Category: Marketing Trends/News

By Posted on Posted in Activism, Corporate Social Responsibility, Demographics/Psychographics, Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Entrepreneurship, Environment, language, Marketing Trends/News, Politics, Social and Economic Justice, Socially Responsible Investing, Technology Tagged with , , , ,
Delegates at an international meeting
A similar international meeting (in Bonn, Germany)

After the failure at Copenhagen a few years back, I didn’t have big hopes for this year’s event. Yet, I’m beginning to think the big Paris climate change conference known as #COP21 may actually accomplish some real change.

Oddly enough, my optimism is rooted in something I would have seen a few years ago as a fatal flaw: that the results will be based in voluntary, not mandatory, compliance.

Why? Because:

  1. We can’t GET mandatory compliance. In the US, that would require a yes vote in each house of Congress, or even worse, the 2/3 Senate support required to adopt a treaty. But even as far back as Kyoto, US electoral politics had become a toxic swamp of attack-dog partisanship. No climate change bill with teeth is going to pass Congress any time soon. And without US (or China’s) participation, any agreement would be useless.
  2. The US and China have already agreed to take climate seriously, and have negotiated their own agreement. Weaker than I’d like, but a heck of a good start, and one that seems to have helped apply the brakes on China’s mad rush to coal (the worst scenario for averting climate disaster).
  3. The business community has woken up. Often a force for conservatism, the business world now understands the catastrophic consequences of failure to make meaningful progress on climate change—and the profits to be made in doing the right thing. If the government won’t act, they will force action through other channels. The emergence of environmental activism among evangelical Christians and even a subset of Tea Party activists who care deeply about the environment is also very encouraging.
  4. The growing use of carbon markets provides additional financial incentives for cutting carbon.
  5. New technology makes it easier to do more with less, use. our resources far more effectively, and solve engineering problems with biological thinking (for example, letting bridge engineers study spiderwebs). We understand now, for instance, just how much energy and carbon we can save by going for deep conservation.
  6. Early discussions about whether the world should agree on a 1.5 degree Celsius vs. 2 degree C cap in global temperatures compared to what existed before the Industrial Revolution means we’ve finally gotten past the question that’s been holding us back for so long: why do we need to contain rising temperatures in the first place? For the first time, the world is pretty much in agreement that it has to be done. Not just scientists, this time, but governments, too. Climate deniers (other than in the US Republican Party leadership, apparently) are now as marginalized as environmental activists were 20 or 30 years ago.

I could keep going, but you get the message—we can do this!

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Activism, Advertising, Branding, Business Ethics, Corporate Social Responsibility, Democracy, Innovation, language, Marketing Trends/News, People Helping People, Politics, propaganda, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , ,
Screenshot of KPMG's internal "higher purpose" video captioned "We Shape History"
Screenshot of KPMG’s internal “higher purpose” video

This Harvard Business Review article and accompanying video are too good not to share. The video is less than two minutes and well-worth watching. Watch it with your marketer hat on. Pay attention both to the direct message and to the outcomes.

KPMG is positioning itself as an agent of social change, a social entrepreneurship giant involved in everything from keeping the Nazis at bay during World War II to certifying the election results that allowed Nelson Mandela to become the first president of a free South Africa.

I’m not passing judgment on the accuracy of the claim that the wonderful, world-changing projects highlighted in the video represent KPMG’s (and predecessor Peat Marwick’s) overall corporate culture  over many decades. I haven’t done the due diligence on that, and frankly, I’m pretty skeptical of the claim. Big Four accounting firms don’t tend to be known as cauldrons of world-changing social entrepreneurship.

But clearly, the company decided to spotlight its role as a changemaker and to foster an employee culture of empowered action—and that’s terrific. Not at all surprised to see the excellent results. Every manager should look at the amazing engagement this campaign created, with over 42,000 stories submitted by employees and 76 percent agreement that their jobs had deeper meaning.

Be sure to note the graph at the bottom, contrasting several employee satisfaction metrics under managers who emphasized or didn’t emphasize a higher purpose.

If one of the largest accounting firms in the world can take this on, your probably much simpler business can do it too. Every person who supervises others should take that data to heart and make sharing their own organization’s higher purpose a consistent part of their own employee motivation (if you get stuck on this, contact me; I can help).

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News, media-general, propaganda Tagged with , , , , ,
Old Movie Camera: How much real news went through these cameras? And how much goes through today's?
How much real news went through these cameras? And how much goes through today’s?

When I’m in airports, fitness centers, and other places that force-feed TV news, I’m always astonished that anyone takes it seriously. Even in the 60s when they had real news staffs, it was so superficial. I read somewhere that an entire 1-hour newscast transcript would only fill a couple of columns on a page of the NY Times.

These days, it’s far worse than “if it bleeds, it leads.” Murder, mayhem, celebrity gossip, and an astonishingly small amount of actual news, and even less serious analysis. And those are the serious networks. Add in a serious case of propaganda and distortion and you can’t be surprised at how little most Americans understand their world, if they accept what’s fed to them by the medium they’ve chosen to “consume” the news.

Of course, the good news is that anyone who wants to educate themselves now has unlimited choices from around the world. My favorite newspaper these days is London’s The Guardian. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an actual paper copy.

In the 1980s, I used to subscribe to a magazine called World Press Review, which featured reportage on the same story from 8 or 10 different papers around the world; it was like a one-stop course in media literacy and the nature of 1) matching message to audience, and 2) shaping the audience through the message. Since I made (and continue to make) my career as a marketer and a journalist, these were crucial lessons.

However, it was a monthly, and the stories were at least three months old by the time they got to my mailbox. Of course, technology has passed it by now, and I don’t miss it; we can easily get the same effect by viewing the same story on NPR, Fox News, Al Jazeera-English, the New York Times, Paris Match (which Google will even translate for you, sort of), and your local newspaper.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, censorship, Corporate Social Responsibility, Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, Ethics in Government, Ethics-International, General Commentary, language, Marketing Trends/News, Media Ethics, propaganda, Psychology, Transparency vs. Secrecy Tagged with , ,

This may be a new level of stupidity. Murdoch-owned publishing behomoth HarperCollins actually prepared and started to sell an atlas that does not show Israel. At all. Lebanon, Jordan, Gaza, and the West Bank are there.

No big surprise, there was lots of pushback when word got out, and HC removed the atlas from circulation and said it would pulp any remaining copies. Even the UK Bishops’ Conference Department of International Affairs condemned the publication as a blow against peace in the region.

The company sheepishly withdrew, saying,

HarperCollins sincerely apologises for this omission and for any offence caused.

But the company is talking out of two sides of its mouth. Earlier, as reported in the Washington Post, it tried to justify the omission:

Collins Bartholomew, a subsidiary of HarperCollins that specializes in maps, told the Tablet that it would have been “unacceptable” to include Israel in atlases intended for the Middle East. They had deleted Israel to satisfy “local preferences.”

HarperCollins has quickly found out that it’s also unacceptable to abandon truth in a volume that claims to offer

“in-depth coverage of the region and its issues.” Its stated goals include helping kids understand the “relationship between the social and physical environment, the region’s challenges [and] its socio-economic development.”

Ummm, hello, and just how do you intend to put the region in context if you ignore the most conflicted issue it faces? Do you really think students in Arab countries haven’t heard of it? Did you really think this would stay a safe little conspiratorial secret just for the cognoscenti?

HarperCollins would have been totally justified in marking the West Bank and Gaza as disputed territory held by Israel, following conquest. But there’s no dispute about Israel being a nation.

This is a time when we all have social media at our disposal. That means it not only should have been totally obvious that this would backfire, but HarperCollins had the tools at its disposal to make the governments demanding this absurdity to be the ones looking ridiculous. If any governments insisted on refusing entry to accurate atlases, the company could have had a skilled social media manager explain why HC would no longer sell atlases into these countries, and create a pressure movement both from outside the country and from those inside who recognize that not knowing geography is a handicap in the global economic arena, and the Gulf states would have lifted the restriction.

Instead, what HarperCollins has done is to eliminate its own credibility. It’s hard to imagine anyone in the future trusting any reference materials from this publisher. Blatant and deliberate repudiation of truth is not a recipe for success in the world of reference books—especially reference books about the world.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Corporate Social Responsibility, Demographics/Psychographics, Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Entrepreneurship, Environment, Green Business, Green Marketing, Marketing Trends/News, Socially Responsible Investing Tagged with , ,

A new report confirms (yet again) what I’ve been saying for years: consumers flock to companies that actively support companies with a clear environmental agenda. A survey of 31,000 consumers around the world reported:

• 21 percent of American consumers often or always bought a brand they perceived as more responsible over another in the past year.
• Factoring in respondents from other countries, that figure rises to 34 percent—that’s more than one in three
• 67 percent would like to make purchasing decisions based on social responsibility in the future.

And it’s not just consumers; it’s employees, too. Another study notes that an astonishing 71 percent of Americans would choose employment by “a company whose CEO is actively involved in corporate responsibility and/or environmental issues.”

Thanks to envirojournalist Debra Atlas for pointing me toward both these studies.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, censorship, Corporate Social Responsibility, Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, language, Marketing Trends/News, poverty, privacy, Protests and Crackdowns, Shel's Personal Life, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , ,

Very interesting post on Business Week: “Can Small Businesses Start a Gay Rights Movement in Mississippi?”

I totally support nondiscrimination in any public accommodation or retail setting—and I’m delighted to see the “We don’t discriminate. If you’re buying, we’re selling” campaign in Mississippi. But at the risk of alienating some of my friends, l think service businesses–especially values-based ones—are a different case. Before you jump all over me—read the language I send to new prospects for my marketing and consulting services:

Please note that I reserve the right to reject a project if I feel I’m not the right person for it. This would include projects that in my opinion promote racism, homophobia, bigotry or violence–or that promote the tobacco, nuclear power, or weapons industries–or if I do not feel the product is of high enough quality that I can get enthusiastic about it.

Notice that this language doesn’t discriminate against a person or class of people–but it certainly does discriminate against a set of beliefs.

Now, if I reserve that privilege for myself, how can I possibly justify withholding it from someone else who runs a service business and has different values than mine?

Also, there’s a provider quality issue. If I were forced to write a piece of marketing copy for a product whose values I despised, I would do a terrible job. Even if I consciously tried to do my best, it would come out shoddy and insincere, because I wouldn’t believe in what I was promoting. By the same token, I can’t imagine why a same-sex couple would WANT to hire a homophobic wedding photographer (one of the examples cited in the article); the pictures will be terrible.

If you’re renting a room, buying a sandwich, riding a bus, patronizing a theme park…yes, you should have the right to be served. But if a service provider is being asked to use specialized skills to support a cause that service provider finds morally repugnant, I’m not at all sure we should coerce that behavior.

Please comment below. I’d love to get some good dialog going on this.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Marketing Trends/News Tagged with , ,

If you get a note like this and wonder, where do I know this person from–you don’t.

When are these jerks going to realize that the Internet is a powerful way to make an honest living and they don’t have to stoop to these ridiculous frauds?

Hi shel I know you were expecting to hear back from me much earlier but I didn’t want to get back to you empty-handed. I finally found the perfect stock for you and I am confident that it will make you some serious profit. Remember the one I told you about in November of last year right? You did very well on it and I think this [TICKER SYMBOL REMOVED TO AVOID PUBLICIZING IDIOTS] stock will do the same for your portfolio again. I have to let you know though that I’m not the only one who found out about [TICKER SYMBOL REMOVED] today. A few of my colleagues are aware as well and they are telling their friends and family about it so I must advise you to move fast if you want to buy it. I think it’s trading at just around 15 cents right now, if you wait too long it might be at 30 or even higher and at that time I won’t be able to safely advise you to buy it. You can buy as many shares as you can first thing at market open on Friday or worst case scenario buy it on Monday but move fast. I know you don’t care about what the company does because you know I’ve done all the due diligence for you already but [TICKER SYMBOL REMOVED] is actually amazing and I think it will do much better than even the one I told you about a few months ago. One of the company’s divisions offers mobile software solutions for the gaming industry. The mobile apps allow customers to play lottery and other games of chance and skill on their smartphones. The software is extremely advanced and could be the backbone of all mobile casinos in the future. It is expected that the US will legalize online gaming in the near future and this could catapult [TICKER SYMBOL REMOVED] to new highs however even without that the company’s software is extremely valuable in the rest of the world and could become extremely profitable. Something big is definitely brewing at the company. I heard something about buy out rumors but I don’t have all the details yet I will keep you posted over the coming days or weeks. Anyway I won’t bore you with much more blabber, but if you have a second do check out [TICKER SYMBOL REMOVED]. By the way I will be expecting a nice gift from you once you make fat bank on this one and a nice dinner with the wives is in order. It’s been too long since we last spent a good evening over a bottle of wine. I was going to call you to tell you about [TICKER SYMBOL REMOVED] but I figured youre probably asleep now with those crazy shifts you’ve been working. Take care and call me if there’s anything. Talk soon Your favorite friend and only broker 🙂

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Activism, Advertising, Demographics/Psychographics, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News, Politics Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Aaargh! Tomorrow is an election day in Massachusetts. We’ve been getting calls for months, but today, its completely out of hand.

–> In the past two hours, from 6 to 8 p.m., I have received FOUR calls. Two from Democratic Party volunteers, one human from the National Writers Union and one NWU robocall. This doesn’t count the barrage of calls over the past week and earlier today.

In an era where the NSA can read our phone logs, I don’t understand why the Democrats and their allies can’t run a “merge-purge” to eliminate duplicates. That technology has been part of the direct-mail world since the 1970s.

If Republican Gabriel Gomez wins tomorrow against Democrat Ed Markey, I’d wager that it was because the Dems over-called to the point of harassment, and turned people off. Since there are more Democrats than Republicans by a huge margin, more Democrats than Republicans will get annoyed.

Personally, I have a low regard for Mr. Gomez and a reasonable degree of agreement with many of Congresman Markey’s positions. And so I will vote Democratic tomorrow. But I also have a ery low opinion of repeat intrusion marketing. I will vote for Markey despite the campaign’s tactics, and not because of them.

As a marketer, I hope the campaign can survive its own excesses.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Advertising, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , , , , ,

Several big, big brands were able to think and act like nimble small businesses and seize the moment when the Superbowl went dark yesterday:

Oreo, with a picture of an Oreo on a dark background and a teaser that said:

Power out? No problem. pic.twitter.com/dnQ7pOgC

Lowe’s and Walgreen’s both went directly to their own product lines:

Hey dome operators at the ‘Big Game’, there are a few Lowe’s nearby if you need some generators.

We do carry candles. 

We can’t get your , but we can get your stains out.   pic.twitter.com/JpQBRvjf

Several nonprofits and PBS also jumped in. Here’s one I particularly like, for its higher-message consciousness raising—and for the smart way it draws traffic to its own website:

half a billion people in Africa NEVER have power. Learn more at https://www.one.org/us/2012/11/13/what-makes-you-angry/ …

Social media marketing maven David Meerman Scott commented on the instant chatter using the hashtag #blackoutbowl. Scott liked the Oreo ad a lot, but noted that Lowe’s lost an opportunity for vastly higher readership by not using a hashtag. Umm, neither did Oreo, actually, yet that got retweeted thousands of times. I wonder if it got so much play because Oreo had actually run a Superbowl commercial earlier in the game? This is something worth investigating: whether traditional advertising can build social media participation, and thus engage the prospect at a much deeper and longer lasting level. It would be fascinating to know how many new followers Oreo got between the time of its original ad and the time it tweeted about the blackout—especially considering the exorbitant price of Superbowl advertising.

What I find most interesting about the whole thing is that the people who run these big corporate Twitter accounts had the freedom to respond instantly. Nobody convened a meeting (good luck with THAT on a Sunday and during the Superbowl). Boom, the Tweets went out. I don’t normally associate that sort of amazingly nimble behavior with the likes of Audi, Procter & Gamble, and Nabisco, especially since there have been many instances of companies taking big flak for Tweets that did not help their brand (Johnson & Johnson’s Motrin baby-wearers fiasco comes to mind).

I’ve been advocating pegging pitches and messages to current events for about 35 years—but social media gives us an instancy that we didn’t have in the 1970s, or even the 1990s. We can expect to see this sort of “newsjacking” (Meerman-Scott’s term) more and more often.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail

By Posted on Posted in Green Business, Green Marketing, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News Tagged with , , , ,

Marc Stoiber, in his article, “Seven Crazy Reasons Consumers Won’t Embrace Your Green Innovation,” argues that many green initiatives fail because humans (to make sweeping generalizations) are too inertial:

  1. we don’t like change
  2. we resist new facts that contradict our worldview
  3. we prefer the familiar
  4. we’re more scared of losing what we have than excited to gain something new
  5. we are biased toward what we already know
  6. we judge innovation based on comparison to what we’ve already experienced, rather than on its own merits
  7. we prefer immediate gratification to long-term benefit

Stoiber explores each of these a bit in his article, which I recommend reading. And I basically agree with him, at least when talking about the majority culture.

Which is why, in my work as a strategic marketer and copywriter working frequently in the green marketing world, I always do my best to:

  • include both emotional and rational benefits,
  • root my arguments in both self-interest and planetary interest,
  • match my message to its intended audience

Let’s make this concrete.

Say, for example, you want to market a “magic” all-natural enzyme that neutralizes the odor and stain of urine, and thus dramatically reduces the need to flush. The environmental benefit is saving water, a supercritical but very much underappreciated (and underpriced) natural resource. But to someone without a deep green consciousness, living in a place where water is close to free and appears to be inexhaustible, saving water is not a benefit they can wrap themselves around. A traditional green marketer would go to people in big cities and laboriously educate the audience on why it’s important to safe water (people in rural areas often already recognize the importance of water).

But an easier approach, based in appeals to self-interest, might take the marketing campaign to places that restrict water use—with arguments like “your bathroom can smell as clean as it did when you were allowed to flush”, “good-bye to icky yellow toilet stains”, or even an economic argument aimed at large-scale users (including landlords and property managers at large residential complexes—let THEM educate their residents, as hotels did with the towel-washing issue), like “cut your water and sewer bills in half.”

Those kinds of arguments open your product up to those who are caught in the kind of rigid thinking Stoiber describes.

Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail