Category: Psychology

By Posted on Posted in Corporate Social Responsibility, Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Entrepreneurship, Environment, Green Business, Innovation, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Networking, Peace and War, People Helping People, poverty, Psychology, Shel's Personal Life, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Dean Cycon, CEO, Dean's Beans, jamming with musicians in Rwanda
Dean Cycon, CEO of Dean’s Beans, making music in Rwanda

This may be the most personal and vulnerable post I’ve ever written, particularly when I talk about the second word.

Every year, Chris Brogan challenges his huge reader base to come up with three words to provide focus for the coming year. This year, I decided to take the challenge. My three words are:

  1. Transform
  2. Win
  3. Love

Here’s what they mean to me, and why I picked them:

Transform

First, there’s the social transformation I want to bring about by transforming the business world. I want to end the biggest crises of our time, and I see the business community as the best lever. Appealing to enlightened self-interest—the profit motive—I want to make the bottom-line business case that just as going green saved costs and increased revenue, so too can addressing big picture issues like how to turn hunger and poverty into sufficiency, war into peace, and catastrophic climate change into planetary balance. When I first started talking a great deal about going green as a profit booster, around 2002, people looked at me funny. Now, it’s common business wisdom. I think the same will be true eventually for creating profitable products, services, and a company DNA that address these issues at their roots.

Second, the transformation in my own business. I see consulting, speaking, and writing on how business can bring about that transformation (and how any particular business can develop and market the right social change products and services for its own culture and markets) as a major part of my business in the coming year, and for the rest of my working life. While I’ve been thinking about these things for many years, have written books and given talks about it, I still have to find the markets that are willing to pay for what I know I can do for them. I go into the year with two possible markets that are quite different: small entrepreneurial and startup companies, and large, established corporations. I’ve developed two different websites for these audiences, because the agenda, methodology, timetable, and price structure will be very different.

All of this is a natural outgrowth of the green business profitability work I’ve done the past several years—but while it builds on the past work, it is different. I’m confident that I can make it work, but am still a bit fuzzy on the how. Which brings us to the second word:

Win

My original choice was “succeed,” but then I went to Chris’s post. He chose “win” as one of his words, and I think it’s like success, but stronger. It can also work as both a noun and a verb, as can my third word.

Also, I feel that on many levels other than the material, my life IS a success. I made a conscious decision about 30 years ago to have a happy life, and I’ve made good on that: I love the marriage I’m in, the house and community where I live, the places I visit, the local organic fresh food I eat, the books I read, the performances I watch, and so on. That decision rippled through all areas of my life. As early as 1985, it was the difference between feeling angry and frustrated and cheated when I had to spend an entire day of precious vacation mailing packages back to myself, as the old me would have—and thinking, even before I was married, about the wonderful story I’d have to tell my grandchildren.

But there are two areas where I need to replace that general feeling of success with a clear, strong victory: the economic underpinning of my business (which has now had two low-producing years in a row while I retooled for the transformation)…and the deeper impact of my work on the world.

The problem with having many interests and multiple skill areas is that it’s really hard to focus. When everything is fascinating, how do you choose? Yet, to succeed—to win—you have to close some doors so you can pass through the doors that remain open.

This is the lens: I’m using to help me choose what to focus on:

Over the past few years, I’ve worked hard to overcome a case of what my friend Noah St. John calls “success anorexia.” I’ve looked at my money/success blocks, and overcome a number of them. But, watching my own failures doing things that have worked really well for others, I realize there’s still some hidden piece, deep in my subconscious, that courts failure. I need to find that piece, hold it up to the light, make an alliance with—and redirect—the parts of it that act out of love, excise the parts that are rooted in self-hatred, and have a clear win. This will be difficult, because I don’t even know what it is that’s holding me back. But it’s essential.

Once that hurdle is overcome, I want to look at how to broaden my impact. I have a great message and great examples of how we can solve these big problems. But for that to really change the world, I need to find tens of thousands, maybe millions of people who are open to that transformational message. None of my books have ever sold more than a few thousand copies. My blog and social media audiences are limited. The number of people who hear me speak in a year is much too small. The second big win I need is to get myself in front of a far larger number of people. That this will help with selling more books, doing more paid speaking to larger audiences, and getting more consulting gigs—in other words, contributing to the win I’m looking for in my own blocks—is an extra benefit. At age 59, I have a limited time to make a big impact on the world. I want to leave a legacy of creating deep transformational change, because I love this planet. And that’s a nice transition to the third word.

Love

Love of others and of self, love of the ecosystem and the planet. In my youth, I was a very angry, loud activist who felt utterly betrayed by governments and corporations and wasn’t good at finding common ground or seeking alliances with those who thought or felt differently from me. Over the years, I’ve learned how mistaken I was—starting all the way back in the 1970s. Some might say I’ve softened but I don’t see that way. I’ve learned to approach with love, respect, and an understanding that almost all of us want a better world; we just have different ways of understanding how to bring it about.

Love is often about deep listening. It’s also about seeking a higher good for a greater number of people, without sacrificing the needs and desires of others. It’s about building the communication skills to allow environmentalists and Tea Partiers to discover their common ground (something I talk about very specifically in my 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World).

Going deeper, this is what allows even the most hate-filled opponents to go past the hurt and build a better world for everyone. Nelson Mandela was a master of this. So were the people who formed the various Arab-Israeli joint projects such as the magnificent Wahat al-Salam/Neve Shalom community in Israel, where Jews and Arabs study and work together—the name, in both languages, translates as “Oasis of Peace”—or Combatants for Peace, which pairs Arab and Israeli former combatants to travel around and speak about cooperation.

It’s easy to love those who agree with you. It’s much harder to love those you might blame for the death of a loved one or the loss of your land. I have tremendous admiration for those involved in these sorts of cooperative efforts and I want to be more like them.

What are your three words?

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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, 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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By Posted on Posted in Branding, Entrepreneurship, language, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Networking, Psychology, Shel's Personal Life, Transparency vs. Secrecy Tagged with , , ,
Business Book Photo by Jennifer Marr
"The Bystander Effect" Photo by Iwan Beijes
“The Bystander Effect”
Photo by Iwan Beijes

In part 1 of this post, I referred to the “story-behind-the-story” news releases I learned to write after reading Jeffrey Lant’s Cash Copy. So here’s the story behind the story of Part 1: the lessons I hope you come away with.

First, of course, are the obvious messages: John Corcoran and his readers prepared a good resource, and reading those books can provide you with new skills and insights. And the two books I added to the list provided ME with  important skills and insights.

But I’m a marketer. There’s a deeper psychology here. I believe in transparency, so I’ll step you through the goals I had in posting this, and the action steps I took to meet those goals—so perhaps it may influence the way you craft your own messages:

  • To introduce myself to—and build and nurture a relationship with—John Corcoran. I build relationships with many people who have a network I want to be part of, and who I’d like to see me as a colleague whose expertise complements theirs. This is my first communication to him. I got on his list a few weeks ago after listening to a webinar he did with one of his marketing partners. As far as I know, he doesn’t subscribe to my newsletter, doesn’t know me from any of the discussion lists I participate in, hasn’t heard me speak or read any of my books. Thus, I’m assuming it’s a cold contact.
  • To introduce myself to his community in ways that may spark interest in my books and/or consulting and copywriting services

Notice how I work toward those goals as I:

  1. Complement him on the resource he put together, right in the very first paragraph
  2. Mention that I’m a business book writer—thus positioning myself as someone it makes sense to pay attention to, since he pays attention to all these other business book writers—and an addicted reader who consumes business books, and thus a natural member of his community
  3. Show that I’ve taken the next action step: listening to his podcasts and naming the first one I played; I’m engaging with his material and psychologically rewarding him for making the resource available
  4. Add two new books that no one has mentioned, along with the reasons why I recommend them—and in those reasons why, I begin to reinforce, not just to John but to anyone else reading this page, the idea that I’m a creative, problem-solving marketing guy that people could turn to for new approaches to marketing (notice how I mention that the example was from work I did for a client)
  5. By citing the year I first read Lant’s book, show that I’ve been in this world for decades
  6. By using the “we we we all the way home” reference, show that I have a sense of humor and a knowledge of cultural references
  7. Provide direct value in the post, by suggesting (without selling and without hype) and giving an example of story-behind-the-story copywriting and mentioning that going green/solving the world’s biggest problems can be a formula for profitable, successful business
  8. Reference the relevant book I have out, and the one that’s coming out soon
  9. Make a direct offer to John: the gift of an advance copy (of course, I’m hoping he will recommend it to others)
  10. Tell him to expect a private email from me, so when he sees it, he’ll open it
  11. Finish with the most relevant of my website URLs, so anyone else whose attention I caught can easily track me down without having to do a search

Incidentally, this transparency extends to my outreach to John. When I send my private note, I will include the links to these two posts so he can see how I used my post on his site as a case study for you. 😉

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By Posted on Posted in Diversity, Energy & Sustainability, General Commentary, Innovation, People Helping People, poverty, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice, Technology Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Summary board prepared in real-time at Leslie Hinkson's talk on desegregation, TEDx Springfield

#TEDxSpringfield’s fourth annual event was held Friday, and as always, lots of brain stim.

I’ve already blogged on my personal favorite talk: Randy Pierce, a blind athlete who recently climbed Kilimanjaro, on how he perceives the world. But there were plenty of other highlights to share:

  • Summary board prepared in real-time at Leslie Hinkson's talk on desegregation, TEDx SpringfieldLeslie Hinkson: If we want real desegregation, we need to not only make sure black and white kids attend the same schools, but that they interact socially within the school.
  • Bill Miller Summary Board: TEDxSpringfieldBill Miller: To deal effectively with homelessness, first get people off the streets and into housing. THEN start addressing the other pieces, like jobs, addictions, etc. And this is good for the community, even the business community.

 

Amanda Herman storyboard at TEDxSpringfieldAmanda Herman: Making films “focusing on what people wish to happen, in their dreams. What is it to make someone else’s dreams come true? I gather with people to transform their ideas into public arts projects…The outcome of each project is joy…What’s possible and impossible in the world is largely a social construct. It’s up to us to redefine what is possible…and make it happen.

Darby Dyer storyboard, TEDx SpringfieldDarby Dyer: Despite 100,000 objects between the sun and Jupiter, our risk of being hit by the kind of cataclysmic asteroid that may have wiped out the dinosaurs. And the sun will keep producing energy and light for the next 5 million years or more. We are the “Goldylocks planet,” with perfect conditions to support human life. But even if we don’t have to worry about the planet surviving, we do have to worry about human survival. Catastrophic climate change is real, it’s here, and our window for addressing it is shrinking.

Nick Cummings poses with his summaryboard from TEDx SpringfieldNick Cummings: A recent high school graduate who has faced disability-level breathing problems since birth, he shared insights on being social when you don’t fit in, and on overcoming the depression of being different: “DON’T think the answer is in a pill or a bottle, unless that pill is made of chocolate and the bottle is Mr. Bubble bubble bath…Find the positive in every situation. Take all that raw emotion and have it drive you to be better…We’re all gloomy depressive messes some time. But there must have been something so fantastic before that to make you feel that way. A roller coaster doesn’t only go up.

Laney Rosenzweig StoryboardLaney Rosenzweig: If we can replace the images we have of traumatic events (often with metaphors), we can reduce the post-traumatic stress. Our memories are not fixed, but fluid, and we can create memories of traumatic events that we can live with, that don’t trap or paralyze us.

 

Thom Fox Storyboard, TEDx SpringfieldThom Fox: As a former drug abuser and gang member, “I’d been on my way to being dead…Life doesn’t have to be miserable. If you don’t like your life, change it. I understood that I could reach out and they’d be kind enough to help. No one succeeds alone. Once you get through hell, you can help one person, two people. That could be exponential and change the world. The more opportunity you create for others, the more you create for yourself.

“The one commonality for all the bad things that happened to me—was me. That’s what I had to overcome.

“Tofu takes on the flavor of whatever it’s with. People are like tofu. Surround yourself with potential, and it will be fulfilled… One person changed my life. I’m passing that on exponentially. What if your conversation was that one thing that changed their life?”

Angela Lussier Sumamryboard, TEDx SpringfieldAngela Lussier: “When I graduated, I thought I had to abandon the artist in order to become a business person. What I realized is I can be an artist and a business person. Even stuffed celery could be an art project…I did a video, with sliding down slides and swinging on swings. I thought, is this something business people do? But the response was, ‘we had so much fun watching you have fun as you taught business principles.’

“The difference is my mindset. I was really outcome-focused at the beginning. Today, I have a creator’s mindset, more focused on learning and growing—the journey. The creator’s cycle: Being–>Dreaming–>Doing–>Making–>Being (reflect on what happened/worked: what happened, what didn’t, what am I scared of). The moment we want to quit lies right before the doing stage. When you move from ‘this won’t work’ to ‘let me just try this,’ a lot of things happen.

“When I figured out that I’m a weird person, I found out everyone else is too; we’re all just pretending to be normal.”

Several other speakers were also on the program, and they had good insights as well—but the notes I took on their sessions don’t lend themselves to reportage. Here are their storyboards (all prepared in real time by the graphics agency Collective Next).

Kalyan_Summaryboard_TEDx John_Longo_Summaryboard_TEDx Diane_Smith_Summaryboard_TEDx Marek_Summaryboard_TEDx Tinsae_Summaryboard_TEDx

 

Tweet: Learning, Breathing, and the End of the World: #TEDX Springfield https://ctt.ec/TgiPS+

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By Posted on Posted in Diversity, General Commentary, Psychology Tagged with , , , , ,
Summary board prepared in real-time at Randy Pierce's talk on blindness, TEDx Springfield
Summary board prepared in real-time at Randy Pierce's talk on blindness, TEDx Springfield
Summary board prepared in real-time at Randy Pierce’s talk on blindness, TEDx Springfield

Randy Pierce, an athlete who recently climbed Kilimanjaro, enjoys a spectacular view or a great sunset—even though he happens to be blind. Just because he can’t see it and has to have it described doesn’t mean he can’t enjoy. His talk was my personal highlight of the fourth annual #TEDxSpringfield yesterday.

Formerly sighted, he had lessons for anyone going through a difficult transition, not just losing sight. “The transition trauma moment is incredibly difficult…If we want to just live there, we can be paralyzed and stay there forever.” Anger and depression are perfectly normal when you lose something you’d always had, but it’s our choice about whether to remain stuck there, or use the trauma to springboard growth. He shared a powerful example of this from his own experience learning to use a blind cane.

While the blind cane was the tool that let me walk around safely, it was also my scarlet letter that let me feel less than, feel their pity, their lack of understanding…

In those early stages, you might be angry, depressed, enthused, in denial. I was all of those. I broke my cane and threw it away, focused on the risk management of how people would react to me… I accidentally knocked over a toddler [too low to the ground to enter Pierce’s sensory awareness] who didn’t have the warning of my cane. I let my vanity restrict me and it caused damage. A really good eye-opener on evaluating more of the risk and what is the right way to manage it.

Once, he asked if anyone was sitting in a bus seat, and hearing no response, plopped himself in the lap of a woman too shy to answer his query. And this, too, was a teachable moment for Pierce:

I can mitigate the challenge of social interaction. I wear glasses so others are not upset by my eyes shaking back and forth. I could have said “if you’re sitting there, please say hello so I don’t sit in your lap,” instead of “is anyone sitting there?”

What he learned from these early experiences is that the risk of being rejected by others is a lesser risk than the risk of failing to connect with those who are ready.

Reach out and connect with people. Make it safe for them. Take a way the risk of rejection for THEM. But how much greater risk is isolation? Make the risk of a little rejection and understand that [not all will work out]. People look for the safety of the community they have in their pocket (phones). But think about how many lost future communities [never occur because we isolate ourselves in our phones and ignore the people around us].

Pierce choses a dynamic, almost Mandela-like optimism and a methodical approach. He achieved an athletic feats that trips up even 90 percent of sighted people: grabbing a moving trapeze and using it to ring a bell.

I have plenty of points of darkness in my life. But how long do I have to wait until I put my focus to the dawn that’s coming, the vision? If you get that vision, there’s a great dawn ahead of you in many ways…Vision is always going to be waaay more important than sight.

See tomorrow’s post for other highlights of #TEDxSpringfield

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By Posted on Posted in Copywriting, Eco-friendly, Energy & Sustainability, Environment, Frugality/Frugal Fun, Green Living/Green Lifestyles, language, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, propaganda, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , ,
Urban bicyclists taking a break
Urban bicyclists taking a break

What surprised me about Seth Godin’s blog post today on cars vs bicycles was the way he based his pro-bike arguments in classic liberal altruism: protect the underdog, ensure the safety of the less powerful. This is even more remarkable because he lives in New York City, whre bikes have clear superiority over cars for many purposes. (His tounge-in-cheek pro-car arguments, on the other hand, were like the modern Republican Party: I have more power than you, so get out of my way.)

I’m a big believer in convincing by harnessing the reader/listener/viewer’s enlightened self-interest. So I’d rewrite his pro-bike list with these eight positive reasons:

  • In dense urban areas, you’ll get there much faster on a bike than in a car, for trips of up to five and maybe as much as seven miles, especially in rush hour
  • You can park within a few feet of your destination (in big cities, I often start looking for a parking space half a mile/one kilometer ahead, and sometimes don’t find a space until a mile/2KM on the other side)
  • In less populated areas, the bike provides a healthy, fun workout
  • You notice more on a bike: stores and restaurants to check out, architectural details, big scenic vista, some ripe and yummy fruit to pick on a wild raspberry vine, that gorgeous hawk soaring above you
  • You enjoy that wonderful feeling of being outside with the breeze and sun
  • Your carbon footprint during your trip is reduced by orders of magnitude
  • You get to smile and be smiled upon by other people; positive human connection, no matter how fleeting, is a good thing, and hard to achieve encased in a ton or two of steel and plastic
  • Bikes are waaay cheaper—bike economics: outright purchase of something between $200 for a decent used street bike on up to, say, $600 for a new one of better quality, maintenance costs of $50-$100 per year, fuel cost of zero; car economics: at minimum, $5000 plus hundreds or thousands in annual maintenance for a functional used car with a remaining lifespan of three years or more, plus costs of fuel and insurance, on up to several tens of thousands for a new one.

Of course, Seth is using the bike vs. car argument as a metaphor for the caring vs. selfish economy. But as an avid biker (going back to commuting to high school in New York City, and continuing through my current rural lifestyle)—and a benefit-focused marketer, I had to point out that bikes do actually offer a number of real advantages.

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By Posted on Posted in Branding, Business-general, Demographics/Psychographics, Diversity, language, Politics, Psychology Tagged with , , ,
Peace, in many languages
Peace, in many languages

I do not use “killing it” or “crushing it” to mean “successful.” Successful does not have to be about dominance and submission, winners and losers. I believe in an abundant, win-win world where we have the power to turn hunger and poverty into sufficiency, war into peace, and catastrophic climate change into planetary balance—while making a nice profit. The words we choose help determine where we (individually and as a society) are going, and how we get there.

In fact, I set up a whole new website, https://goingbeyondsustainability.com, to bring this message home. Somehow, I don’t think it would have the right tone if I had called this website “killingitforsustainability.com”.

Language matters. A lot. I just told a client yesterday to remove the word “dumb” from her vocabulary; she’s building a brand around smart, sexy, socially conscious blondes, and the “dumb blonde” stereotype is the exact opposite of that.

I don’t use the term, “senior moment.” I see elders as more often wise than confused. I’m 58 and I expect to be doing good work for the rest of my life, whether that turns out to be another 50 years, or whether my time turns out to be much more limited. I avoid gender-specific language; it’s almost always possible to find a gender-inclusive way to say something. “Firefighter” rather than “fireman,” “chair” (or the more cumbersome “chairperson”) instead of “chairman.” Since “s/he” or “co” or any other quick substitute for “he or she” hasn’t become common language, I do say “he or she” or “his and her.” Even though it’s clunky, it is less clunky to my eyes and ears than switching gender every paragraph.

Yes, I know that the word “niggardly” (meaning stingy) has nothing to do entomologically with a certain slur-word directed at black people. The root is different. But because the sounds of the words are so close, I would never use it. I don’t want to reinforce any association with the n-word. I’m also careful about words like “savages” or “primitive” or “cripple.” And I even avoid “sucks,” which was introduced as a slur against gay men. So many words are so loaded up with negative baggage that it’s a whole lot easier just not to use them.

Marketers should pay attention, too. Chevrolet made a huge mistake decades ago when it tried to introduce its popular Nova line into Latin America. Nobody bothered to check what that name meant locally. Oddly enough, it turned out that the locals weren’t exactly breaking down the doors to buy a car whose name is Spanish for “it doesn’t go.”

There is one military metaphor that doesn’t bother me at all, however. I use the word “target” to describe a tightly defined market niche. I like the precision of that. And because I’m a Guerrilla Marketing co-author, I use the phrase “guerrilla marketing.” But if I had been naming the brand, I’d have chosen something less grounded in war (and maybe easier to spell).

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By Posted on Posted in Activism, censorship, Democracy, Diversity, Ethics in Government, localism/locavore, People Helping People, Politics, propaganda, Psychology, Transparency vs. Secrecy Tagged with , , , ,

In his daily blog, Seth Godin wrote today,

The last hundred years have also seen a similar ratchet (amplified, I’d argue, by the technology of media and of the economy) in civil rights. It’s unlikely (with the exception of despotic edicts) that women will ever lose the vote, that discrimination on race will return to apartheid-like levels, that marriage will return to being an exclusionary practice… once a social justice is embraced by a culture, it’s rarely abandoned.

Unfortunately, those “despotic edicts” are all-too-common. While the general trend is not to reverse progress, there are far too many exceptions:

And, sadly, dozens more examples from around the world.

If you think “it can’t happen here,” do some research on Berlin in the 1920s–or read Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale). Or look at the scary anti-Arab and anti-Muslim acts of violence that started showing up regularly in the US starting in the aftermath of 9/11/01 and are still escalating.

Although this is a pessimistic post, I am ultimately an optimist. I think Godin is basically right–but there are many, many exceptions. Let’s work together for a world in which those exceptions are no longer tolerated–we can do this!

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