Category: Marketing Trends/News

By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Marketing Trends/News, Media Ethics, Uncategorized

I couldn’t agree more with John Ritskowitz’s blog entry criticizing the marketers of a new anti-wrinkle product that was actually Nestle’s Quik powder–yup, the chocolate breakfast drink of your childhood.

This was a test by NBC’s Dateline, to see if they could find a marketing firm unscrupulous enough to take on the project despite dubious clinical results. And they did.

His blog includes a link to the Dateline report, which describes informercial scoundrels as “television terrorists.”

Masquerading as a representative from “Johnston Products,” a Dateline reporter contacted a marketing firm and told them up front that he didn’t think the product would help many people, and that no clinical trials were run to test its effectiveness.

And what did the marketing firm think? They thought there wouldn’t be a problem, as all that was needed was “somebody in a white coat” to give the impression that the product had been scientifically tested. That and a few paid testimonials.

The real shame was that the marketing firm then found a real doctor, a well-credentialed doctor, a hospital’s Chef of Dermatology, in fact (Dr. Margaret Olsen, then of Santa Monica’s St. John’s Hospital), who gave a glowing endorsement without ever examining the product. Yuck!

Ritskowitz goes on to cite several other products that give marketers a bad name, and were eventually pulled off the market under government pressure.

I totally agree with is analysis that this deceitful crap makes it much harder for us legitimate marketers. And of course, I agree with his call to sign the Business Ethics Pledge, which I founded (big grin). We currently have signatories from 24 countries, and I’d love you to be the next to sign.

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Ethics in Government, Marketing Trends/News, Media Ethics, Uncategorized

Remember the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle from high school physics? It’s the idea that the act of observing something can alter the organisms or events being observed.

A fascinating article by Thomas Kostigen on Dow Jones MarketWatch looks at how media coverage changes the behavior of governments and corporations, specifically dealing with ethical concerns. The article cites the work of Luigi Zingales, professor of entrepreneurship and finance at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business–who found that businesses will often improve their behavior when the media spotlight shines on them.

As an example, when the media jumped on the excessive-compensation reportage regarding the salary of former New York Stock Exchange chairman Richard Grasso, he lost his job.

However, government is a different matter, at least these days. Kostigan sees the media, in its coverage of both corporate and government issues, as irresponsibly unwilling to go deep, late in its reportage, and too eager to sail in the perceived political wind:

Too often the media plays patsy and is meek in the face of challenge, as was the case with the reporting on the events leading up to the war in Iraq. Or it trails intrepid government inquisitors such as Elliott Spitzer. Or it gets the story wrong — weapons of mass destruction, President Bush’s National Guard record. Or lies about it — Jayson Blair, Jack Kelley

On the business front, the media lagged inquiry on just about every corporate scandal in recent memory; its business is to break news, not merely report it.

As someone who writes regularly about ethics and media, I have to agree with him, at least as far as the mainstream press goes. Most important stories these days are broken by the underground press, or by people like Greg Palast who is an American working for British journalism companies that are less afraid to go after the truth.

I’m still hoping that the Business Ethics Pledge will help change that unwillingness to question. Questioning–questioning everything, and digging deeper–is what journalism should be about.

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Marketing Trends/News, Media Ethics, Uncategorized

Yeech! I just signed on to approve one comment and found 65 in my box. 63 were spam and two were legit. I marked them all as spam and hopefully won’t ever see another subject line of “buy Valium.” What do these people think they’re going to accomplish by spamming a blog that moderates posts?

If you suddenly find that I’m no longer accepting comments, it’ll be because I’ll have lost patience with these cretins. I wish I could force them to read the section of my book Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World called “Spam: The Newbies’ Natural Mistake.”

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By Posted on Posted in Customer Service as Marketing, Marketing Trends/News, Uncategorized

You’ve got to wonder about marketers who send those horrible emails where everything is in 8-point type all jammed on the left side of the page and completely unreadable. I own a one-trick-pony software app called SmartWrap that is designed to strip out all the > characters and bad line breaks in multi-quoted e-mail–but it’s also very useful for converting those scrunchy e-mails into something my 49-year-old eyes can handle. If only it supported the page-down key, I’d be all set.

As for my own newsletter prep: I do three monthly newsletters, all in plain text, none of them with pix. I could probably increase deliverability by posting the whole thing on a web page (we do archive them later, but only the main articles) and sending an email with a URL pointer–but I think the higher deliverability would be countered by the lower readership, especially as two of my newsletters target the frugality market and therefore can be expected to have higher-than-usual percentages on dialup.

When I was on dialup, pretty much the only outfit that got me to click to the web was MarketingSherpa.com; now that I’m on broadband, I’m considerably more willing.

However…as a recipient, I loathe HTML, find that in 98% of newsletters with graphics, the graphics are unnecessary–I keep them turned off, so for the most part, I don’t even see the “pretty” pictures–and 3/4 of the time I do turn them on for a particular newsletter, I wonder why they bothered.

As for PDF as an attachment versus a webpage, I’d let it be the reader’s choice. But I do remember that PDF downloads on the web were very annoying when I was on dialup–attachments were better, but only if they weren’t too huge. If a lot of readers are on dialup, it’s probably better to format a page in HTML and send a link. Or just post on a blog!

* * * *
Shel Horowitz is the award-winning author of Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First and five other books, and the creator of the Business Ethics Pledge to make crooked business as unthinkable in the future as slavery is today.

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By Posted on Posted in Ethics in Government, Marketing Trends/News, Media Ethics, Uncategorized

The US House of Representatives struck a major blow against our Internet freedom the other day, voting for the so-called Communications, Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement Act of 2006.

This disastrous bill, if also passed by the Senate, would take away the principle of “Net Neutrality”–that every website gets to load as fast as the server can manage and be found as easily as it shows up in the search engines. A vast coalition of 752 groups on both the left and right joined forces to block this bill, but the House passed it 321-101, including 92 Democrats.

Contact your Senators NOW and speak out against this bill–or face a world in which not the government but big telecommunications corporations effectively decide which websites you will see, and promote the sites that pay them the most. The Internet has been the backbone of the independent press, one of the last bastions of people unafraid to tell the real news. We must protect our rights to view these sites, read these blogs, watch these videos–and if content providers have to pay for the privilege of having their sites accessed, that channel will dry up mighty fast. Our browsers will be sold to the highest bidder, and that will not be the alternative voices.

* * * *
Shel Horowitz is the award-winning author of Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First and five other books, and the creator of the Business Ethics Pledge to make crooked business as unthinkable in the future as slavery is today.

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By Posted on Posted in Marketing Trends/News, Shel's Personal Life, Uncategorized

Responding to a post by Ed Smith on the Self-Publishing Yahoogroup about whether blogs are worth it:

Hi I am considering putting a blog on my website with the objective of
increasing visitors to my site. I am aware of the costs to set it up,
but I am concerned about the amount of work involved in keeping it
spam free and on target. It sounds like it is a lot of work that has
to be done on a daily basis. Could those of you who run blogs on
their websites, give me your opinion as to it being worth the time you
are putting into the blog. Any thoughts about do’s and don’ts
regarding setting up a blog are welcome as well. Thanks for your help.

I spend one to two hours a week on my blog, which I host on my own site in WordPress and also keep a mirror hosted on Blogger–probably average three posts per week. Some of these posts I also copy to my AmazonConnect blog, but very few. I spend far more time posting here and other lists. Been doing it for a year and a half, and what scared me off for so long was the idea that I needed to post every day. Of course, you’ll get better results the more often you post.

Some advantages:
* It’s really true that blog posts seem to get into search engines faster
* A post of mine got referenced by Slate.com and I saw a nice traffic spike
* Some of the posts only take five or ten minutes–a paragraph or two, and a link
* One of my long-time goals is to be a syndicated columnist. Last year, I took about six of the longer and best thought out pieces and repackaged them as sample columns. I sent to four syndicates. All said no, but at least I wasn’t creating the articles from scratch!
* I have a small but dedicated following, a few of whom (including at least one listmate) have signed up for e-mail notifications
* Sometimes I can repurpose content–this post, for instance, will make a nice blog entry
* Of course, it’s more links inbound to my site (from the Goggle-owned mirror on Blogger and from anyone referencing my post)
* It seems to add to my credibility when I tell, for instance, reporters that I’ve been blogging on business ethics for over a year

Definitely offer the option of e-mail feeds and XML feeds, and definitely use pingoat.com to tell the world when you update.

As for comment spam, yes, I’ve experienced it. I turned on word Verification on Blogger, and turned on pre-approval on WordPress. No spam gets through, and when someone tried to hammer me on WordPress, I just bulk-deleted all their attempts.

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Marketing Trends/News, Uncategorized

I promised on May 24 I’d post the results of my press release offering to comment on the Enron verdict. And being a man of honor who writes about ethics, I’m keeping that promise.

Results were less than stellar. An email drop to some 700 outlets resulted in *one* radio interview–admittedly, nationally syndicated and for a full hour. PR Web claims 36,997 people saw the press release (which means they saw at least the headline) and 398 media outlets picked it up but none used it. This is about half the number of page views of my previous two releases posted there, but both of those have been up quite a bit longer.

But here’s the really astonishing thing: not only did my carefully crafted press release (vetted with a PR expert before it went out) fall flat, it seems that almost no one was looking for comments on this big, big story.

Watching Google-flagged alerts for business ethics and related topics in the days following the verdict, I found only one case of a reporter turning to expert sources to comment on the case: the South Bend, Indiana paper, interviewing two professors from Notre Dame and another local university.

There were quite a number of reporters who made their own comments, all of them roundly critical of Lay and Skilling. But nobody was talking to experts.

Strange!

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Marketing Trends/News, Media Ethics, Shel's Personal Life, Uncategorized

Last week, at Book Expo America, I attended a panel of NPR producers. I asked how my book on business ethics, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First (published in 2003) could be made timely again for the Enron verdict.

They told me, have something on our desks before the verdict is issued.

So this is what I sent–a different approach to PR:

Expert Commentator: Enron Verdict/Ethics Issues

As a verdict nears in the trial of Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling of Enron, business ethics author is available for comment on Enron verdict and other business ethics issues.

Hadley, MA (PRWEB) May 23, 2006 — As a verdict nears in the trial of Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling of Enron, business ethics author Shel Horowitz is available for comment on Enron verdict and other business ethics issues

Suggested Questions to Ask Shel (or choose your own):
* What does this verdict mean for American business? For business worldwide?
* What’s the business secret that Arthur Andersen, the company founder, understood–but that the Arthur Andersen accountants who conspired with Enron were clueless about?
* You say ‘nice guys don’t finish last!’ How can a ‘nice guy’ attitude generate business success?
* How did the Tylenol poisoning scare actually help its manufacturer, Johnson & Johnson?
* Does an ethical attitude matter more in a big company or a small company?

Credentials:
* Award-winning author of Principled Profit: Marketing that Puts People First (and six other books)
* Founder of the Business Ethics Pledge
* Regular columnist for Business Ethics Magazine
* Speaker on ethics to the Public Relations Society of America International Conference, Publishers Marketing Association University, Folio magazine industry conference, UMass Family Business Center, and many other organizations
* Blogger on ethics issues since 2004
* Host: Principled Profit: The Good Business Radio Show (WXOJ, Northampton MA)
* Frequent interviewee in major print and electronic media (see https://www.principledprofit.com/press-room.html#media for detailed list)

Perspective: In the long run, ethics is *good* for business. Ethical, cooperative businesses make more profit, create intense customer and employee loyalty, and have a much better chance of staying out of legal and regulatory trouble. Greed of Enron’s senior officials blew apart two companies and had a definite human cost. Specific comments will depend on the verdict.

Commentator Personal Profile: Shel Horowitz, 49, copywriter and marketing consultant. Lives on a working dairy farm in Hadley, MA. Married to novelist D. Dina Friedman; two children.

Contact:
Shel Horowitz
Office (and best message number): 413-586-2388
Home: 413-584-3490
Cell:
Email: shel AT PrincipledProfit.com (Subject: Ethics Interview Request)
https://www.business-ethics-pledge.org (Ethics Pledge)

# # #

I’ll let you know how it goes.

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Marketing Trends/News, Uncategorized

I just posted,

Within 12 hours, I read two newsletters with deeply disturbing stories–one about the media, and the other in the retail world. Both of them made me want to jump out with a big protest sign that says “Ethics are Important…Ethics are Profitable!”–but in both cases, I’d have rather too many targets to picket effectively.

So what’s the other story? Roy H. Williams, in his Monday Morning Memo (another favorite of mine despite its weak title–consistently provocative and visionary) talks about “the cashier con,” where offers turn out not to be as they were presented.

His examples include a computer clerk who offered a cheap software upgrade–without disclosing that it involved filing for a manufacturer’s rebate…and an oil change franchise that flat-out lied when Roy started the interaction by asking if they do state inspections.

I agree wholeheartedly with Roy that these are short-sighted and stupid, as well as unethical. He says…

In the short run, these cashier cons are likely to elevate profits. But can you think of a faster way to grind away brand image and erode brand loyalty? I traded with these companies because I believed in them. And now I don’t anymore. I let them keep my money. But I did not let them keep my heart.

I share these stories with you only to alert you to the dangers of shallow, short-sighted marketing. Quicky-tricky profits often come at a terrible long-term price.

Personally, on the inspection sticker con, I would have demanded an immediate refund and filed a complaint with the state Attorney General. The outfit wasted half an hour of his time, did not deliver what was promised, and could have caused him to get an expensive ticket for an outdated sticker.

If your business delivers what it promises, gain the marketing advantage by signing the Business Ethics Pledge.

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Marketing Trends/News, Media Ethics, Uncategorized

First of Two Disturbing Trends: Paid News Placement

Within 12 hours, I read two newsletters with deeply disturbing stories–one about the media, and the other in the retail world. Both of them made me want to jump out with a big protest sign that says “Ethics are Important…Ethics are Profitable!”–but in both cases, I’d have rather too many targets to picket effectively.

Joan Stewart, in her excellent weekly e-zine, The Publicity Hound, writes that more and more media are taking the old concept of paid product placement (to which I’m not particularly opposed on the entertainment side) and extending it…to news stories. Unfortunately, I can’t find it on her site or on her blog.

Whoa, pardner! If people have to pay in order to get covered in the news, it’s not news anymore. And it means that what is news may be bounced in favor of the advertorial stuff. Not good! And yet it’s happening, and not just in small markets. her article cites examples of TV stations in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

KRON-TV Channel 4 in San Francisco, for example, once a well-respected
news operation, now offers “product integration fees” to people who want
to be included in news stories. In February, the station broadcast an
11-part “Spa Spectacular,” in which each featured spa paid a fee and
bought advertising. Anchors offered viewers a chance to buy half-price spa
certificates at the end of each segment.

Of course, this ties in with the related bad idea of airing Video News Releases (VNRs) and pretending they are the original work of the station. And the other important story about consolidation of print media, dismissal of long-time and highly competent reporters, etc., all around the country.

Time to get the bean counters out of media management, I say! Yes, a true news department is expensive–but it can be subsidized by the highly profitable mindless fluff that’s cheap to produce–or perhaps by small cuts in the outrageous compensation of media execs and on-air personalities. We don’t need personalities; we need news. News–do I really have to verbalize this?…

  • Keeps the politicians and corporations honest
  • Creates an informed citizenry that can bring public pressure for change
  • Generates a historical record that will show future historians a contemporaneous account of earth-shaking events as they unfold

    It’s bad enough that the news has been so dumbed down that for the most part, it’s doing a very poor job. Switching to a paid model will be the nail in the coffin, and we’ll have to get all our news from bloggers. Don’t get me wrong–bloggers are great. But there’s also an important, even crucial, role for the professional journalist. (See the post I just made on the Pulitzers.)

    Let’s reverse this trend!

    PS: If you believe as I do that ethics are not only important but contribute to profitabillity, I invite you to sign the Business Ethics Pledge.

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