Category: Marketing Trends/News

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.

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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.

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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 🙂

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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.

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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.

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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.

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By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Green Marketing, Marketing Trends/News Tagged with , , , ,

22 years ago, the first known CSA (community -supported agriculture farm) organized in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, US; now, there are somewhere between 4570 and 6500 US farms selling shares ahead of the season.

During the same period, the number of farmers markets in the US exploded roughly 500 percent, from about 1350 to 7864. The local food sector in general has seen an astounding 24 percent annual growth for 12 consecutive years! This while the economy for the past several years has been far from robust.

All the above stats come from this slowmoney.com summary of a talk by Gary Paul Nabhan, considered by some “the father of the local food movement.” And the article didn’t even mention such numbers as the growth in Fair Trade and organic, or the way terms like “locavore” have entered our vocabulary.

In short, despite the defeat of GMO-right-to-know legislation in California, sustainable foods are definitely on an uptick.

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By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Entrepreneurship, Green Business, Green Marketing, Innovation, language, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News, People Helping People, Socially Responsible Investing, Technology, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Heard of Carrotmobs yet? Consumers have used our buying power to avoid companies with the wrong values for decades. Now there’s a positive flip: actively making the effort to buy from companies that support your values. I only heard the term “Carrotmob”—so called because consumers use the carrot of positive business rather than the stick of withdrawing business to achieve social good.

I think I only heard the term a month or two ago; since then, I’ve run across it several times. This concept seems to be entering the language faster than anything I can remember since “Ms.” was invented as a gender-neutral alternative to Miss and Mrs., back in the1970s.

Here’s a particularly cool one with the odd twist that it was initiated by the company—and since I write about out-of-the-box people-centered marketing of green products and services, worth flagging here. I imagine this marketing strategy could get old fast if too many people do it, but the idea of having your customers pre-fund your sustainability venture is a good one. Think abou Kickstarter campaigns; this isn’t so different, after all.

A coffee company has decided that organic/fair trade coffee is not enough; the coffee should be transported on cargo ships powered by renewable energy. Specifically, using wind power.

Thanksgiving Coffee, a California-based artisan roaster, will arrange for wind-powered shipping if people buy $150,000 worth of coffee on Carrotmob. The goal is to prove demand for wind-transported coffee and research ways to make wind-powered shipping a reality in our own time.

It’s worth remembering that all cargo shipping from the dawn of history into the 19th century was either wind-powered or human-powered (by rowers). So there’s no need to prove that cargo shipping can be wind-powered. However, a transatlantic voyage by wind took many weeks, sometimes went way off course, was more susceptible to storms, etc. Steam and then diesel made shipping fast and reliable enough to create the modern global economy. So the real challenge is not to prove that they can use wind-powered ships, but that they can compete effectively using a modern wind-powered shipping fleet.

This of course could have a huge impact on the entire cargo shipping industry, if it can be done effectively and inexpensively enough to transport many different types of items. And certainly, it will inspire the shipping industry to add more sustainable practices even if using conventional diesel-powered cargo ships.

Meanwhile, if you’re a coffee drinker, you can help Thanksgiving Coffee test the waters for sustainable shipping. Go read the article on Ecopreneurist, or skip directly to the Thanksgiving Coffee Carrotmob page and buy a pound or two.

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

Yet another company has gotten in trouble for greenwashing. Raz Godelnik writes in Triple Pundit about cereal giant General Mills’ legal woes: multiple lawsuits over deceptive packaging, claiming for example that its Nature Valley brand of granola bars is “all natural” when in fact it’s highly processed and contains such ingredients as maltodextrin.

You’d think by now companies woud have caught on that honesty really is the best policy.

Of course, it would be nice if the word “natural” actually had a legal definition, and thus some teeth. But it would also be nice if a company that claims to be strongly guided by ethics would do a better job of walking its talk.

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

Gary Hirshberg, who recently stepped down after decades as CEO of Stonyfield Farm Yogurt—the company he founded—carries a memory that would make any executive’s heart gladden:

Recently, I was standing in a Florida supermarket reading the label on a Yoplait yogurt cup because I was curious about a new ingredient the company was trying. An older customer walked over to me, touched me on the elbow, and said, “Young man, someone your age really should be eating the Stonyfield.” Her comment was akin to a religious moment for me. However, I regained my composure quickly enough to ask why she thought I should be eating the Stonyfield product. Her remarkably well-informed answer can be summarized this way: Since I apparently have a few decades left in me, I can make them more enjoyable and productive by eating organic foods. Plus, I will get the extra bonus of knowing that I am supporting a company that cares. This lovely woman certainly sold me.

Isn’t that every marketer’s dream? To have a total stranger come up to you and tell you that you MUST buy your own product, because it’s so much better? WOW!

So how can you generate that sort of love for your own products? How can you turn random strangers into fervent evangelists for you?

I give some answers in my latest book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green—but I’d love to make this a broader conversation. Please post your ideas in the comments.

(Author’s note: I heard Gary tell this story in his interview on the Spring of Sustainability series. I contacted Stonyfield’s publicity department to get the exact quote, as it appears in Gary’s book, Stirring It Up: How to Make Money and Save the World. Used with permission.)

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