line “Vote for Smith.”
So the 7th graders saw the posters, and voted as follows:
Johnson 19
Smith 12
When my son told me the results, I felt an enormous sense of relief. I really wanted Johnson to win, and not just because he’s a Commie. No, I wanted Johnson to win because his positive ads are an effort to convey to the voters the enormous power that we all have. What power? The power to make the world a better place, by making better rules for everyone.
That’s why I do it, anyway.
You can look at these results and feel a renewed faith in humanity. Or if not all humanity, at least seventh-graders.
Under the guise of protecting small business from frivolous lawsuits, the House of Representatives just gutted the Americans With Disabilities Act—a major piece of civil rights legislation signed by George H.W. Bush. I have to say, I’m on a LOT of small business discussion boards, and I haven’t heard any business owners screaming about hardship. Small businesses in pre-ADA buildings are exempt unless they do major renovations.
One way to rethink transportation for wheelchair users
It’s up to us to make sure the Senate doesn’t follow along. Contact your Senators and let them know this is a vote where you will hold them accountable. And if your Rep was one who voted Aye, give them a piece of your mind too.
Of course, we’ll be tempted to argue on the basis of compassion. But remember who we’re dealing with here. These people have a long history of NOT acting out of compassion, often of doing the opposite. So compassion arguments “ain’t gonna cut it.” We have to get to them on the things they will listen to: costs to taxpayers, personal hardship to them, and of course, voting and campaigning for and donating to their opponents.
Don’t Waste My Tax Dollars: How dare you make it harder for productive citizens to work, just because they have disabilities. If you think I want my tax dollars squandered on welfare payments to people who could have had a job until you made it impossible to get to work, you’d better think again.
Don’t Hurt the Economy by Hurting Disabled People: For new construction, it’s really easy to design in ADA compliance from the ground up. By allowing builders to take shortcuts because you took away the teeth of this legislation, you’re encouraging them to stop designing in ramps and wider doorways, setting aside parking, making elevators disabled-friendly, etc have you noticed how many people with disabilities who in pre-ADA days had to sit home and be a burden have gone on to start job-creating companies making our economy better (like the personal-transportation vehicle for wheelchair users in the photo—designed by a wheelchair-using Texas woman)? There’s even an organization of disabled business owners that was named one of President George H.W. Bush’s 1000 Points of Light. Do you really want the blame for squashing that on your shoulders?
Protect Our Veterans: Do you realize that veterans have much higher disability rates than the general population (due to war wounds), and that many have a hard time finding work and frequently start their own businesses? Thus, many of these job creators are veterans.You are hurting the people who served our country and defended our freedom.
Pointless Government Meddling: The ADA has been around since 1990. Most public buildings are already accessible. This is bringing in the government to break a system that’s working just fine right now, and that has enabled millions of people to be productive members of society. And if buildings are allowed to come online without meeting current ADA code, it will be expensive to retrofit them later, when (not if) this weakening of the law is repealed.
Personal Inconvenience to the Senator (this one takes a wee bit of research): I noticed that [name a family member of theirs with a disability] uses a wheelchair [cane, walker, seeing-eye dog, whatever]. Do you really want to be called away from important Senate business every time [name]has to go to the bank? How do you think I’m going to feel as a [business owner, manager, productive employee supporting my family] if I have to leave work to help my Aunt Mary do things she could have done for herself until you put obstacles in her way? And what’s going to happen to you, 20 years from now, when you may not be able-bodied yourself?
Vote No or You’ll Organize to Defeat the Senator During the Next Election: Don’t just pledge to vote for your Senator’s opponent. Say you’ll be willing to campaign and fundraise for someone who understands that disability rights are important. If you’ve voted, donated, or volunteered for your Senator in the past, be sure to let them know.
Watch the 3-minute video at the top of Expand Furniture’s Smart Space-Saving Ideas page. Don’t multitask; you need to see people going through the few seconds of converting a piece of furniture from one use to another, or storing it in tiny spaces when it’s not needed.
This entire product line is an excellent example of the principle of one part, many functions (which I discuss in Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, BTW). If you want to create a green business, one of the planet-saving tricks is to build for multiple uses. It’s also an example of miniaturization; when not needed, these chairs, tables, sofas, and storage units take up almost no space.
Think of the all-in-one printer/scanner/fax as one example that’s gone mass-market. A smartphone is an even better example because it’s far more universal AND and embraces miniaturization.
When I was a kid growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, portable communication existed in concept and showed up in comics, science fiction, etc. (Maxwell Smart’s shoe phone, Dick Tracy’s walkie-talkie). And so did the idea of all-powerful computers that contained the world’s knowledge.
But combining those two concepts into one device that fits in a pocket—WOW! I don’t think I came across anything that even hinted at this until the Apple Newtown and Palm Pilot PDAs in the 1990s, and I don’t think either of those had Internet access.
Now, think about the video. Most of the furniture ideas are not really a new concept. William Murphy received his first patent for a “disappearing bed” in 1912 (and the concept predated him); modular sectional sofas and tables with self-contained expansion leaves have been on the market for decades.
Expand Furniture’s FlexYah bench is made from paper
Yet this gets only a few seconds in the video. The rest of it is simply doing more with ideas that have been around forever.
Some of the other designs could be called “deep Kaizen.” The Japanese concept of “continuous improvement,” Kaizen got very popular in the US business world a few decades back. So yes, we’ve had Murphy beds forever—but have you ever seen a Murphy bunk bed before? An ottoman that holds a set of five padded folding chairs? A coffee table that can transform in under a minute into a full-size dining room table?
And this brings up another principle: repurposing. Ask yourself what do you already make or sell that could be used differently? I ask my consulting clients this question regularly, and it opens up many conversations about new markets and new ways of marketing to them. Expand has identified several target markets: condo dwellers and people living in Tiny Houses, among them. But some of the marketing photos and videos deploy the pieces in massive, spacious living rooms, too. The company understands that a photo like that changes the way people think about their products and make it attractive to a whole different sector.
How will you take these insights into your own business?
Some marketers are engaged in a vigorous debate between people who identify as “thought leaders” and those whose skins crawl when they hear the term.
Whether you love or hate the term, “thought leader”, marketing by showing leadership through content and letting people meaningfully engage with those ideas is undeniably powerful.
That type of marketing hooked me when I first tried it, as a 15-year-old 3rd-year high school student, and I’ve been using it ever since. First, I used it only to spread my ideas. Later, I also marketed products and services based on those ideas. And those ideas built me a decent following (and, eventually, a decent consulting practice)—sharing them through my books, articles, presentations, interviews, media coverage, etc.
This takes time and energy, and I know many people who do it better than me. But it certainly can be done. One of my book launches garnered over 1,000,000 short-term Google hits (for the book title, an exact-match four word string that wouldn’t show up in any other context). It’s the only time anything I’ve done got a million hits on Google.
I’ve even managed to help shift several mindsets at the international or national or local level.
My biggest success was changing the attitude about a proposed local mountaintop housing development from “this is terrible but there’s nothing we can do” to “of course we’ll win! The question is how.” This campaign took just over a year and used everything I knew in 1999-2000 about marketing AND community organizing (and the knowledge/labor of many others)—but the mindset shift took only four or five months. And that mindset shift created the conditions for our victory.
Lawn sign from the Save the Mountain campaign in Hadley, MA, in front of Mount Holyoke (a state park next to the mountain we saved)
I also like to think I helped change the idea that business has to be evil. Of the five books I’ve published since 2003 (and the 10 since my first book came out in 1980), four show how business can profitably address issues ranging from business ethics to ending poverty—while reversing environmental destruction. I’ve given dozens of “Making Green Sexy”, “Impossible is a Dare,” and other talks on how business can be heroes.) And it’s been years since I’ve heard “business ethics? That’s an oxymoron!” When I first started talking about business ethics as a success strategy, I heard that false “wisdom” constantly.
I like to think my activity is part of WHY I no longer hear that horrible sentence.
Leading with ideas means finding others who will amplify those ideas. It’s not a coincidence that I actively seek out media coverage, endorsements, and more.
My latest book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World has a blurb from Chicken Soup’s Jack Canfield on the front cover, another from Seth Godin on the back, and some 50 endorsements on the front pages. It has 4 guest essays from best-selling authors. These are some of the ways I’ve built credibility and gotten people interested, even though the book no longer has a current-year copyright.
One review of that book didn’t appear until 17 months after publication—and I’ve gotten reviews on books that were up to eight years old at the time. When you write about issues and do so with substance, your book can attract interest for years.
Of course, events can shift the relevance. If you try to repurpose articles on how to survive the coming Y2K crisis or books on the presidencies of Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney, or Al Gore, thought leadership is not the image you’ll project. 😉
As progressives and liberals breathe a big sigh of relief this morning after racking up victories in yesterday’s election, my Facebook feed is full of chatter about how the Democratic Party is not dead after all, though it’s still very ill.
I responded to one such post thusly:
Curable. Inject backbone 3x/day until they run candidates who stand for the people, give them the support to win, and stop backing down at the first hint of disagreement. Dems should have learned this lesson in 1988 from the disastrous Dukakis campaign. I kept waiting [after George HW Bush kept repeatedly accusing him of being a liberal] for Dukakis to say, “Yes, George, I’m a liberal. Liberals brought us the 8-hour day vs. 10 or 12 hours. Liberals protect the rights of people of all colors and gender identities. Liberals fight for the planet so we can all live healthy lives. Why aren’t YOU a liberal, George?” I think he’d have won with that approach. Instead, he kept doing this horrible, “Gee, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be a liberal” crap.
Yup. That time, as so many times, the Dems slunk away with their tails between their legs to count their losses and blame it on not being centrist or rightist enough. And they still seem to believe that rot.
When ordinary people can’t easily tell the Democrats from the Republicans by their positions, the Republicans will win, because being a true Republican is more convincing than being Republican-lite. But being a true Democrat who is seen as standing for the people (rare thing!) generates far more excitement than being a true Republican and a toady to Wall Street and the ideology that puts money ahead of people, rights of the already privileged above rights of ordinary people, and voter suppression ahead of real democracy.
Despite his centrism, Obama was able to portray himself as a man of the people and generate that excitement. And he won, twice.
Gore, Kerry and Hillary Clinton never got this, despite pressure from the Left in the form of mass defections to Ralph Nader, Howard Dean, and Bernie Sanders. Sanders was able to move Hillary and the party platform well to the left, but she was unconvincing. And even when Sanders beat her by 13 points in the Wisconsin primary, she still took the state for granted (never campaigned there in the general election).
The lack of candidates with actual spine and the ability to energize the masses will continue to be a problem until the Dems remember their working-class roots. When they run charismatic progressives in places where the ballots are counted fairly and the populace is not prevented from voting, they tend to win. We get the Cory Bookers, the Barack Obamas, the Elizabeth Warrens.
When they run nonentities, they lose, even in my own very liberal state of Massachusetts. Martha Coakley ran a terrible campaign to keep Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat Democratic, and it went to Scott Brown. But then along came Elizabeth Warren, and boom! Brown ran a nasty campaign, Warren portrayed herself as a people’s champion on economic issues, and she won. And she has kept her promise, expanding it as one of the most pubic opponents of the current regime.
For the most part, the Dems’ lack willingness to take bold positions. Worse, they also lack the spine to challenge Republican-initiated disruption of the electoral process—which is the Democratic Party’s hospital bed, and could become the party’s grave. After narrowly stolen elections in 2000 and 2004, the party didn’t fix the plague of voter suppression in 2009 when it had the chance. And thus the election was stolen again in 2016.
The new governor-elect in Virginia is a centrist who probably won largely on the basis of being far less bad than his openly Trumpist opponent—and because Virginia went back to paper ballots, which cannot be so easily hijacked as electronic-only votes (unlike the recent Congressional race in Georgia, for example). How much stronger the victory if there had been a candidate who truly engaged the populace?
A voter marks a ballot. Photo by Kristen Price.
Today is not only the morning after the election. It’s also the one-year anniversary of the theft of our democracy in the 2016 election. While some of the loss is because Clinton was uninspiring, tainted with scandal, and vulnerable to accusations of her loyalty to Wall Street, at least as much was the result of a failed constitutional process that allows candidates with fewer votes to win, big-time voter suppression of likely-Democratic voters, probable fiddling with the results in electronic-only ballot areas, the interference of a foreign government, and other factors that seem to add up to a big fat case of fraud.
I will commemorate this disaster at an impeachment rally in downtown Amherst, Massachusetts, at noon on the corner of Amity and Pleasant Streets. Hope to see you there!
I received a fund appeal from a climate-change nonprofit asking for money to put this ad on the air. I was so appalled that I sent this letter:
[Subject] THIS AD WILL DO THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT WE WANT Re: Enough tiptoeing around it
[Body] No, and here’s why: This ad shows an astonishing ignorance of the deep triggers that change or reinforce behavior. You pit an audio track that is 100% climate-denier against visuals that fail to make a connection between the catastrophes shown and climate change.
For climate skeptics, this will not only not change their mind, it will REINFORCE the idea that climate change is a hoax. They will focus on the audio. Those of us who understand that climate change is real will focus on the visuals, and will be able to make the connection that climate change worsened the storms—but we’re not the ones who need to be convinced.
As a marketer with over 40 years experience who believes strongly in the ability of marketing to create social change, I think this ad will do more harm than good and should not be released.
Please don’t run it!
We’ve known about the difference between how the brain processes the obvious and the subliminal messaging in an ad for decades. I think I learned about this when I started reading a lot of marketing books, back in the 1980s. We’ve also known about “social proof” (the idea that because other people are doing something, you should too) going back to early-20th-century advertising geniuses like John Caples and Edward Bernays.
Edward Bernays’ secretary Bertha Hunt smokes in public at Bernays’ 1927 “Torches of Freedom” march
And we’ve known about the negative impact of negative images about the environment since at least the Cialdini study of 2003 (which showed that people are more likely to litter after watching an anti-littering video showing lots of people littering) and probably much earlier. So why would any marketer script an ad like this?
We’ve also known for many years that cultural and language differences have a lot to do with any marketing piece’s success. I’ve written often about the way companies sometimes market the same product differently to different nations or subcultures, or how a company can even change up its whole product line for different markets. Here are two examples from very different industries (breakfast cereal and luxury cars) in an article I published five years ago on an Australian website.
Don’t make the mistake that Chevrolet made when it tried to market the Nova in Latin America. In Spanish, “no va” means “it doesn’t go.” Oh, and look at every possible way to break up a website or product name into separate words. Unintended consequences of a badly-chosen name are still consequences, as that link demonstrates extremely well.
Have you examined your own marketing to make sure the subliminal message, the obvious message, and the goal are all aligned? Do this right away—or contact me. I’d be happy to do it for you, at very reasonable prices. I’ve written eight books on marketing including several that won awards, were translated and republished overseas, and/or made some best-seller lists—note that I’m using social proof here ;-)—and have studied marketing for more than 30 years.
There are hundreds more I could honor. These 10 are all people I knew personally. I chose them somewhat randomly, basically who came top of mind first. I am grateful to all of them even if the interaction was painful when it happened.
My mom, whose commitment to racial justice extended to desegregating the apartment building we lived in. She was also a tester for the Urban League, making sure that when a black family was told an apartment was already rented that it was really rented—by applying to live there.
Walking my mother, Gloria Yoshida, into her 65th-birthday surprise party, 1998
The speaker I heard when I 12, at my first peace demonstration, who told me the Vietnam war was undeclared—and brought my false reality crashing down around me.
The idiot who made me sit in the children’s section of a movie theater with my full-price adult ticket (also age 12) and gave me my first experience of discrimination-based injustice (for being part of a class of people). I started a boycott of that cinema that has now continued for 48 years, and thus had the first experience of recognizing that I had power to change things.
Mrs. Ehrlich of the Bronx High School of Science English Department in the 1970s, who believed the lie I’d told that I had turned in an assignment. Horrified, she said she’d never lost a student paper before. I felt intense guilt and realized that my action had hurt someone innocent. I’ve done my best not to repeat that and to take responsibility for my actions even when I don’t like the consequences.
My first grade teacher, Mrs. Gross of Westchester Day School in the 1960s, who recognized that I was already a good reader and sat me in the back of the room with a 4th grade geography text while she inflicted Sally-Dick-and-Jane on the rest of the class. I still love reading, still love maps, and that was probably the first time I recognized how fascinating the world is, how people lived so differently in different parts of it.
The college classmate who yelled at me that I was extremely and consistently selfish. It hurt like hell at the time, but on reflection, I realized he was right. And I changed my behavior! (Years later, I went up to him at a reunion and thanked him. He didn’t even remember the incident.)
Dr. Jeffrey Lant, who was the first person to help me discover you-centered, benefit-focused marketing.
Dean Cycon, CEO of Dean’s Beans, who combined the strongest moral compass and the best sense of humor of any business owner I know. (I never got to meet the late Ray Anderson; he might have topped Dean in his commitment).
Maggie Kuhn, founder of the Gray Panthers, who started a whole social movement after mandatory retirement forced her out of a quiet job within the Presbyterian Church.
Pete Seeger, who was probably the first to show me that the arts could change people’s minds and create action for social and environmental justice.
This Facebook Live video by Brené Brown, “We need to keep talking about Charlottesville,” posted August 15, might be the best thing I’ve ever come across on how to combat oppressive language without heaping guilt and shame on the other person, building bridges instead. I’d known her name but not her work. This video made me a fan. Strongly recommended.
She has an unusual perspective: a white anti-racist raised in the South, often mistaken for black by people who hadn’t met her, on the basis of her full legal name.
Can we create a world where these girls will be judged “not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character”? Photo by Anissa Thompson, freeimages.com
I’ve been saying for many years that guilt and shame are not effective in making change (and in my work to create social change in the business world, I do my best to harness other motives, like enlightened self-interest). The example she gives of the young man confronting his father shows exactly why they don’t work. Not to confront racism or other isms, and not to protect the planet.
Brené is a better communicator than I am. As I engage in dialogue with “the other side,” I will do my best to remember her communications lessons, and those of Van Jones, whose wonderful riff on how to talk to Tea Partiers I wrote about several years ago.
But many times, I’ve heard phrases like “she’s basically a good person” used similarly.
Language is very important, and framing even more so. I agree that these phrases (for either gender) have been used to excuse all sorts of horrible behavior that should never be accepted. But change happens when we meet people where they are and find ways to move them further. This is typically a slow, gradual, incremental process. And the only way it ever works is if you approach your opponent with the idea that he/she is basically good. We as activists must be especially careful to keep that understanding top-of-mind. Far too often, we demonize our opponents and drive even more wedges, when change might happen if opened sincere opportunities to be heard, to listen, and to grapple with our differences instead of building walls of name-calling and accusation. It’s a marketing activity. And we market our ideas to those who disagree by finding pieces of their ideas we can agree with and build from, or at least that we can respect.
Sometimes, we even need to validate that they feel they haven’t been given a fair shake, and then show how the way to get that fair shake is not by pushing others down who are climbing up behind them, but by building ladders to help everyone rise. This is slow, difficult work, but also immensely rewarding. I’m no expert in this area, but I’ve seen it work miracles.
Effigy of “the Donald,” photographed by Shel Horowitz at the Climate March, April 2017, Washington, DC
Sometimes, it’s quite challenging. I heard DT speak in 2004 and was repulsed even then. His behavior in the last few years is beyond despicable. When I think about how I would behave if I had the chance to confront him, I can’t find much good—but I do see him as reachable through his misery. I see him as a deeply unhappy person, traumatized by a tyrannical father, someone who hasn’t found contentment even while accumulating a vast fortune, celebrity status, and the most powerful job in the world.
So I would go into the room searching for what it would take to make DT a happy person and give him a purpose in making the world better, knowing that the answer would eventually end the abuse, lies, misogyny, racism, and all the other crap he brings to the table.
Yes, personalization in marketing is a good thing. But it has to be done right. You’ll find some important lessons in this Epic Fail attempt I received.
A contact on LinkedIn sent me this note:
Hi Shel, I am starting a new business and am looking for business owners, who would allow me to test our solutions to grow their customer base. If you would be so kind to review this 30-second video and let me know what you think. It is for the real estate industry, but the concept is universal. Thanks! <URL>
It was a link to a personalized video that wanted access to my Facebook account but didn’t require it. I clicked on “proceed without Facebook” and watched her 38-second video. Then I wrote back thusly (she has not answered my two questions so I’m taking that as a no):
Well, I’m going to give you a detailed response and make a blog out of it. (May I use the sample video in my blog? And do you want to be named?) I think there’s a good future in personalized video marketing. But this example had major problems both in the underlying assumptions and in the implementation of the technology.
ASSUMPTIONS
The video assumes that:
Everyone wants a big house in the suburbs, with a big yard and a big garage
Everyone is white and Christian and heterosexual
Anyone would call a Portland, Oregon phone number to buy a house in Massachusetts
As a result, it comes off as generic and not really personalized. Right now, I live on a farm. I grew up in New York City and lived for 17 years in a small college town. If I were a real estate prospect from any of those three communities, or a person of color, or (as I am) a non-Christian, I would dismiss this video as irrelevant, and actually be offended that a “personalized” video was so out of touch with my particular reality. Using the name and community is not any more personalized than a mail-merge on a mass mailing.
Real personalization would draw from a video clips library of people who looked and acted like the families of the actual prospect, and show a home search that reflected the character of the prospect’s own community—and, if the prospect were actually doing a home search, the types of houses s/he was looking at.
And the whole advantage of using a real estate agent is in things like familiarity with the market and a personal touch. This is why even the big national RE franchises have local offices in each community they serve. Giving a number from 3000 miles away is a huge disconnect and makes me uncomfortable.
You also assume that you can call it a 30-second video. It was 38 seconds plus probably another 15 while the video was assembling itself. You could accurately say “less than one minute.” 30 seconds is misleading.
TECHNOLOGY
Load experience
Geotargeting
Where a personalized video really shines is in creating the idea that the video was created just for the individual who gets to watch. I admire the honesty, but staring at a long pause with a note that it is creating the personalized video removes that illusion. We are all aware that computers are doing the work. Some other kind of splash screen saying that the video is loading and perhaps telling three points to pay attention to in the video might be a better user experience.
And the geotargeting was not only off, it didn’t match the video contents. For some reason, it thought I’d be looking at houses in East Longmeadow, a working-class/lower-middle-class suburb of Springfield a good 30 miles from here. But the homes shown in the video were more likely to be found one town over in Longmeadow, a much wealthier town.
A fancy house that you’d find in a wealthy suburb—mistargeted to me. Photo by Margan Zajdowicz, FreeImages.com
I personally am very happy where I live and have no interest in buying a home in either of those towns—but I understand that I am not the prospect for homebuying, but for using personalized promotional videos. I actually like the idea, though I think the library of personalized clips for my business would be far too complicated and expensive to assemble, as it would get into things like climate change solutions for manufacturers, retailers, restaurant owners, etc.
