Category: Politics

By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Peace and War, Politics, propaganda, Shel's Personal Life Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

I deeply resent Hillary Clinton’s message that we can’t go for what we really want. Barack Obama beat her in ’08 because his message was “hope” and “yes we can.” He made some of that a reality in spite of tremendous resistance–more than I’ve ever seen for ANY president’s policies. But he would have gotten much more accomplished if he’d continued organizing: bringing the same coalition that led him to victory into supporting his agenda and pressuring that reluctant Congress. As a former community organizer, he should have known this.

Bill Clinton’s presidency shows the dangers of the HRC approach. By dismissing any effort at real change right from the start, he allowed himself, over and over again, to back away from meaningful change and turn what should have been the post-negotiation fallback position into the starting gate, and then allow that to be whittled down further until the change was so small that Grover Norquist actually could drown it in a bathtub.

Obama made the same mistake. “Single payer isn’t on the table but we have a public option” turned into. “no public option.” And the ACA as finally passed was a giveaway to insurance companies. Yes, it made people’s live’s better and I’m glad it passed. But Obama squandered the potential for much deeper reform.

Isn’t it so much better to aim for what you really want and get only three-quarters of the way than to aim for what you think is “achievable”—and still get only three-quarters of the way? It’s a very rare football play that gets a touchdown from the kick-off point. Much more commonly, the team advances the ball, play by play, and starts again from the end point of the last play. Then they get the touchdown.

It took 100 years to eliminate slavery in the US. It took another 100 to pass meaningful civil rights legislation, and it may be another 100 before the cancer of racism is nothing but a memory. It has already taken about 80 years to get even the wimpy ACA; that doesn’t mean we say we don’t need to make more progress. And it certainly doesn’t mean you have to tear down the ACA before you have something better in place.

Henry Ford said, “Whether you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right.”

Muhammad Ali put it this way:

Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.

And I personally have taken on the “impossible” goal of showing the business community how to turn hunger and poverty into sufficiency, war into peace, and catastrophic climate change into planetary balance—at a profit. Taking my cue from Ali, when I speak on this, my talk is called “Impossible is a Dare!” I’ve also written a book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, that demonstrates how these future victories are actually quite possible. I’ve done “impossible” things before. Why restrict ourselves by thinking small?

I have other issues with Hillary besides her willingness to settle for less even before the negotiations start. HRC’s ties to Wall Street make me nervous. Her hawkish rhetoric, even more so. And her Middle East policy is just plain shameful. As an American Jew, I stand up and say “Israel right or wrong” is as misguided as “America right or wrong” was in the Vietnam era—and I further say that we progressives knew that going into Iraq as we did was a terrible mistake. I was out there in the streets with millions of other Americans, saying “don’t do this, it will be a disaster.” There is zero justification for her vote to support the worst foreign policy disaster in history.

I will proudly—excitedly—vote for Bernie in the primary. Nonetheless, if Hillary is the nominee—and she probably will, due in part to Party rules that allocate delegates to high-status mainstream Democrats over and above those allocated in elections—I would support her unequivocally over any of the Republicans running. I think she has a good heart, I’d much rather see her in charge of picking the next members of the Supreme Court than any of that bunch, and I would see her election—as I saw Obama’s—as getting us closer on the path from the kick-off to the goal.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Branding, Democracy, language, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News, Politics, propaganda, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,
Top of a special Bernie Sanders fundraising offer involving a very special custom pint of ice cream
Top of a Bernie Sanders fundraising offer involving a very special custom pint of ice cream
Farther down the page, showing the whole container
Farther down the page, showing the whole container

If you’re friends with me on Facebook, you already know I’m supporting Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primaries. And if you read this blog regularly, you know I’m both a long-time student of marketing and a long-time advocate of marketing with honesty and integrity.

In light of this, I received a mailing from one of the groups allied with the Sanders campaign, and immediately noticed some things I wanted to share.

  • The product is totally in keeping with Bernie’s message, talking about the “1%” chocolate layer on top of the ice cream
  • The video featuring Ben Cohen explaining the flavor to Jerry Greenfield, is hilarious, especially where he talks about breaking through the one percent barrier to spread the wealth (the chocolate) throughout the pint
  • Most marketers, when faced with the opportunity to offer a single unique item, set a stratospheric price—but even with a total production run of just fifty, and only one being given to this organization, the price is only $50 (once again reinforcing the brand messaging)
  • However, it’s something of a lottery; only one person gets the prize, but anyone who contributes $50 or more by the deadline gets to play
  • There are also a number of less exclusive rewards—democratizing the lottery somewhat.

If you’d like to see the other prizes, or make a donation and enter the raffle (deadline is tomorrow), visit https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/wewantbernie

Disclaimer and disclosures: I am not involved in any way with organizing this promotion and don’t benefit financially. I have given money to the Sanders campaign and I’ve probably also given money to Progressive Democrats of America, the sponsoring organization.

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By Posted on Posted in Branding, Business Ethics, Diversity, Ethics in Government, language, Marketing Trends/News, media-general, Politics, propaganda, Psychology Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

A friend of mine, a very successful author and marketer, a deep student of the human psyche, asked on Facebook, “Why do you love/hate Trump? (Disclaimer: I’m indifferent.)”

It was the disclaimer that got me worried. This is part of my response to him:

I have enormous respect for your analytical skills, M.______, but I question deeply your indifference…

M.______, I hope you’re pulling our legs. You of all people understand human motivations and psychology. Trump is a master marketer and manipulator. I don’t know if he’s studied NLP [Neurolinguistic Programming] (or maybe you) or if he’s actually a natural.

I do know that if he wins, I will be looking seriously at what other country I might live in for the next 4 to 8 years. I have family who died in Nazi concentration camps. I don’t want to be part of an America where ordinary citizens are rounded up because they’re Muslim or Mexican, just as my parents’ cousins were for being Jewish.

I don’t say this lightly. I consider him extremely dangerous, and it scares me that enough people in the US take him seriously enough that he’s doing well in the polls (we’ll see if this translates to actual votes).

 Some things I didn’t say to my friend:
In the courtyard of the new Reich Chancellery, the Fuhrer partakes of the "one-pot" communal stew meal in the company of invited fellow citizens. Photo by Heinrich Hoffman, courtesy New York Public Library
In the courtyard of the new Reich Chancellery, the Fuhrer partakes of the “one-pot” communal stew meal in the company of invited fellow citizens. Photo by Heinrich Hoffman, courtesy New York Public Library
 But my deep message to my friend is that we cannot afford indifference. Let’s remember that Hitler was democratically elected, and that Berlin in the 20s was a liberal, arts-centered city. We must not get complacent. We must not think “it can’t happen here.” And we must not be swallowed by indifference.
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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Ethics in Government, Politics Tagged with , , , , ,
Caricature of Donald Trump by DonkeyHotey, Creative Commons License: https://www.flickr.com/photos/donkeyhotey/5471912349/sizes/m/in/photostream/
Caricature of Donald Trump by DonkeyHotey, Creative Commons License: https://www.flickr.com/photos/donkeyhotey/5471912349/sizes/m/in/photostream/

This 1979 profile of Donald Trump in the Village Voice should be mandatory reading–in the Know Your Enemy department. The corruption, refusal to acknowledge responsibility, self-aggrandizement, and use of other people’s money are not at all surprising. Only two things surprised me: 1) the racism goes back so far in time. I’d always thought that was a “party dress” he put on in order to run a demagogue campaign for president–but he was apparently the enforcer keeping blacks out of his father’s apartments.

2) The notorious McCarthy henchman Roy Cohn, one of the sleaziest figures in 20th-century US politics, was one of the family’s lawyers.

If Donald Trump becomes the nominee (or runs 3rd-party), we need to distill some of the central points into a highly readable one-page flier and get it absolutely everywhere. If Trump is the nominee, I will personally do that flier. And I want a legion of volunteers to distribute it.

Side note: I’m proud to say my mom was one of those white Urban League volunteers mentioned in the article, who determined if an apartment was *really* “already rented” after a family of color was refused. I have no idea if she was involved in the Trump Village investigation–probably not, since she lived far away in the Bronx.

I do find it deeply ironic that he has managed to build a meme that as a “self-made man,” he has so much money, he can’t be bought. He and his father got their money in the first place by leveraging political connections and doing deals with little or no skin in the game, if the article is accurate (and I have high confidence that it is).  What is self-made is not his wealth, but his image.

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Business-general, Democracy, Energy & Sustainability, Environment, Green Business, Innovation, Politics, Protests and Crackdowns, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,
Earth Lightning, by Stephanie Hofschlaeger
Photo by Stephanie Hofschlaeger

2016 is going to be a GREAT year for the green world, and the green business world in particular. I thought so even before two developments this past week that make me even more optimistic:

  1. COP21, the historic climate change agreement signed by 197 countries at the Paris summit, will cause pressure from governments and their citizens
  2. The US has extended the tax credit package on solar and wind (slated to expire at the end of 2016) for five years—adding as much as 39 gigawatts of clean energy

Add in the widely spreading understanding in the  business world that going green the right way slashes costs, boosts revenues, and generates profit, and it’s not surprising that 2016 will be a year of great progress. (If you don’t yet see the connection, order a copy of my new book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World. It’s got hundreds of examples ranging from Fortune 100 to solopreneurs.)

Expect to see lots more high-level research, looking for holistic steps that create big jumps in energy efficiency and big reductions in waste. Already, we’ve made amazing technological leaps within just the past couple of years. I’ll name two among hundreds:

  1. Approaches like biomimicry—modeling how nature solves complex problems—will let sustainability ripple through the whole culture, relatively rapidly.
  2. Electrical storage (a major restraint on renewable energy growth) has made huge strides, including the vaunted Tesla battery systems.

All is not sunshine and roses, of course. The Act of Congress that extended the clean-energy tax credits also opened up the door for some of the worst kind of carbon-intensive development: exporting the dirtiest types of fossil fuel energy. Public pressure—activism in the streets, in the boardrooms, and in the halls of legislative power—must hound every proposal to put in fracking, use or transport tar-sands oil, build unnecessary pipelines, etc.

One key meme has to be “honor the commitments we made at COP21.”

If the business community, especially, makes it clear that it expects the US to do its part in meeting the targets, and that exporting fossil fuels across oceans will work against this, that open door may stay largely unused. But it will take vigilance.

One not-so obvious trend

The above predictions are relatively mainstream in the green world, even if they appear startling to those outside of it. Let me conclude with a much more “out-there” proposition:

Businesses will go beyond merely going green. Sustainability will be seen as a first step. More and more companies will be going beyond sustainability to create a world where hunger and poverty turn into sufficiency, war into peace, and catastrophic climate change into planetary balance.

Why? Because they will see enormous profit opportunities, and because it feels so much better to oneself, employees, neighbors, suppliers and other stakeholders to see making the world better as a key success metric. How? I wrote a whole book to answer that question.

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By Posted on Posted in Corporate Social Responsibility, Democracy, Energy & Sustainability, Ethics in Government, Politics, propaganda, Psychology, Socially Responsible Investing Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Offshore oil platform. Photo by Freddie Hinajosa
Offshore oil platform. Photo by Freddie Hinajosa

A petition crossed my desk this morning that called for President Obama to unilaterally ban oil exports. Here’s the text:

With the crude oil export ban lifted, oil companies will be pushing to speed the export of fracked crude oil and ramp up production, and we’ll be fighting every step of the way to prevent it. The budget deal preserves a straightforward way to do so: President Obama can declare a national emergency and prohibit exports.

In rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline, Obama acknowledged the need to keep fossil fuels in the ground. In his final year in office, he can still build a positive climate legacy if he prohibits oil exports under the new law and ends new auctions of publicly owned oil, gas, and coal on federal lands as hundreds of environmental organizations and community leaders have petitioned him to do.

I totally agree that oil exports will be a big step backward in the struggle to stave off catastrophic climate change. But not with this method! I not only won’t sign, I’ll work against it, as I’m dong by writing this blog.

I don’t think they’ve thought through the implications here.

This budget deal was a hard-fought compromise where both sides had to give a lot to get anything through. To stab that agreement in the back while the ink is barely dry would be to put a stake through the heart of bipartisan government. It would be, quite frankly, a betrayal. And I would call it unethical.

And the Republicans would not forget, and not let anybody else forget. If you think they beat the drums on Benghazi or Hillary’s email issue, you “ain’t heard nothing yet.” NOTHING that would require Republican cooperation would be passed again, for decades. As we enter into the 2016 campaign, the mantra would be “you can’t trust the Democrats; they betrayed us and they will betray us again.” And this time, they’d be correct.

I’m guessing the consequences would include 12 to 20 years of Republican presidents with veto-proof Congressional majorities. No, thank you! I don’t want to hand them the ability to wreck everything we’ve worked for during the 250 years of our country’s history.

So what can we do instead? So glad you asked. Here are a three ideas (among many other possibilities):

  • Start a massive lobbying campaign aimed at Republicans in Congress. Let them feel big pressure from their own constituents, telling them that climate change is a deal-breaker issue for you at election time, reminding them that the US pledged to make serious climate change progress at COP21 (the Paris climate accord signed earlier this month) and that fossil fuel exports—incompatible with that commitment—are not acceptable. Use the argument that the US needs to be seen internationally as a government that keeps its promises and honors its commitments if we want other countries to work with us. Add a national pressure campaign at the top GOP legislators, those in positions of great power within their own party. Push the Republicans to introduce a ban on fossil fuel exports as if it were their idea. If the Democrats can run with Obamacare, which was based on Republican proposals in the 1990s, why can’t the Republicans steal Democrats’ issues?
  • Turn to the business community for binding pledges NOT to participate in fossil fuel exports. If necessary, pick one company at a time to threaten with boycotts and shareholder resolutions. Organize stock divestment campaigns and large public demonstrations in front of the corporate offices, not just of the targeted company but of any of the “players” if they move forward.  Get a few smaller players to move before going after ExxonMobil.

    Use the stick of negative pressure, but also the carrot of what they could do with that investment money that would build their reputation and their profits while avoiding all this unpleasant controversy. Have meetings with their executives to strategize better ideas.

    Big corporations hate to be seen as enemies of the people and don’t like being in the center of controversy; they’re also risk-averse.

  • (This is probably the hardest one.) Create an international pressure campaign on many fronts: Get foreign governments pledging they won’t accept US oil, gas, and coal. Get the United Nations to pass legislation making fossil fuel exports a crime against humanity. Start international boycotts and pressure campaigns against participating companies. This would not be easy to organize and might also have unintended consequences. The US is an importer of fossil fuels, so this would apply what Naomi Klein calls “the shock doctrine” to the US, forcing a mad and potentially destabilizing scramble to convert a much greater share of the US economy to renewables, and fast. So let’s start with the first two ;-).
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By Posted on Posted in Democracy, Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, General Commentary, language, Politics, propaganda, Psychology, Shel's Personal Life, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

So much of the news is bad right now. Both my local papers had the same depressing Associated Press article this morning. In the years since Sandy Hook, apparently, many states have made it EASIER to carry guns and basically nothing has been done to bring gun violence back to levels typical of most civilized countries.

Another article talks about the attacks by Republicans in Congress on our democratic society, on the environment and the new #COP21 climate agreement just hashed out, and even on medical benefits for 9/11/01 first responders, among the other bad stuff they have in store.

“What does he mean by ‘attacks on our democratic society?'”  you ask. I’ll answer with a couple of excerpts from the article:

The trucking industry wants to allow longer tandem trucks and block rules requiring added rest for drivers.

If you don’t think that’s an attack on our democracy, consider the consequences if the driver of a supersize truck falls asleep at the wheel and crashes into a school bus. There’s the human cost of an avoidable tragedy, of course, but also the financial burden on cities and counties already squeezed to the bone. It will be the safety net that gets shredded.

Financial companies want to ease tighter regulations imposed by the 2010 Dodd-Frank law.

Have we learned nothing from the debacle of 2007-08?

And there are efforts to repeal a law requiring that meat be labeled with its country of origin…and to block mandatory labels for genetically modified foods

Whatever happened to consumers’ right to know?

And then, of course, there’s the usual run of Islamophobic racism in our land built by immigrants, many of them refugees:

Republicans want to include a House-passed bill restricting Syrian refugees trying to enter the U.S. Faced with an Obama veto threat, that may be replaced by a measure, approved with bipartisan support by the House, restricting visa-free entry into the U.S. by many foreigners.

These Republican politicians forget that they are also descended from people who came here seeking a better life.

It happens that I sent a birthday greeting on Facebook to a Muslim (Pakistani immigrant) friend yesterday (I happened to sit next to him at a Bruce Springsteen concert several years ago, and we’ve stayed in touch). His response and the dialog we’ve had is relevant to the conversation. I reprint with his permission:

Him:
Thank you Shell….. It’s been an awesome few weeks. Finally became an American citizen and celebrated my birthday the same week.
Me:
Wow, congrats. We’ll have to change that Springsteen song (did he sing it the night we met? I don’t remember) to “CHOSE the USA!” It’s a powerful time to make that choice, with anti-Islamic crazies running high-poling campaigns for president.
Him:
Lol…. The same day I received my naturalization, Trump opened his mouth …. Lol…. It was funny…. However, the support has been wonderful from friends and coworkers.
Me:
All I can do is shake my head in wonder. He is sounding more like a Nazi. It shakes my faith in America that he has measurable support. My best hope is that he doesn’t get the nomination but gets close enough that he runs as an independent. And Hillary (more likely) or Bernie (my preferred choice) leads a Dem sweep that gets not just the WH but both houses of Congress and we can actually get some stuff done around here. Of course, US media has been playing up anti-Arab and anti-Islamic bigotry since at least the 1970s oil crisis–even though other than 9/11, Fort Hood, and this recent tragedy in California, most of the gun violence is at the hands of people who self-identify as Christian (I don’t think Christ would agree with their claim).
It just occurred to me as I hit send that this might make a good blog post. May I have your permission to reprint your comments–you can be an anonymous “Muslim friend” or I can name you.
Him:
Sure. Trump is just an attention seeking idiot. Amazing that a reality star, upstart millionaire can received so much attention …. Lol.
I’m glad he’s not deterred by recent xenophobia. Like my ancestors and yours, he will help us build a better country in the US.
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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!

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Diversity, Energy & Sustainability, Environment, Peace and War, Politics, Protests and Crackdowns, Shel's Personal Life, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , ,

Visiting Minneapolis for the holidays, we happened to walk by the American Indian Movement Interpretive Center and its Thunder Before the Storm Gallery, located in the Ancient Traders Market, 1113 E. Franklin Avenue (at South 15th Avenue).

As a child in the 1960s and 1970s, I learned about the powerful activism of the American Indian Movement; they were in the newspapers constantly with bold actions around native people’s rights in the US and elsewhere.

Their multipronged approach included:

  • Nonviolent direct action such as the occupation of
    Alcatraz Island and the Trail of Broken Treaties March on Washington/occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs offices
  • Shows of force, including the 71-day occupation of Wounded Knee, South Dakota
  • Creating alternative institutions such as schools, community media (including a radio station), and career training programs
  • Legal actions in the courts

(See a detailed history at https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5564875fe4b0a715f94b3b42/t/558850b7e4b010cd4058b0d6/1434996919389/AIMPastPresentFuture.pdf; scroll down to the section, “A Brief History of he American Indian Movement.”)

Later, in 1980, I attended the Black Hills Gathering, as did many people involved with AIM, several of whom spoke from the stage. The Black Hills Gathering fused the causes of environmentalism/protecting land and water/the safe energy movement with those of indigenous rights around the world, and particularly the native peoples of North America.

Along with the Seabrook, NH nuclear power plant site occupation of 1977, the Black Hills Gathering was a turning point in my own activist journey. I’d already been involved in the safe energy movement for several years, starting well before Seabrook, and before that was a high school and college activist on ending the Vietnam War, abolishing nuclear weapons, LBG rights, and students’ rights.

The Black Hills Gathering was my first deep exposure to the specifics of the indigenous people’s movements. Speaker after speaker drew connections among seemingly disparate struggles like the Dine (Navajo) people’s resistance to uranium mining in the Southwest, the struggle to replace a collaborationist tribal government on the Lakota Pine Ridge Reservation, and the battles of native peoples around the country and around the world to block the corporatization and expropriation of land, water, and other resources.

I trace my advocacy on water issues, and my promotion of the idea that urban rooftops could be food and energy sources, to this 3-day outdoor conference and festival. Those are both areas that I still talk about 35 years later; they’re even discussed in my newest book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World.

Walking into the AIM Interpretive Center, seeing the photos on the walls, brought back all those memories.

The gallery doesn’t get a lot of visitors, but it is open to the pubic (and it’s part of a neighborhood that’s a hotspot of American Indian culture). We were lucky enough in our visit to meet Eric Byrd, AIM’s archivist and curator, who filled us in on plans for future exhibits and on the photo-history publishing program the organization is working on.

If you’re in the Twin Cities, pop on in. If you’re not, visit the website.

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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).

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