Category: Marketing Trends/News

By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Business-general, Consumer Issues, Democracy, Diversity, Energy & Sustainability, Ethics in Government, Ethics-International, Green Business, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, Innovation, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News, Mindset, Politics, poverty, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , , ,

The first thing I do when I get online each morning is read a few things:

  • Poems of the day from Rattle, The Academy of American Poets, and Second Coming.
  • Heather Cox Richardson and Robert Hubble for analysis of the craziness in the US government right now and how people are fighting back.
  • Seth Godin for his deep insight, creative thinking, and common sense in the business and learning worlds, and news roundups from among The Guardian, New York Times, and/or Associated Press. (Disclosure: I donate to The Guardian and Associated Press)
  • Bob Burg, with his daily sermon on succeeding by treating people right, is often on the list.

Today, Godin opened my eyes to a completely new understanding of economics with one sentence:

The price variation in any market reflects not what the market will bear, but what the people in that market can bear to charge.

Brilliant. And I don’t think I’ve come across this anywhere else. It changes everything, doesn’t it?

He backs up his thesis with examples as different as the pricing of luxury handbags and concert tickets. He discusses how rock musicians who allow promoters to scale tickets out of the range of affordability for most of their fans pay a price in loyalty. And he talks about how that particular dynamic came out of outsourcing concert pricing to third party vendors like Ticketmaster who don’t really give a flying f about the fans as long as they can find enough who are willing to pay hundreds of dollars when they could just as easily spend $10 on a movie in the theater or nothing to watch it at home.

I’ve made those choices many times. I paid $6 in 1972, as a 15-year-old without a lot of cash, to see the Rolling Stones in Madison Square Garden. That’s only $46.24 in today’s money. Most of the time, if a concert or theater ticket is more than $100, I will choose a different form of entertainment. I think I have made four exceptions: The Who, my all-time favorite rock band that I had never seen in concert; tickets for touring Broadway productions of “Hamilton” and “Wicked”; also an actual Broadway show, but I’m not sure which one it was.

The three that I remember were actually worth the money and I didn’t regret spending it. But if I had spent that much for some of the mediocre concerts I’ve seen by top acts, I would have been furious, feeling totally ripped off. I saw many of them as either a concert reviewer or an usher, and thus didn’t pay to be ripped off. But it was frustrating even to give up an evening for something that wasn’t worth it and was charging a lot, even though I wasn’t paying. it was an insult to the fans.

But concerts are by definition discretionary purchases. Let’s look at price elasticity in other contexts that Seth didn’t mention—such as necessities.

Many have jumped in price far beyond inflation. Housing is one of them. But housing is something we have to have. Other societies consider housing a basic right. There is no homelessness problem in Cuba. Medical care and higher education, two other sets of services that have shot up in price here in the US, are also provided to everyone there. But they have an authoritarian government and they have deep poverty.

When I visited in 2019, the biggest complaint that I heard, and I heard it from almost everyone I met, is the inability of wages to keep up with the cost of living. Most workers make about $20 US a month. Doctors make $60 or $70. Our guide told us that the only reason his wife is able to afford to be a doctor is because he makes far more than the typical Cuban income from his clients’ tips. Sometimes, it is about trade-offs.

But sometimes, it’s not. Europe proves that decent, democratic governments can afford to treat healthcare as a right and keep higher education extremely affordable as well (housing, not so much). And they’ve also made huge progress in greening the economy.

China also has an authoritarian government. But the streets of its cities are crowded with relatively inexpensive electric cars (which is to say, still totally out of reach for most Chinese—but enough can afford them that massive traffic jams are common). This transition was quite conspicuous between my first trip to China in 2016 and my return in 2024. I rode in several of them and was impressed with how well they seem to be designed. Those stubborn trade-offs with their moral dilemmas.

Yet, for the past year, we have an authoritarian government in the US. The ugliness of its actions and policies would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.

But unlike Cuba and China, the benefits are not accruing to ordinary people. This government is about benefiting billionaires and openly, blatantly lining its leader’s and his friends’ pockets while collecting undeserved and insincere tributes from those who understand that they can flatter their way to what they want, even if they want things that are absolutely at odds with the interests of us ordinary people.

Seth’s thesis is not the whole picture, though. It’s a both-and, not an either-or. Price sensitivity is certainly an issue in purchase decisions—but so is sensitivity to what your market could pay without feeling exploited and ripped off. In my own business, I’ve kept my pricing far lower than most, because that makes me affordable to the solopreneurs and microbusinesses I enjoy serving. I don’t want to live in the corporate world enough to charge too much for my preferred clients, and those huge corporations have in-house people who do what I do. I also recognize that money is one means to an end, and there are others—such as what I referred to earlier: volunteering or reviewing instead of buying tickets

It is also quite possible to make a good profit serving the bottom economic tier. I recommend two great books on this: The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits by C.K. Prahalad (out of print; that’s a link to a used copy) and Business Solution to Poverty by Paul Polak and Mal Warwick. That link takes you to bookshop.org, where your purchase supports the independent bookstore of your choice instead of lining the pockets of an oligarch who has aided and abetted the authoritarian government that has taken over the US.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Activism, Business-general, Consumer Issues, Corporate Social Responsibility, Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Environment, Ethics in Government, Ethics-International, General Commentary, Gratitude, Green Business, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, Innovation, language, Marketing Trends/News, Media Ethics, media-general, Mindset, People Helping People, poverty, propaganda, Psychology, Publishing, Science, Social and Economic Justice, Talking to the Other Side, Technology Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

“We have built the safest civilisation in human history while convincing ourselves that we live in the most dangerous. Billions of people experienced measurable improvements in health, safety, and material conditions in 2025. That progress didn’t make the news. But it happened anyway, one vaccine, one school meal, one kilowatt-hour at a time.”
—Angus Hervey, Fix the News

From Fix the News, one of several good-news publications I receive—and one that skews toward science-based progress. This one does start with a depressing summary of the news we’ve all heard—but then moves into a long series of victories that most of us didn’t even now about. It pauses to excoriate mass media for amplifying the negative and superficial (e.g., celebrities) while ignoring unsexy but vital stories such as the amazing ocean treaties and the actual elimination of rampant fatal diseases, country by country. And then it finishes with another long list of victories for humanity and the other creatures we share this amazing planet with.

You won’t be sorry to spend ten minutes with this. https://fixthenews.com/p/the-telemetry?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=4861955&post_id=182468358&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=sl4r&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Activism, Branding, Business Ethics, censorship, Corporate Social Responsibility, Democracy, Diversity, Ethics-International, language, Marketing Trends/News, Peace and War, People Helping People, Politics, propaganda, Protests and Crackdowns, Social and Economic Justice, Talking to the Other Side Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

When Unilever acquired B&J’s, the agreement guaranteed the ice cream company the right to an independent Board empowered to continue B&J’s decades of social and environmental activism as they see fit. But apparently, Unilever, one of the largest consumer packaged goods (CPG) conglomerates in the world, disagrees with the Board’s repeated attempts to support the people of Palestine, a situation much more dire now after more than a year of constant Israeli attacks that have killed more than 43,000 Palestinians and injured and/or made homeless hundreds of thousands more, including thousands who’ve had their replacement homes or shelters destroyed and had to flee multiple times.

Most of the time, Unilever is one of the better corporate citizens. It’s done a lot of good in the business world for environmental and human rights efforts. Many of its business units, beginning with Ben & Jerry’s in 2012, are certified B Corporations (a business structure that allows environmental and social good to be factored in alongside profitability)–and the parent company has been undertaking a Herculean effort (ongoing since 2015) to get the entire corporation B-corp certified.

But now, Unilever is censoring the B&J’s Board and threatening to dissolve the Board and sue individual Board members. And, once again, B&J’s is suing the parent company over censorship around Gaza.

Israel’s position is unusual because it is treated differently than other governments, in two different ways. Some people grant Israel special status because of its history, and some use that history to condemn it and even question its existence. Here are some of the reasons why Israel-Palestine conflict is treated differently than elsewhere:

 

The Pro-Israel Reasons Why Israel is Treated Differently

  • European and US guilt in the aftermath of World War II, when it became obvious that millions of Jews, Roma, lesbians and gays, people with disabilities, and political opponents of the Nazi dictatorship could have been saved by other nations and were instead murdered in Germany and the lands it occupied.
  • Extremely effective pro-Israel lobbying that has demonized Arabs, Muslims, and Palestinians (overlapping groups, but not interchangeable) both within the Jewish community and in the wider culture. I recommend the film “Israelism” as the quickest way to gain understanding of how this has worked. This has been so effectively percolated into the culture that any attack on the Israeli government—even in its current super-brutal iteration—is labeled antisemitism.
  • The industrialized world’s continued reliance on fossil fuels from the Arab lands—and the widely-held view within the US government that Israel is our foreign-policy surrogate and enforcement agent in the Middle East (one of the most important strategic regions in the world: a crossroads of trade since ancient times and a place where political, energy, and military control conveys enormous influence over Europe, Africa, and western Asia).

 

The Reasons Why Others Condemn Israel

  • In the larger population, this role as US surrogate gets translated into accepting at face value the common belief that Israel is a bulwark of Western democracy in a region lacking in democracies. And that, in turn, causes conflict with those who criticize Israel’s appalling record of violence and subjugation in the Gaza war. The democracy meme is partially true. If you are a white Jewish citizen of Israel, you have rights under a democracy—but those rights are limited for your Israeli Arab neighbors and do not exist for your Palestinian neighbors in East Jerusalem and just outside Israel’s borders.
  • Pretty much every Israeli and Palestinian has experienced direct harm: the loss of loved ones, the destruction of and/or eviction from property, denial of human rights. For 76 years, Israel has oppressed Palestinians, dating back to independence in 1948—and Arab nations have repeatedly waged wars and nongovernmental attacks against Israel. More recently, Israel has initiated several wars. On my second trip to Israel and Palestine ten years ago, I listened to a man who had been only 11 years old when the Israelis told his family not to take a lot of their possessions because they would be back in a few weeks (scroll down in the linked article to the section on Bar-Am). He’s one of many whose story I’ve heard over the years that describe the oppression, loss, and bitterness —as the many Israeli Jews who’ve recounted their own losses through terrorism have also experienced. The gruesome toll affects people on both sides.
  • The denial of rights to ethnic and religious minorities within Israel and to majorities in the Palestinian Territories, the violence done to these populations, and the forced resettlement have all combined to make Israel a pariah in the eyes of many.

Unfortunately, what should be anger directed at the government of Israel is often misdirected into attacks on Jews. And it doesn’t help that so many people who should know better equate any criticism of Israel with antisemitism.

Mind you—antisemitism is real and it is not OK. But there’s a big difference between “Israel, stop bombing civilians, stop denying food access, stop destroying hospitals, stop killing journalists,” etc. and saying that the heinous Hamas attack of October 7, 2023 was justified or that the Jews as a people should be destroyed. Those latter constructs are antisemitic. The former are legitimate criticisms of a government gone amok.

Rabbi Jill Jacobs, the head of the rabbinic human rights organization T’ruah, has a helpful article on how to tell the difference.

But legitimate criticism of violent and discriminatory Israeli policies and actions, even those before October 7, cannot justify what Hamas did. There is NO justification for kidnapping, killing and raping innocents because they happen to be Jewish and living in Israel—just as there is NO justification for killing and torturing innocents because they happen to be Palestinian, Arab, and/or Muslim. And there is also no justification for treating Israel far more harshly in the diplomatic arena than other countries brutalizing occupied populations. If it’s wrong when Israel does it, it’s also wrong when other countries do it. Not to make that clear is another form of antisemitism.

 

And How Does This Relate to Unilever and Ben & Jerry’s

What Unilever is doing to Ben & Jerry’s is just a less intense version of the censorship and repression on college campuses last spring when Palestinians and their allies demanded justice and peace. What it says is “we espouse values of multiculturalism but we don’t actually believe it. In fact, we believe in demolishing entire populations based on ethnicity, religion, or other factors that we say shouldn’t matter. And we will bring repression down upon the shoulders of those who defend the groups we want to marginalize.”

To make real change, we have to make space for dissenting voices, especially from marginalized populations. That gets stripped away when criticism of Israel’s malignant actions are blocked. If you agree, click to tell Unilever to stop stomping on dissent at Ben & Jerry’s. You’re welcome to copy and modify my message:

As a proud Jew and an activist for 55 years who’s worked on peace, Middle East, the right to dissent, environmental, business as a social change agent, and immigration justice among other issues, I take strong issue with Unilever’s unilateral abrogation of Ben & Jerry’s right to protest genocidal policies in Gaza. With the Board’s independence written into the acquisition agreement, the umbrella entity of Unilever is not obligated to agree with their position and nor does that position have to be thought of as representing the whole corporation—but you are obligated to let them express it. Palestinian rights are compatible with Jewish rights, and the world needs to stop accepting the argument that criticism of Israel’s government is antimsemitism.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Demographics/Psychographics, language, Marketing Trends/News, Mindset, Politics, propaganda, Psychology Tagged with , , ,

Relax and take some deep breaths. Get time in nature and in physical exercise. And think about these truths:

  1. Just forget about the polls. They self-acknowledge that when an election is as they all seem to think it is, the margin of error is greater than the projected margin of victory. In other words, each state they forecast could go either way.
  2. Judge more by both the magnitude and demographics of early voting. 76 million people have voted ahead, even though society has recovered from the pandemic that created a huge wave of early voting four years ago. Women and youth are very prominent in these early returns, and that bodes well for the Democrats.
  3. Remember that we will probably not know the results Tuesday night and maybe not for a few days, because all these early votes have to be added into the tabulating machines and some states don’t allow that until after the polls close—and because really close races will trigger recounts (by hand, in some places). The only exception would be if the votes are so overwhelmingly in one direction that adding in the early votes won’t change the results. And that’s not likely in the seven swing states that will determine the winner. So don’t get anxious because the result can’t be called yet. That’s normal.
  4. As the campaign has progressed, so has enthusiasm for Harris, including endorsements from not just A-list celebrities with enormous followings but also many former Trump staffers. Meanwhile, facing diminishing crowds, lots of empty seats, and people leaving early, Trump continues to deliberately alienate large sectors of the electorate with his hatreds, vindictiveness, name calling—and rambling narratives that simply don’t make any sense. And not only is Trump’s mental acuity seemingly on a rapid decline, so is his vaunted physical strength. He had trouble opening the door of that garbage truck that he rode (he was in the passenger seat, so no, he didn’t drive it) around the airport tarmac).

So those are some of the reasons why you shouldn’t waste energy fretting about the result until we know the result. And by then, I’m hoping we’ll have something to celebrate. Last month, I blogged ten reasons why I think Harris will win. My analysis has gotten validation from a number of sources, among them Michael Moore and Rachel Bitecofer. One day before the election, and after spending four weekend afternoons knocking on doors in a swing state, I remain calm and optimistic.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Demographics/Psychographics, language, localism/locavore, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News, Mindset, Networking, People Helping People, Politics, Psychology Tagged with , , , , , , ,

I just came across a 20-something marketing genius who is not in the business of business. He’s the Democratic Party Chair for Mecklenburg County, North Carolina (Charlotte and environs). His job is to make sure Democrats vote on or before November 5, 2024.

Regardless of your politics, you can learn a lot from Drew Kromer in this 22-minute interview with Substack pundits Robert Hubbell and Jessica Craven. A few of my takeaways:

  • Understand your market, deeply. Kromer knows that his market is the roughly 500,000 registered Democrats in his county–and especially the huge subset that doesn’t tend to vote.
  • Craft your messaging as a win-win. To get his army of 5000 volunteers(!!!), Kromer didn’t say, “please come out and canvas, work your butt off in all sorts of weather, get doors slammed in your face” or even “come out and canvas, for the future of the country and to protect democracy.” I’ve canvassed for candidates and ballot initiatives, and I’ve experienced both of those His pitch was, ‘Hey, we’re having a party and it’s really close to where you live, come on out, have a good time, and meet neighbors who share your values’ (single quote marks because I’m paraphrasing).
  • Deploy resources where they do the most good. Kromer’s fundraising went into staff on the ground, a far more effective allocation than TV ads, which will not reach the typical unmotivated Gen Z voter who doesn’t consume much if any broadcast TV. A good ground game, where people are listening and talking and interacting with potential voters, is far more effective.
  • Keep the bigger vision in mind. Kromer says that if Democrats win his county, they win North Carolina. And if they win NC, they win the race. He shared his vision of a commentator on Election Night, having the results come in, saying on-air “What the hell happened in Mecklenburg,” and calling both the state and the nation for the Dems.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Democracy, Ethics in Government, language, Marketing Trends/News, Politics, propaganda, Psychology, Talking to the Other Side Tagged with , , , ,

…They claim the Dems are undemocratic because Kamala didn’t become the presidential nominee through primaries? What hypocrites!

Here’s what to tell MAGA folks when they start kvetching that Biden got 14 million votes in the primaries while Kamala got none:

  1. 81 MILLION people (almost 6 times as many as Biden’s primary votes) voted for Kamala Harris when she ran for Vice President in 2020 (and that same 14 million who voted for Biden this year also voted for her again in the Democratic primaries)—and the entire electorate will get to vote on this very shortly.
  2. She has Biden’s (and both Obamas’ and both Clintons’) strong endorsement as well as pretty much every major non-MAGA politician from AOC and Bernie on the left to Liz Cheney, her father the former VP, and conservative columnist George Will along with a bunch of former Trump senior staffers on the right—precisely BECAUSE Trump presents an existential threat to democracy.
  3. She got endorsements from practically every delegate pledged to Biden once he withdrew.
  4. The whole idea of HAVING a VP is to have a mechanism in place if the president can’t continue. Listing them in reverse chronological order, LBJ, Harry Truman, Calvin Coolidge, Teddy Roosevelt,  Chester Arthur, Andrew Johnson, Millard Fillmore, and John Tyler all became president without ANYONE voting them into that office. They were sitting VPs when the president died. If people feel that Kamala’s nomination was unfairly undemocratic, they have the option not to vote for her on November 5.
  5. MAGA people are opening quite the can of worms by bringing up undemocratic attitudes. Because THEIR guy is super-vulnerable on this. Not only has Trump openly stated he wants to be a dictator but his speeches are jam-packed with attacks on minority groups, calls for retribution against his enemies, endorsements of other dictators including Orban, Xi, Putin, and Kim among others, not to mention endorsing the savage but fictional cannibal Hannibal Lecter. Project 2025, which Trump falsely claims to know nothing about, is a roadmap for overthrowing democracy—created with help from more than 140 past and  present Trump employees and naming Trump numerous times. And that is just one of his tens of thousands of documented lies (30,573 just during his time as president, 162 in a single recent so-called press conference that did not take actual on-the-fly questions and did not subject him to being in the same room with his hand-picked panel). Agenda 47, which Trump does endorse and which the GOP has adopted as this year’s platform, sounds an awful lot like a simplified, less detailed Project 2025.
  6. And Trump not only has an extremely undemocratic record in his four years as president, a lot of the guardrails that kept him at least somewhat in check have been taken away—starting with the loony Supreme Court decision that found a president can not be held accountable for any action that was taken in his role as president.
  7. Finally, do we even need to mention that sore loser Trump is the ONLY US president who refused to hand over power peacefully at the end of his term, who incited a riot in a vain (and in-vain) attempt to incite a coup, who filed roughly 60 lawsuits to overturn the will of the people, many of which were tossed out by judges he had appointed? And, of course, he’s the only US president to be charged with 94 felonies and to be found guilty of 34 of them in the one trial that has taken place so far, not to mention held liable for $454 MM in the aftermath of just one of many suits against him for slanders and credible allegations of abusing women.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Activism, Business Ethics, Business-general, Consumer Issues, Corporate Social Responsibility, Energy & Sustainability, Ethics in Government, language, Marketing Trends/News, Politics, Socially Responsible Investing Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Wall Street bull statue
Creator: Sam Valadi
Credit: ZUMAPRESS.com/Newscom
Copyright: via ZUMA Wire

It’s been a pretty heavy news week, so you may have not heard about this incredibly stupid action in both houses of Congress.

Tuesday, the House of Representatives passed a bill “that would prevent the Labor Department from enforcing a rule that makes it easier for plan managers to consider ESG factors when they make investments and exercise shareholder rights, such as through proxy voting” (as reported by Reuters). The Senate, with four members absent and the complicity of two Democratic Senators, did likewise one day later.

This push says that pension funds must not be allowed to even consider any factors pertaining to ESG–Environmental, Social, Governance. It doesn’t say they have to make sure that ESG investments perform as well as non-ESG investments (which, often, they do). That would be a reasonable law to protect retiree pensions. But this one would bar fund managers from even considering anything involving ESG.

For decades, smart fund managers have been shifting investment toward ESG, and their reasons are fiscally sound. From avoiding corrosive investments in “stranded assets” like fossil-fuel or nuclear processing infrastructure that’s been plagues, by leaks, spills, explosions, etc. to avoiding ethics scandals that destroyed once-respected companies like Enron and Arthur Andersen, ESG investing makes so much sense that, as no less an authoritative source than NSDAQ notes,

In 2020, net inflows into ESG funds in the U.S. reached $51.1 billion, a significant increase over 2019 when flows equaled $21.4, which itself was a record.3 Global ESG investing by end of the first quarter in 2021 was nearly $2 trillion4.

The article goes on to list six factors in ESG investment growth and notes that even during the pandemic, “funds with ESG strategies outperformed traditional funds.2″ (Click the link to see the footnote sources, too.) This updates and reinforces the research I did when writing my 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, a few years ago. Every single one of the dozens of studies I checked at that time showed that ESG criteria lead to better financial results.

This growth started decades before the pandemic and was accelerating rapidly and consistently, as this 2020 article from Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance, states:

Net flows into ESG funds available to U.S. investors have skyrocketed, totalling $20.6 billion in 2019, nearly four times the previous annual record set in 2018, [1] while ESG funds in Europe also attracted record inflows of $132 billion in 2019. [2] More than 70% of funds focused on ESG investments outperformed their counterparts in the first four months of 2020, [3] and nearly 60% of ESG funds outperformed the wider market over the past decade. [4]

One unintended consequence I haven’t seen addressed anywhere is the possibility of widespread rebellion by private investors that could put the whole pension system at risk, as stakeholders demand that funds embrace sensible, profit-driven ESG corporations in their portfolio choices while an inane law makes that commitment illegal.

Fortunately, President Biden has promised that he will use the first veto of his presidency to block a law that is just as crazy as the various “anti-woke” measures authoritarian Florida Governor Ron DeSantis keeps shoving down the throats of his state’s residents and businesses. Oh, and in the unintended consequences department, please read this Daily Beast commentary on how the anti-woke law even puts Fox News at risk.Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Consumer Issues, Ethics: General, Innovation, Marketing Trends/News, Technology Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

On November 30, without much fanfare in my world, a new Artificial Intelligence tool called ChatGPT was released that could be as disruptive as Google or smartphones or affordable green energy. Less than a week later, on December 3, my programmer son-in-law blew our socks off with a demo. He showed us how he kept building more and more complex prompts to a query that in its final form compared the philosophies of Descartes, Nietzsche, and Bugs Bunny (who the software even correctly identified as fictional). The written response was cogent and fairly convincing–and went a lot deeper than, say, Wikipedia. And in its basic form, it apparently doesn’t even crawl the Internet!

Just one day later, Chris Brogan raved about the tool and gave another example in his newsletter; he asked ChatGPT to write a newsletter article about itself. While it didn’t produce work that I would turn in to a client, it’s better than at least 50 percent of the business writing that crosses my desk. He also used another tool, DALL-E, to create shockingly realistic graphics of things that don’t exist. Chris doesn’t have a public archive of his newsletters, so, unfortunately, I can’t link to his article and examples.

One day after Chris, the New York Times jumped in. One of its examples gives instructions for removing a peanut butter sandwich from a VCR (I hope the sandwich isn’t as old as the VCR!). Here are the first five sentences:

King James Version VCR cleaning tip written by ChatGPT
King James Version VCR cleaning tip written by ChatGPT

And today, one week after Chris wrote about it, Seth Godin devoted his daily column to preaching that the existence of ChatGPT, which can generate adequate (if mediocre) copy in seconds, means that we should pride ourselves on our artisanship–on creating work that is significantly better than a machine can do. (I like that approach!).

Oh, yeah, and the tool’s developer, Open AI, has a nice little flowchart of how it works (that I suspect ChatGPT helped prepare).

While news and opinions about ChatGPT seem to be popping up everywhere, you might shrug your shoulders and think, “so what?”

That would be a dangerous mistake! Dozens if not hundreds of industries could face fundamental shifts. Writing of all kinds (commercial, academic, literary, philosophical, instructional, etc.), obviously. But also design, fine art, computer programming, marketing, teaching, office administration, human resources, engineering…it would be a long list. It raises issues around ethics, staffing, training, research, library science, intellectual property–and perhaps most crucially, a future where bots and AI engines make decisions independent of their human creators.

In other words, this might be how we get to HAL, the infamous AI computer that went rogue in the 1968 movie, “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

Why am I going on about this? Because I want you to be forewarned and prepared.

Before deciding if my advice is worth paying attention to, you may find it helpful to consider my history with technology trends:

Although I’m not a professional trendspotter, I do pay attention. I’m a sponge for news and keep notes that sometimes find their way into books, blog posts, or speeches. I may not personally use some of these technologies, but knowing that they’re out there and what they can do influences my consulting recommendations.

I tend to wait for new technologies to be reasonably affordable and user-friendly, so I’m rarely in the very first wave, but it’s not unusual for me to be well ahead of others. I got my first computer (an original Mac) in 1984 because the learning curve was far less than for PCs of that era, my first laser printer in 1985–and that combination allowed me to disrupt and dominate my local resume industry by offering low-cost while-you-wait service. I got my very underpowered first laptop in 1986, which gave my travel and interview journalism and book writing a huge jumpstart. I made my first Skype video call, to New Zealand, in 1998 and had been on Zoom for about three years before the pandemic made it popular.

I knew about the online world in 1984. But it was too hard to use back then. I tried it for the first time in 1987 (and even dipped my toe into social media as it existed in that era), using Compuserve. But I didn’t like the primitive and buggy interface, hated trying to keep track of user names that consisted of long series of numbers with a random period in the middle, and was constantly frustrated by the balky connection that kept tossing me off–and left after a few months. I waited until 1994 and AOL’s easy interface before going back. And within a year, I had my first of many overseas marketing clients: a vitamin company in the UK.

In the green world, I follow innovations fairly closely. I put solar on the roof of my then-258-year-old farmhouse in 2001, LED lighting throughout the house around 2013-14, and a green heating system somewhere around 2015. I’ve been telling people for years about powerful innovations like a Frisbee-sized hydroelectric power generator that doesn’t require a dam, wind turbines made of old 55-gallon drums that spin on a vertical axis and can generate power at a far larger wind speed range, and the disruptive power of 3D printing.

But sometimes I wait, even if I’m recommending certain tools to others. I didn’t get a smartphone, digital camera, 3-in-1 printer, or color monitor until the bugs were worked out and the prices were slashed. Now, I wonder how I ever managed without those tools. And I still don’t have an electric car or a color printer.

So with this background, I will call ChatGPT a very big deal indeed.

It’s likely that I’d see the potential impact anyway, but it’s especially obvious because I’m reading a book called The Anticipatory Organization by Daniel Burris, which focuses on the need to focus on disruptive trends and the benefit of being the disruptor rather than the disrupted. (I’ll be reviewing it in my January Clean and Green Club newsletter; if you don’t subscribe yet, please visit http://goingbeyondsustainability.com, scroll to “Get your monthly Clean and Green Club Newsletter at no cost,” and fill out the simple form. You’ll find lots of interesting information on your way to the subscription form, too :-).

Once I get a chance to play with ChatGPT directly, I will probably have more to say about it. Unfortunately, with all this buzz, there’s now a waiting list, so I’ll have to delay that particular experience.

 
Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Consumer Issues, Corporate Social Responsibility, Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Environment, Green Business, Marketing Trends/News, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , ,

One area where sustainability can really easily interface with consumers–and give them a direct role in becoming more sustainable–is the very simple step of adding signage (including website notices) that indicates how far a product has traveled. Informal observation (not any real research) at a store that was doing this showed me that it significantly raised consumer awareness and drove purchasing choices toward more local options. Similarly, signage can clue people in about what progress you’re making on the social equity issues you’re addressing.

Another is revealing what goals were met in the making of the product, which were not meant, and how the failure to meet a sustainability or equity goal is pushing your company to do more.

And a third is to open actively monitored channels where customers and other stakeholders can make suggestions on your sustainability and social justice improvements. Think of it as a form of zero-cost consulting help (but recognize that however well-meaning they are, they are unlikely to know the true costs and feasibility levels of their suggestions. ALWAYS respond to any serious suggestion (ignore and block the addresses of the ones who spam your form, though). Engaging in real dialog is not only excellent PR, it’s also excellent market research.

Are there benefits to this approach? Absolutely! Consider Marks & Spencer, a major UK retailer. In 2007, they started measuring and reporting on 100 environmental metrics, calling this initiative “Plan A.”

Very quickly, the results provided so many benefits that the company started measuring an additional 80 metrics. As Bob Willard reports in his book, The New Sustainability Advantage (which I cite in mown book Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World),

The company expected to invest £200 million in the program, but by 2009-10 Plan A had broken even and was adding £50 million t0 the bottom line. In response, M&S added another 80 commitments to the original 100 in Plan A. (p. 159)

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Consumer Issues, Democracy, Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, Ethics in Government, Marketing Trends/News, Mindset, People Helping People, Politics, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice, Talking to the Other Side Tagged with , , , , ,

Those of us in the US are probably used to hearing people go on and on about our high status in rankings of desirability. And in some ways, we are. (I am a US citizen and a lifelong resident, so in this post, I’m going to use “we” and “our” when referring to Americans.)File:Life expectancy vs healthcare spending.jpg

  • We are super-cosmopolitan, able to create cities where hundreds of different ethnic, racial, and religious groups not only live and work together but enjoy each other’s food, music, etc.
  • We introduced modern democracy to the world–a huge improvement over the divine right of kings
  • We have enormous diversity in geography, agriculture, weather conditions…whatever you want, you can find it somewhere in the US
  • US technology leadership sparked enormous progress in fields as diverse as computing, clean energy, and space exploration

BUT on a lot of other metrics, we fall alarmingly short. Consider, for instance:

I could go on,  but you get the idea. In metric after metric, the US was once the leader and now lags.

Isn’t it time to reclaim that greatness?Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail