Category: Marketing Trends/News

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

1. My friend and colleague Denise O’Berry, down in Floria, was born to blog. She’s a natural-born connector and networker. I stopped counting the times I got mentioned in some relatively obscure publication and got a clip of the article postally mailed to me with a personal note and Denise’s business card–and this was loooong before I met her in person two years ago. So it shouldn’t surprise me that Denise has put together a wonderful directory of business blogs. Now I just need her to set up an ethics category so I don’t have to try to shoehorn my own blog into one of the existing categories, none of which are quite right for this hybrid beast I’ve created.

2. More and more bloggers are functioning as journalists–but unlike professional journos, we are self-directed, in most cases have no direct supervision (e.g., a boss), and aren’t necessarily schooled in getting the story behind the story, knowing what’s true and what’s rumor, and how to behave responsibly. (Of course many bloggers do have journalism training and experience, including me–but many do not, and there have been consequences).

Cyberjournalist.net has jumped into the breach with a Blogger’s Code of Ethics. I quote it in full here:

Be Honest and Fair
Bloggers should be honest and fair in gathering, reporting and interpreting information.
Bloggers should:
• Never plagiarize.
• Identify and link to sources whenever feasible. The public is entitled to as much information as possible on sources’ reliability.
• Make certain that Weblog entries, quotations, headlines, photos and all other content do not misrepresent. They should not oversimplify or highlight incidents out of context.
• Never distort the content of photos without disclosing what has been changed. Image enhancement is only acceptable for for technical clarity. Label montages and photo illustrations.
• Never publish information they know is inaccurate — and if publishing questionable information, make it clear it’s in doubt.
• Distinguish between advocacy, commentary and factual information. Even advocacy writing and commentary should not misrepresent fact or context.
• Distinguish factual information and commentary from advertising and shun hybrids that blur the lines between the two.

Minimize Harm
Ethical bloggers treat sources and subjects as human beings deserving of respect.
Bloggers should:
• Show compassion for those who may be affected adversely by Weblog content. Use special sensitivity when dealing with children and inexperienced sources or subjects.
• Be sensitive when seeking or using interviews or photographs of those affected by tragedy or grief.
• Recognize that gathering and reporting information may cause harm or discomfort. Pursuit of information is not a license for arrogance.
• Recognize that private people have a greater right to control information about themselves than do public officials and others who seek power, influence or attention. Only an overriding public need can justify intrusion into anyone’s privacy.
• Show good taste. Avoid pandering to lurid curiosity.
Be cautious about identifying juvenile suspects, victims of sex crimes and criminal suspects before the formal filing of charges.

Be Accountable
Bloggers should:
• Admit mistakes and correct them promptly.
• Explain each Weblog’s mission and invite dialogue with the public over its content and the bloggers’ conduct.
• Disclose conflicts of interest, affiliations, activities and personal agendas.
• Deny favored treatment to advertisers and special interests and resist their pressure to influence content. When exceptions are made, disclose them fully to readers.
• Be wary of sources offering information for favors. When accepting such information, disclose the favors.
• Expose unethical practices of other bloggers.
• Abide by the same high standards to which they hold others.

As the moving force behind the Business Ethics Pledge, I welcome this, of course. Maybe some of the ethical bloggers will find their way to the Pledge.

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By Posted on Posted in Marketing Trends/News

Unlike the GoDaddy valentine I wrote about last week, this one was not cheap. But it’s promoting a movie so they probably had a lot of the footage.

A set of three trailers for “The Secret.” After seeing the intro and the first trailer, I signed up for their mailing list–I’m ready to see this movie! The second and third trailers were significantly less impressive.

One particular thing that shows these people really understand marketing: once you’ve viewed any of the trailers, the finish screen gives you several viral tools I hadn’t even come across before: Furl, Blogmark, and Delicious. I think we’ll be seeing not only more really classy high-end videos like this (it even looked good on Windows Media Player, at both high and low bandwidth–while most WMP files look pretty jerky and crude on my system–they also offer Quciktime and Flash). Oddly enough, there were a lot more captions on the low-bandwidth version.

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By Posted on Posted in Marketing Trends/News

​​​​I have a lot of respect for media coach/PR queen Susan Harrow,
author of one of my favorite PR books (Sell Yourself Without Selling
Your Soul) and the go-to person if you want your author on Oprah. I’ve
subscribed to her newsletter for years and it’s one I actually do read.

Susan’s launched a new project: celebrity makeovers by nomination (e.g., these are not really her clients). She starts with advice to Malcolm Gladwell.
I’ve read Blink and a chunk of The Tipping Point but have not heard him
speak. I think I have heard him on radio but it didn’t leave much
impression.

Susan goes after him to improve his speaking
delivery in a big way, and all the points she makes sound valid.
Speaking is a vital communication tool for authors. But she also tells
him to shave his hair. Looking at his picture on her blog, I think it’s
kind of cute. I’d vote for a little trim maybe, but not a radical new
look.

But I sure do hope we haven’t reached the point on the
glitz-scale where someone with as important a message as Gladwell is
judged on his or her hairstyle!

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By Posted on Posted in Marketing Trends/News

3. New Business Ideas are Everywhere
It
seems there’s no shortage of unfilled needs that could become the core
of wildly successful businesses. Here are a few I noticed:

Ralph Stevens turns 100 (See #4, below).
(Photo by Alana Horowitz Friedman)

A. Mail-back kiosks and/or check-this-as-luggage containers at airport security checkpoints:
My 13-year-old son brought his oboe on the trip, including a set of
four tiny screwdrivers, like the sort for tightening eyeglass frames.
TSA confiscated three of the screwdrivers. (I offered to let each of
the four of us take one screwdriver, but this was not acceptable.)
Apparently there was some rather inconvenient way we could have mailed
it to ourselves for $10, but it would cost less to replace them. We
could have also sent the whole bag through checked baggage, but the
risk of damaging or losing the instrument far outweighed the
convenience of keeping the screwdrivers.

There must be thousands
of items per day that are confiscated, causing great inconvenience to
the owners of the objects, and also a substantial disposal problem for
TSA. Someone should come along and contract with the postal service and
TSA to set up a self-service mail kiosk at each security checkpoint,
with a selection of small padded envelopes and the ability to type an
address label and take credit cards. Charge actual postage plus maybe a
$3.00 or $4.00 service charge, of which two-thirds would be profit.
Someone would need to refill the envelopes and be available for
maintenance problems, but the post office would collect the packages
for free.

Another possibility: rent small suitcases big enough
to go through baggage without being lost or crushed, with drop-off at
any airport in the U.S.

B. Travel planning website for fixed dates, open destination:

We’ve been trying to plan a trip for our next vacation, over Christmas
week. But we have to try one destination at a time. The truth is, we’re
not so fussy about where we go. I’d like to be able to select a date
range of two or three days on each end and see destinations ranked by
fare within broad categories of U.S., Europe, Asia, Africa, Pacific.
Then we could quickly narrow it down and click for more
information/booking. I checked with two prominent travel experts;
neither knew of such a site.

C. Urban compost centers:
In my brother-in-law’s food-co-oping, Prius-driving, recycling
Minneapolis neighborhood, a lot of food scraps end up in the municipal
garbage system. If someone could figure out a way to create a business
model around composting, while still keeping the disposal a free
community service, it wouldn’t be hard to generate a significant
quantity of waste. I live on farm and my neighbors sell composted cow
manure for $5 a bag, but my guess is they sell only a few bags per
week. Still, there surely must be people who would pay for high quality
compost; it’s just a matter of figuring out who has the need, wants to
pay, and can generate enough orders to be worthwhile. Garden centers,
perhaps? They’re already selling fertilizer. Or maybe the garden
centers should operate the compost operation.

4. Aging Populations Have Different Needs
My
sister-in-law’s grandfather, Ralph Stevens, turned 100 while we were
out there, and we went to the party along with about 40 of his
relatives. I’d never been to a 100th birthday party before, although I
did go to my neighbors’ 70th wedding anniversary.

When I was a
kid in the 1960s and 70s, many people born around the beginning of the
20th century were dying off; if you lived past 70, you were considered
old. Yet 76,000 Americans have reached that amazing 100-year milestone–and
these are the same generation that appeared to be dying off thirty and
forty years ago. What marketing opportunities are presented by people
living to be 100? By having four or five generations of the same family
alive at once? What does Ralph Stevens, a wheelchair-using blind
centenarian who loves to sing and lives in close proximity to a large
family, want and need in his life? How would you market to him in his
nursing home or through his family?

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, General Commentary, Marketing Trends/News

Just back from several days in Minneapolis, and I had my trend-spotting radar up. Some observations:

1. The airline industry continues to shift.

We flew ATA and Southwest, and it was illuminating to contrast them. Southwest still very much encourages the nonconformists and humorists among its staff, and continues to do very well with on-time performance, full or nearly-full planes, and other metrics. And they continue to make things nicer for their customers. For instance, online check-in is a big improvement over the cattle-herd system of the old days, and printing your boarding group right on the boarding card is much better than the old plastic passes. Maybe it was my imagination, but it seemed to me there’s a bit more leg room than there used to be. And on today’s flight home, they even gave us each a square of chocolate!

Lessons for other companies: give your people room to shine and they will. Fill a market niche, and you’ll be profitable. Be nice to your customers, and they will return. Do all three things right and you’re a rare success in a troubled industry.

ATA, by comparison, was not a pleasant experience. The seats are jammed together to the point where, even at only 5’7″, I was extremely grateful to have an aisle seat so I had someplace to put my feet. (My wife flew Northwest recently, and said the legroom is even worse there.) On the way there, we discovered that the airline had never entered a change in our itinerary and had us flying the previous day. Luckily, we had a paper trail and there were still enough seats. Yet, even though I watched the ticket agent enter the correct information for our return trip, it seemed the check-in agent on the flight home had some difficulty getting the reservation to show up appropriately. And other little things–no sparkling mineral water or seltzer, only club soda (which has salt, on top of all the salt in the pretzels). And big things: ATA had over two hours to get our luggage to Southwest during our Chicago transfer; not one of our four bags made it on the plane, and neither did the bag of another passenger with the same itinerary. None of this was life-threatening, and most of it is a pretty small inconvenience–but it added up to somewhat negative experience that is likely to influence future purchase decisions. Oh yes, and the reason we were on Southwest in the first place is that ATA suddenly pulled out of our market long after we’d booked our flight. (Southwest doesn’t fly to Minneapolis.)

Lesson: No matter how good your advertising, your brand is built on positive and negative customer experiences.

(Disclosure: I was a fan of Southwest long before this happened, but I should point out that the company bought 1000 copies of Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First, prepublication. If that colors your view of my comments, so be it.)

2. A Discounter Goes Upscale

Southwest again. The airline’s Unique Selling Proposition has always been the combination of low prices, reliability, and superior service. Perhaps it’s the service aspect that’s helping Southwest Spirit, the inflight mag, to go after a very upscale advertiser profile. The pages are filled with ads for expensive high-rise housing, Las Vegas casinos, glitzy restaurants, expensive gizmos…and there are a lot of ads!

This could mean several things:

  • High-end consumers are putting greater value on low prices
  • Southwest’s superior experience means non-price-conscious consumers are seeking them out because they want to get there on time and be entertained
  • The airline may be experimenting with moving away from that USP, and higher prices may be on the way (though I suspect they wouldn’t be quick to throw away 30 years of loyalty built in large measure by affordability)

I’ll try to do Part II tomorrow

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By Posted on Posted in Events, Marketing Trends/News

Tsunami Publishing’s Bob Bellin is a small publisher who thinks big. “We take abandoned brands, former bestsellers that we can bring back to bestsellers through aggressive and offbeat marketing and promotion.”

New York Times bestseller Steve Alten feels Bellin is treating him “a lot better than my last two publishers.” Bellin sent out 1500 galleys of his first title, Alten’s The Loch; he spent $100,000 on PR, satellite TV and radio tours, bought ad time and a banner on a coast-to-coast radio show, and is testing a radio ad campaign involving a bookstore coop.

“Our goal is to sell books. Ideally, a book that’s likely to be made into a movie; it will sell more books.” And apparently, it’s working, so far. “We popped in the first week at number 9 on Ingram’s bestseller list. We’ve already sold more than his last publisher. We printed five figures and we’re about to go to print again,” one month after the May 1 publication date. Bellin bought the rights to another abandoned Alten book, Meg, from Bantam. New Line Cinema is making the movie.

The trend of smaller publishers picking up larger authors was evident elsewhere at the show. Two among several examples: Small publisher Quill Driver Press has picked up Dr. Ruth, and Chelsea Green, publisher of the mega-hit Don’t Think of an Elephant (see related story), is in negotiation with some successful authors (but declined to name names).

On the other side of the fence, large publishers continue to pick up titles that have proven themselves in an independently published, self-published, or even subsidy-published run. John Wiley, for instance has picked up Internet marketing gurus Joe Vitale and Mark Joyner (in separate books, although the two have often collaborated).

Several categories seem to be drying up. You’d expect some reduction in political books now that last year’s hotly contested election is in the past, but their near-total absence from the major houses and obscurity even among the smaller houses was surprising.

Also, unless I simply missed the whole section somehow, there were amazingly few glitzy new cookbooks. The cookbooks I saw were mostly of the down-home variety, rather than the big coffee-table volumes that have dominated for several years. Combined with the greatly reduced presence of large four-color art titles, the shortage made me wonder if there’s been a huge increase in the cost of printing and/or shipping in Asia–though I wouldn’t expect the impact of the weak dollar and high fuel prices to show up until next year, given the publishing industry’s long lead times.

I noted last year how bland the largest houses have become, and this year that was even more true. Cookie-cutter, formulaic books dominated the largest booths–but independent publishers continue to focus on titles that one can take pride in.

One category where the largest houses do seem to still have some verve: history. Lots of solid-looking titles on wars, presidents, and fashions over the decades and centuries.

And perhaps 2005 is the Year of the Ordinary Mortal. From both small and large publishers, I saw a number of books celebrating the achievements of average Joes and Janes. One of my favorites in the category was Damn! I Wish I’d Written That!: chronicling the publishing successes of ordinary folks who didn’t necessarily even have big credentials. (However, it was rather odd to see Spencer Johnson’s Who Moved My Cheese on the cover along with several more appropriate books. Johnson, after all, was already the best-selling co-author of The One-Minute Manager.)

Faith and religion were much evident this year, and not just in the religion aisles. WJK Books, whose The Gospel According to the Simpsons I picked up a couple of years ago, has now expanded to a whole line of Gospel According to titles: Harry Potter, Tolkein, and even (forthcoming) Oprah, among others. Wonder if the Potter book will shift the discourse among those elements of the Christian Right that have attacked and tried to censor the series.

And speaking of Hogwarts’s celebrated wizard, spin-off were everywhere: not just books trying to position themselves as the Next HP, but also literary criticism and scholarship on Potter and other fantasy series–looking, for instance at the mythology that influenced JK Rowling (this is a trend at least a few years old–my 2001 show report mentions The Magical Worlds of Harry Potter: A Treasury of Myths, Legends, and Fascinating Facts, but more titles are appearing, including Fact, Fiction, and Folklore in Harry Potter’s World from midsize publisher Hampton Roads.

As I look over my notes, I do notice that a lot of what I’ve found worth mentioning is from midsize publishers who put out, say, 10 to 50 titles per year. As the big boys swallow each other up and increasingly concentrate on celebrity tell-alls and blockbuster novels from famous authors, perhaps it is these publishers who will become the Keepers of the Culture: the ones who can release books that actually advance our thinking as a society, who take a chance on a first-timer’s literary gem–and who have enough marketing muscle to actually move the books out of the warehouse, into the bookstore, and out to the consumer (unlike the vast majority of self-publishers, tiny independents with fewer than five titles a year, or authors publishing with subsidy presses).

Maybe it’s time to start reading publisher labels as we select our bookstore purchases. While an imprint like Chelsea Green, Berrett-Koehler, or New Society Publishers–and there are a couple of dozen others–doesn’t guarantee a great book, in my experience, it definitely increases the odds.

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

An interesting week in the news, for sure.

This from Jack O’Dwyer’s PR-industry newsletter, which I hadn’t seen before but picked up at a PRSA event in New York. (I’m actually writing this from New York, in fact–where Book Expo America starts tomorrow.) O’Dwyer reports that the White House press corps, tired of their role as “props,” boycotted a May 23 press conference with President Bush and Afghani President Hamid Karzai–because the events are so tightly controlled that they’re only allowed two questions. I imagine they mean two questions total, rather than two apiece.

So as usual, the Bush administration appears to be afraid of an open and free press, and for once the 5th Estate is showing a little muscle. More power to them! The charade that has passed for Washington journalism the last few years is badly in need of a shakeup.

This is a particularly nice nugget considering that after 33 years, we’ve learned the identity of Deep Throat–the most vivid case study for the idea that undisclosed sources have a place in legitimate mainstream journalism, and that journalism has a responsibility to investigate the powers-that-be. To my knowledge, no one has ever challenged the authenticity of Mark Felt’s reports back then, and for 33 years, his identity was unknown. He helped to bring down a crooked government, and it wouldn’t have happened if journalists Woodward and Bernstein had been forced to disclose their sources.

Newsweek, are you listening? (See my two previous blog entries, May 18 and 25)

The same newsletter also bore an item about the PR industry, trust, and the bill that was passed forcing media to identify government video news releases (VNRs, a/k/a/ propaganda) when they use them: A little spat between the president of PRSA and a former PRSA/NY board member, in which the latter said that the former’s contention that PR has a high level of trust (and didn’t need regulation of VNRs) was ridiculous.

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

I was off on a road trip last week, and one of my stops was the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, in downtown Cleveland.

I’m used to marketing products, services, and ideas. The Hall of Fame markets an entire culture. Can I learn a few things from them and apply it to marketing the books, widgets, services, and opportunities that make up my livelihood? You bet!

A few for starters:

* If you want to market a culture, define it broadly. Rock, as the Hall of Fame sees it, goes back to the 1940s and continues through the day after tomorrow. So anyone under about 80 will feel that the museum has something for them.

* Honor the contributions of others. One of the things that really makes the museum stand out is its emphasis on the trailblazers of folk, jazz, blues, R&B, gospel, and world music. Without them, rock would never have come to be. By honoring these pioneers, the museum has made itself accessible to several older generations, and let casual fans trace the music through its roots, so they gain a greater understanding of what makes this a music to take seriously.

* Employ all the senses. Sound, vision, and touch are all part of the experience. I imagine they’ll figure out ways of incorporating taste and smell at some point.

* Make it fun! And make it unique. You’d expect to see Eric Clapton’s guitar, Jimi Hendrix’s wardrobe. But how about John Lennon’s grammar school report card? (His teachers saw him as creative, but undisciplined.) Or a video clip of Bruce Springsteen saying most rock stars wee misfits in school.

I’ll stop there. It was not only a wonderful good time, but it was professionally useful, too.

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

As a copywriter, I’m always looking to better my skill set—so I read a whole lot of copywriting newsletters and books. One of them is Ivan Levison’s “Levison Letter.”

Ivan’s latest issue expressed surprise at the results of an A/B split—a test that changes one variable in a copywriting piece. He had advised the client to format the letter in an old-fashioned typewriter-style font, like Courier–because, in the old days, letters that looked hand-typed usually pulled better. (Direct marketers measure absolutely everything–the number, kind, and quality of the results; it’s as much science as art.) But the client was adamant about doing it in Times Roman. So they did an A/B test: 25,000 letters in each font, no other variables changed.

It was a dead heat, and this shocked Ivan. But it doesn’t shock me. In fact, I wouldn’t have been surprised if the typeset-looking version had outpulled the classic Courier.

Why? Because to the current generation, Times New Roman represents hand-typed. It’s the default font in Microsoft Word, the word processor that completely dominates the market. Many people never even touch their font settings. There are probably a lot of people under 30 who’ve never seen a letter typed on a real typewriter. What Ivan forgot to adjust for is that the principle behind his original conclusions is sound: people respond better to a letter that looks like it was created just for them–but the parameters of what makes that true have changed.

I’m betting that in the last ten years, the only letters you’ve seen that were typed in Courier were marketing documents, done by direct marketers who didn’t realize the territory has shifted. Unless, maybe, you have an elderly aunt who never got a computer and doesn’t hand-write her letters.

Now, this got me thinking about a famous situation where several careers were dramatically altered because of the difference between Courier and Times Roman: Rathergate.

You’ll remember that in the run-up to the election, a memo was leaked that seemed to prove the longstanding allegations that President Bush had not only used his family privilege to get a precious–and safe–spot in the Texas National Guard, but then skipped out on his responsibilities, didn’t show up for a required physical, and lost his pilot status.

Some alert bloggers in the Republican camp noticed that the memo had been done in Times Roman, and appeared to be produced on a modern word processor, and not a 70s-era typewriter. Yes, proportional-font technology existed back then–I even used a funky IBM compositor in 1975–but no sane person would use it to produce a casual memo. It was hard to wrestle with and expensive to purchase and operate, and it was designed to create finished typeset documents for publication. I saw a PDF of the memo at the time, and recognized instantly that it was a forgery. This caused the firing of several people at CBS, and advanced Dan Rather’s retirement to several months earlier than planned.

The interesting side result was to deflect all the piled-up criticism about Bush’s highly questionable service record. Mary Mapes got fired; Bush held on to the presidency.

The question I asked then, and continue to ask, is who really benefited from Rathergate, and who was really behind it? No one has ever really tied this scandal to either the Democrats or the Republicans–but actually, the Republicans had far more to gain. In fact, this story completed deflated the various investigations into the actual military service record–a record which, in a time of war, and a war whose purpose and justification were tangled in a web of deceit (does anyone remember that we were supposed to be preventing Saddam from using his non-existent weapons of mass destruction?), was a valid and crucial election issue. The various trails running through this sordid story are starkly relevant to the election and its outcome. For starters, it would be worth looking at how quickly people were able to trace these memos back to the same source. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if we found out Karl Rove had a hand in this.

If that turns out to be true, will the mass media, cowed into submission by this and other instances, raise its collective head, remove the tail from between it legs, and call strongly for impeachment?

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

https://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/30/opinion/l30ethics.html? (you may need to register)

Not that big a secret, actually: the letters column. Though the Times is notoriously fussy. With other newspapers, I have, typically, about a 90 percent success rate. With the Times, I’ve probably sent well over 100 letters in 33 years (most of them during the 1970s and 80s); this is the third success. The first was in 1972, when I was 15, and I got in a letter criticizing Dean Koontz’s support of Nixon’s Vietnam policy.

This one’s on ethics. The one between was a comment on a travel article.

Two tips:

1. Well-argued controversy seems to be something they like

2. Speed counts. I was responding to an article on page 1 of the Tuesday, March 29 edition. I submitted my letter around noon that day; it ran in the next day’s paper.

The link above is what they actually ran, somewhat abridged, but with the wonderful slug, “The writer is founder of the Business Ethics Pledge Campaign.” and yes, this little letter has drawn quite a number of responses.

–>Here’s what I originally wrote:

“On Wall Street, A Rise in Dismissals Over Ethics” chronicles, somewhat dismissively, the spate of firings over ethics violations within the financial community. The article makes a case that innocents are being shown the door in a hurry for behavior that’s perfectly legal.

The problem, though, is that big business has pretty much destroyed the culture of trust. Consumers are more suspicious of these large corporations than they’ve been in decades. Without passing judgment on the specific individuals cited in the article, I’d say that keeping a commitment to ethics means acting rapidly to prevent or deal with ethics violations as soon as they’re discovered. Whether termination was the correct response for these particular people, I couldn’t say–but the bank acted immediately, and that is better than the all-too-typical non-response we’ve seen in the last few years.

Eventually, the public will simply demand higher standards of accountability. I’m hoping to foster that with an international pledge campaign around business ethics; I hope to make future Enrons and Tycos impossible. The campaign is hosted at www.principledprofits.com/25000influencers.html

–Shel Horowitz, author, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First, columnist for Business Ethics magazine, and founder, Business Ethics Pledge Campaign

–>And this is what they actually printed:

To the Editor:

In chronicling, somewhat dismissively, the spate of firings over ethics violations within the financial community, you make a case that innocents are being shown the door for perfectly legal behavior.

The problem, though, is that big business has pretty much destroyed the culture of trust. Consumers are more suspicious of large corporations than they’ve been in decades.

Keeping a commitment to ethics means acting rapidly to prevent or deal with ethics violations as soon as they’re discovered.

Whether termination was the correct response I couldn’t say, but acting immediately is better than not responding.

The public will simply demand higher standards of accountability. I’m hoping to foster it with an international pledge campaign around business ethics.

Shel Horowitz
Hadley, Mass., March 29, 2005
The writer is founder of the Business Ethics Pledge Campaign

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