I have been a fan of your since you took office. However, after following your Facebook link to the Planned Parenthood funding survey, I have to say I felt tricked, deceived, and betrayed.
I’ve used this blog to call out unethical marketing from various companies over the years. And even though you and I share many political views (including a strong commitment to women’s rights)—I have to call you out on this.
The initial question that led to the dead end
I had no problem with the initial one-question survey. But then I opted in to the follow-up questions.
First, as a survey instrument, the questions were useless. Each had only a yes or no option, written in language that showed a clear bias toward one answer. Yes, you’ll be able to prepare a press release that could cite a number like 95 percent of respondents—but it’s meaningless. You’d be laughed off the page, or worse, publicly shamed, by journalists who bother to look at the source data.
Second, after I checked off my answers and tried to submit, my phone took me to a page demanding money. I say demanding rather than asking, because there was no way out except by giving money. My submit button was refused when I left the field blank and refused again when I put in a zero. And when I exited the page without contributing, it tried to post to my Facebook page that I had just contributed to you. I have no way of knowing if my responses were actually counted—but I can tell you I did not appreciate being trapped and manipulated like this.
I don’t have a problem being asked for money at the end of a survey, when it’s my choice whether to give or not. But this felt like a shakedown, quite frankly. It left a very bad taste.
I would find this unacceptable from any politician and any charity. But since you were “the very first member of Congress to put her official daily schedule, personal financial disclosure and federal earmark requests online” and cited by The New York Times for your commitment to transparency, I find this an especially bitter pill.
As a marketer, I am saddened to see you resorting to Trumpian tactics based in dishonesty and lack of transparency. You’re better than this. In Michelle Obama’s famous line, “When they go low, we go high.”
Sincerely,
Shel Horowitz, marketing strategist and copywriter
I have noticed that many successful startups are advertising that they donate x% of their profit to someone in need or they help someone have a better life,etc. What do you think is the importance of such messages to gain initial traction and how does it help grow the company?
By the time I saw the post, several other people had jumped in to tell him that social entrepreneurship isn’t just a marketing trick. It must be genuine.
How some people view the world—Opportunity for businesses that genuinely care
I agree, but there’s more. Here’s what I wrote:
Yes, social giving has to be genuine–motivated not by marketing but by sincerely helping the world–but if you’re doing that, you gain huge marketing advantage if you handle it right.
Keep in mind: charitable give-backs are NOT the only model. I’m rather a fan of creating products, services, and business cultures that directly *and profitably* turn hunger and poverty into sufficiency, war into peace, and catastrophic climate change into planetary balance. In fact, in my latest book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World–which is focused on this aspect–charity givebacks account for part of one chapter out of 22 chapters. In my speaking and consulting, I help companies actually develop these kinds of approaches. You can get a very quick early-stage introduction by spending 15 minutes with my TEDx talk, “Impossible is a Dare” https://www.ted.com/tedx/events/11809 (click on “event videos”)–but recognize that this was 2 years ago and the work has evolved a lot since then.
All other things (such as price, quality, convenience) being comparable, consumers “vote with their feet” to support ethical, green, socially conscious companies. So you, as a startup, have the chance to look at the skills, interests, and wider goals within your company…create products and services that match these skills, interests, and goals with wider goals like the Big Four I mentioned at the beginning…and market them effectively to both green and nongreen markets (which has to be done differently, as I discuss in the book). But please, do it with good intentions! (I can help, BTW.)
Here in Massachusetts, we get to vote on some interesting referenda.
Lifting the Charter School Cap
UPDATE, OCTOBER 6, 2016: I’ve been convinced in the intervening weeks that this particular charter school vote is not one I can support. I am not convinced of the motives of this bill’s supporters, and I see a greater threat to the public schools in the way this measure is structured. Below is what I’d written on September 18, before I was really aware of the issues with how this referendum is structured. All my other points about the other issue and candidate remain accurate.
One is on lifting the current cap on charter schools. These schools are publicly funded and privately run, funded primarily by a state per-pupil allotment. They range from liberal experiments in educational democracy to corporate-sponsored throwbacks to long-abandoned educational models promoting rote learning and obedience. At the moment, 32,000 Massachusetts students are on waiting lists for charter schools.
Preschool girl with a creative project. Photo by Anissa Thompson.
It’s important to separate whether the charter school experiment is a good thing from the funding formula. Bias disclosure: both of my kids attended charter schools for elementary through high school, so I’m a quadruple alumni parent. It’s also worth pointing out that my wife and I both attended the same New York City high school for gifted children. This was a public school, but in many ways the experience was closer to an academic-achievement-oriented charter school in today’s world.
The switch came for us when the public school second grade teacher insisted on teaching reading by lowest common denominator. Our daughter, who had always loved school through preschool, kindergarten, and first grade, very quickly started hating it. She didn’t want to sit through whole-class reading lessons using a book with two words on each page, paced to the slowest kids in the class–and the school administration was not responsive. We moved her to Hilltown Cooperative Charter Public School, an arts-based school that emphasizes love of learning through multiple modalities–and she thrived there.
We worried that my son, five years younger than my daughter, could have been a bullying victim in the traditional public school, as I was. He was a sensitive, feminine, non-sports-playing classical musician, avid reader, and a member of a tiny ethnic minority in our town. And our town’s school culture is heavily focused on sports. But he did well in the zero-bullying-allowed culture at Hilltown. Both of my kids went on to thrive in the performing arts charter high school they attended afterward (which was, incidentally, much more ethnically and racially diverse than our town public school). My son drew on that training to attend a major music conservatory for both his undergrad and graduate studies.
Hilltown also did its best to follow its mission and be a lab school for new educational methods, which it was eager to share with other area schools. However, the school’s outreach efforts were rebuffed over and over again. My wife was on the board for a while, and she told me how almost every outreach gesture was brushed away by the local traditional public schools.
I vote an enthusiastic yes for the idea of charter schools–but the funding formula borders on criminal IMHO. Removing resources from the traditional public schools just adds to the spiral of despair, increases bureaucracy, denies resources to kids who are in many cases already begging for more, and cuts off real learning.
Yet I will vote for more charter schools–because they were there for my kids when traditional public schools failed them–but reluctantly, because I think the funding formula strikes a blow against public schools with every student who leaves. And whether or not the vote passes, I think we charter school supporters have to be part of fixing that rotten funding formula. And as a vote to give a few of those 32,000 waitlisted students the same opportunities my children enjoyed.
Recreational Marijuana
I will also vote, reluctantly, for pot legalization, though I don’t like the way the industry is moving. I see it becoming another outpost that extracts money from the poor, uses questionable marketing tactics, and encourages people to detach from reality rather than step up to the plate and work for change. It’s also likely to concentrate clout in the hands of a few big players, squeezing out any mom-and-pop businesses. And I worry about fostering a culture of chemical dependence, and of course I worry about problems when people drive while stoned.
However, we already have all of that, with alcohol. And pot is actually a much more socially benign form of blocking the real world than alcohol. Pot smokers don’t get aggressive or violent, and don’t drive nearly as dangerously, as drunks. And criminalizing this behavior causes deep and lasting damage. It:
Ruins the lives of people who are using a much milder drug than many legal ones
Diverts scarce law enforcement and criminal justice resources away from crimes that actually hurt people
Causes a tremendous financial burden to taxpayers (it’s not cheap to keep someone in jail for several years) and contributes to prison overcrowding
Jacks up prices to levels that may lead to property crime
Once again, I’m voting for the lesser of evils. Criminalization is a failed solution.
The Presidential Race
And yes, dammit, I will vote reluctantly for a deeply flawed Democratic presidential candidate who in many other years might not get my vote, even though I live in a “safe” state where I could vote third-party, and have voted for independent candidates in the past.
I want such an overwhelming margin of defeat for Trump’s agenda of racism bullying, misogyny, lying, cheating his suppliers, suppression of the media, egomania, etc. that he never shows his face in politics again. Let’s compare Clinton and Trump:
She is far too likely to get us into another war. He would make us a puppet of Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
Her support of Israel’s ultra-right government is troubling. His support of anti-Arab and anti-black and anti-Latino positions is equally troubling. And his consistent egging his supporters on toward physical violence against dissenters is straight out of the Nazi playbook.
She has a history of standing up for the rights of women and children. He embraces racial stereotyping and stands up only for the rights of his own various business enterprises—including the “right” to cheat vendors and lenders out of legitimate payment.
She’s uncomfortable with the press. He actually bans reporters from media outlets he doesn’t like.
She embraces secrecy in ways that make me deeply uncomfortable. He says the first thing that comes into his mind, regardless of the implications–but is the first major party candidate in decades to refuse to release his tax returns, which makes me wonder what he’s hiding.
I could go on and on. If you want more, start with longtime political observer Adolph Reed’s article, Vote for the Lying Neoliberal Warmonger: It’s Important. And to those on the Left who say a Trump presidency would revitalize the opposition, I would respond that repression doesn’t often create a climate of change. For every success like the freedom struggles in South Africa and India, there are many more like Prague Spring being crushed by the Russians–where the hopes and reams of the people are squashed like bugs. We didn’t see a popular uprising during Reagan’s or even George W. Bush’s presidency; why would we suddenly see one under Trump and his suppression of the press?
In other words, I find myself facing the lesser-of-evils in three different votes on my November ballot. And while I can’t say I’m OK with it, I find voting for the lesser evil better than the non-action that triggers the greater evil. Better still: taking action to get voting reforms so we no longer need to vote lesser-evil.
Last night, I signed a petition created by Rep. Joe Kennedy about gun control. The page gave me the option to share on Facebook, and I did. Then I went to bed.
I was pretty horrified to check my page this morning and see my share that said “Stand With Rep. Joe Kennedy” and had a huge picture of him. Not a word about gun control showed up in the Facebook preview.
So I took it down and posted this note:
To those who might have wondered why there was a huge campaign ad for Rep. Joe Kennedy on my page last night. I had just signed a petition he originated on gun control, and wanted to share it. I didn’t check how it posted on FB. I felt tricked and betrayed enough to take the entire post down. Let him get signatures some other way.
This was a classic bait-and-switch. In fairness, Kennedy probably delegated this to some social media intern and most likely wasn’t personally involved. But if I lived in his district, this would make me look for someone else to vote for, because I don’t like being manipulated and cheated.
Only after I took it down did I think about blogging about this feeling of betrayal. If I’d decided to blog before I instinctively took it down, I would have grabbed a screenshot to post here. Instead, you get the logo of the ultimate-bait-and-switcher: Volkswagen.
Aging Volkswagen showing VW logo. Photo by Daria Schulte.
VW, of course, preyed upon environmentalist car owners to sell them a low-emission vehicle—but fudged the test results and was really selling highly polluting cars. This is costing the company billions, and it isn’t over yet. The state of Vermont just filed suit against VW two days ago. Vermont, tiny as it is, has the second-highest per-capita concentration of VWs in the country (after Oregon)—precisely because environmental consciousness is extremely high among its residents. In fact, a year ago, a group of those Vermont residents already filed a class-action suit against Volkswagen.
I used to think my parents and in-laws were overreacting with their continuing pledge never to buy Volkswagen s because of the company’s involvement with the Holocaust. After all, the people who made those brutal decisions are long dead or in nursing homes. But after this scandal, I can’t think of any reason why I would ever trust the company again.
Bottom line: in business and in politics, bait-and-switch has no place in ethical marketing.
Regardless of where they fall on the liberal-conservative spectrum, many of my friends face a choice between a candidate they find deeply flawed and one they find completely unacceptable. They differ on which candidate they will vote for with gritted teeth and a hope for a better future vs. the one they see must be stopped at all costs—but fundamentally, it’s the same question. And I know plenty who find neither candidate acceptable and will either vote third-party or skip that line on the ballot.
The US presidential election has become a shambles. As a country, we deserve better.
And we can get better! Proof is as close as this coming Tuesday’s primary election in my own Hampshire County, Massachusetts.
One district over from me, much-loved State Representative Ellen Story is giving up the seat she was first elected to in 1992. Six candidates are on the ballot to replace her, and all six bring impressive credentials, endorsements, and a track record of community service. Ellen herself has no major enemies—pretty remarkable in 24 years in state politics, especially in a fractious town where even Town Meeting takes two weeks. In my town, we do Town Meeting in one night, twice a year.
I’ve listed a few simple reforms in bold, below. Adopting them throughout the US would go a long way toward reclaiming our democracy.
Reform #1: IRV The state rep election is a perfect case study of why we need ranked voting (a/k/a Instant Runoff voting). You name your first choice, and if your candidate is eliminated, your vote goes to your second choice. If that candidate is eliminated, the vote goes to your third choice, and so on down the line until there’s a clear victor. We need this locally, and we need it nationally. Several other countries use it, as do a few cities in the US. For the first time in a US national election, people would be able to vote their consciences without feeling they were throwing their support to the worst candidate if they picked someone unlikely to win.
I don’t vote in that election, but I’ll be happy with whoever wins. And I do get to vote in two county-wide races. I consider two of the three candidates for Sheriff highly qualified, as are both of the candidates for Governor’s Council (an obscure Massachusetts office that helps select judges). I’m voting for Melissa Perry and Jeff Morneau, but I don’t think I’ll be badly served as a voter if my first choices don’t win.
The Key Difference Between Local and National Elections
Reform #2: Undo Citizens United and Change the Way We Finance Campaigns
Why did these races draw so many strong candidates while at the national level, we have to scratch our heads and hold our noses?
I believe we can sum up the answer in just two words: CAMPAIGN FINANCE. These local campaigns are cheap to run and use little paid advertising. So the candidates are not beholden to any special interest.
On the national level, campaigns cost billions and special interests hold major sway over the candidates they fund. It’s not a coincidence that the only candidate who was able to galvanize progressives was also the only candidate to fund his candidacy through direct populist appeal to small individual donors. Nobody thought a year ago that Bernie Sanders would be any kind of serious candidate. Yet he won numerous primaries and—for the first time in decades—proved that you can run a national campaign without becoming a puppet of your funders. As the devastating effects of the Citizens United Supreme Court decision allowing essentially unlimited corporate money to flow to campaigns become palpable, this is key for the future direction of American politics.
Reform #3: Hand-Countable Paper Ballots We will never know who really won the US presidential elections of 2000 and 2004. In both cases, the decision hung on a single state, and in both states, the outcome was highly suspect. These are only the most dramatic among many elections that were very close. In far too many, the use of electronic voting machines without paper ballots means there’s no way to tell if the votes were counted accurately. This is simply unacceptable. Electronic voting machines and regional tabulation machines are far too easy for a hacker to flip—or to simply go out of alignment and count votes for people the voter didn’t vote for. The law should mandate that an electronic total is preliminary, and that election officials will hand-count within the week if the margin of victory is narrow or if there are any reports of irregularities. And those ballots should be properly archived so they can be checked later if accusations surface on the basis of new information.
Reform #5: Eliminate Winner-Take-All Electoral College Nebraska and Maine have been apportioning electoral votes by who wins each Congressional District. Why are the other 48 states still using the weird 18th-century throwback of giving all electoral votes to the person with the most? This disenfranchises any of us who live in a “safe” state. Our vote doesn’t really count unless we live in a swing state. Isn’t that crazy?
Left and Right can agree on these and a few other reforms. Let’s join forces and get this done.
Mind you, I share your distrust of electronic voting machines without paper backup. Yes, they can be manipulated. They likely were in 2000 and 2004.
Caricature of Donald Trump by DonkeyHotey, Creative Commons License: https://www.flickr.com/photos/donkeyhotey/5471912349/sizes/m/in/photostream/
But you will lose because you underestimate the decency of the American people. Your views AND your tactics are so repugnant that you even got ME to vote for Hillary Clinton—not because I’m so in love with her (actually, I have lots of issues with her), but because I want your margin of defeat to be so “yuge” that it dwarfs the margins of even Goldwater in 1964 and McGovern in 1972. I’ve voted third-party before, and there’s a third-party candidate this year that I could feel somewhat comfortable voting for.
You will lose because of your racism…your misogyny…your constant bullying and name calling…your attempts to shame people for being disabled, losing a son who defended our country, surviving years of torture and horrible conditions as a POW who stood true to his beliefs…your untrustable temper…your veiled threats of violence…your refusal to disclose your finances, which the New York Times called “a maze of debts and opaque ties…your 40-year history of cheating small business owners, lying, and showing your contempt for others.
You will lose, by a landslide, because you do not speak for the American people. The American people are better than you—and we deserve better leadership than you offer.
I got an email this morning from Labor for Bernie, urging me to sign up to continue the movement. My wife saw a note from Bernie himself, on Facebook. Both urged us to join the ongoing movement by signing up at OurRevolution.com.
So I clicked over. And this is what I saw:
Landing page of OurRevolution.com
It’s designed like a classic marketer’s landing page with only two options: sign up or send money. Except that a classic marketer’s landing page describes the project it’s selling—sometimes, in great detail. This time—not a clue about what this organization is going to stand for.
I’m a strong Bernie supporter. I love that he was able to bring a progressive agenda into mainstream US politics—after watching so many fail before, from Jesse Jackson to Howard Dean to Dennis Kucinich. But I’m not signing.
Too many times, I’ve seen organizations co-opt supporters by turning out to stand for something other than they pretended, going back to the Socialist Workers Party’s attempt to co-opt the Vietnam peace movement when I was a teenager. Here, I don’t even see a pretense. I see nothing about what this organization will stand for, what tactics it will use, etc.
Even for Sanders, I don’t write a blank check. Not financially, and not in my commitment to an organization whose tenets I can’t describe. Even for Bernie, I won’t sign blind.
All my life, I’ve heard about the authoritarian Chinese government micromanaging every aspect of everyone’s lives, the government’s total control over career options, and of course, the “reeducation” of intellectuals and destruction of cultural resources during the Cultural Revolution.Getting a visa was a major and expensive hassle that had to be set up weeks ahead, and there was no way to get a business visa without an invitation from someone.
The other obvious difference was the way China blocks many key Internet sites, including all Google sites, Facebook, and Twitter. LinkedIn, Yahoo, and Bing do work, however.
And yet, during our brief visit, the society felt very open. While there are plenty of cops and security guards (including community volunteers who have almost identical uniforms to the police but with the addition of bright red armbands), most whom we saw were not obviously armed and seemed for the most part to be a force for peace, not repression. We’d often see cops joking around with passers-by or chatting amicably with each other. And mobility was almost totally unrestricted, other than at paid attractions. As visitors, we felt no police presence singling us out, had no “minders,” and we were unrestricted even when we went to meet a young couple that a friend of ours had met through Couchsurfing.
Even when our entire group of 26 struck up a conversation with a red-robed Tibetan monk (in the government’s eyes, a potential dissident) who happened to walk through Tiananmen Square with a stylish female companion, there was no feeling of being watched. Since I briefly had a Tibetan housemate and know how to say hello in Tibetan, I even greeted him in his own language. His face lit up—but he got frustrated and disappointed when he tried to answer back and realized that was the only Tibetan I knew. (China claims Tibet and has often consideredorganized Tibetan Buddhism a hostile force; the Tibetans see themselves as an occupied nation, and govern the religious aspects from exile in India.) He spoke fluent Chinese, so our tour director interpreted for us. He posed for selfies with all those in our group who wanted one and was with us for about ten minutes. Plenty of cops were on the plaza, and none took the least interest in this interchange.
I’ve seen photos of China in the 60s and 70s with Chairman Mao’s picture everywhere, providing a Big Brother is Watching motif. We saw exactly two pictures of Mao, other than on the 1 yuan bill: a giant portrait on Tiananmen Gate into Forbidden City,
A guard stands near the Gate of Heavenly Peace and its giant picture of Mao. Photo by D. Dina Friedman.
and a modest poster in a random store window. We did not knowingly see a single picture of current Chairman Xi. Our tour director told us that the Cultural Revolution is definitely considered a mistake, and that the current government rates Mao “70 percent good and 30 percent bad.” He confirmed my suspicion that the prosecution of the “Gang of Four” (Mao’s widow and three comrades) a few years after Mao’s death was as much about repudiating Mao as anything else.
I noted only these very minor incidents:
An officer on Tiananmen spun rapidly in an about-face when a tourist tried to take his picture; the cop Dina managed to catch in the picture shown here suspected he’d been photographed and glared at her, but made no attempt to engage.
An annoying beggar outside the Shanghai Museum was told firmly to go elsewhere and leave our group alone.
I was told to put my camera away after taking a photo of an ad inside a subway station—but I was not asked to delete the photo.
Street crime seemed to be nonexistent. The only threats I felt to my safety had to do with driving patterns, and particularly the very challenging lane-by-lane crawl across a completely uncontrolled eight-lane rotary to get between our hotel in Xian and the subway entrance one block away. Wasn’t too thrilled about silent electric mopeds sneaking up on both sides of what I’d thought was a one-way bike lane either.
Quite frankly, St. Petersburg, Russia, in 2002 (long afterthe collapse of the Soviet Union) as well as New York and Washington post-9/11 have felt far more invasive. It is, however, the first country I’ve ever visited that routinely x-rays all bags belonging to subway passengers before allowing them to board.
Our tour director, who had been at the Tiananmen demonstrations in 1989, even told us that when someone steps out of line on social media, all that happens is eventually the dissident’s account is closed. However, in the aftermath of 1989, friends of his were jailed.
Still, every resident of China we discussed it (a limited number) with felt oppressed by the government. One family we met with is actually arranging to relocate to Canada. So obviously, there’s more repression than meets the eye.
Shel Horowitz’s latest book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, shows how to turn hunger and poverty into sufficiency, war into peace, and catastrophic climate change into planetary balance—using the power of the profit motive.
As a new subscriber to John Corcoran’s newsletter and a constant reader, I followed John’s link to his list of 20 influential business books. It was a terrific list (I’ve read quite a few of them). And he got quite a few additional suggestions from readers. (Side note: sign of a successful post: 40+ comments, most of them recommendations.)
He has never heard from me. As far as know, he has no idea who I am. But I, of course, jumped in. I’d like you to read my comment in “learning mode,” think about what lessons you can pull from it, and post a comment on this page. THEN check out the lessons I think I’m imparting here, and comment again on that page. (You probably want to look at John’s list first.)
Hi, John, great list. I’m fairly new to your email tribe and this is the first time I’ve seen it. I’m a business book writer and an addicted reader (read about 70 books in the first 9 months of 2015) and was delighted to see how many I’ve read. I’ll look forward to listening to some of those podcasts. I’m listening to the interview with Dan Pink as I write this.
My own recommendations? Two in particular that no one else has mentioned:
1) The Success Principles by Jack Canfield and Janet Switzer. By far the best thing I’ve ever come across on personal motivation and the life hacks to build world-changing influence.
2) Cash Copy by Jeffrey Lant utterly changed the way I think about copywriting. Plenty of other books I’ve read since have a similar trajectory, but Cash Copy happened to be the one I read first–somewhere around 1988 or 1990. It turned me on to the whole idea of the you-focus of solving a pain point or helping the reader achieve a goal, rather than what I call “we we we all the way home copywriting” (e.g., “At _____ [company], we believe…”). That led me to develop “story-behind-the-story” marketing materials for my clients, such as a press release for a book on electronic privacy that used the headline, “It’s 10 O’Clock—Do You Know Where Your Credit History Is? (The book didn’t even get a mention until the third paragraph.)
I’ve been told by a number of people that my own Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green has opened them to the idea that green business is not just the right thing to do but can be quite profitable, thank you. I’m hoping my next book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World, will broaden that discussion to show that turn hunger and poverty into sufficiency, war into peace, and catastrophic climate change into planetary balance. John, I’ll be in touch with you privately to see if you’d like an advance review copy.
—Shel Horowitz, https://impactwithprofit.com
Again, I invite you to post your immediate takeaways here. Then visit https://greenandprofitable.com/the-lessons-i-think-i-was-teaching to see if my intention matched your reaction, and post again over there. It may prove a fascinating and illuminating conversation—and give you lots of insight to use in your own marketing and customer relations.
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:
Complement him on the resource he put together, right in the very first paragraph
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
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
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)
By citing the year I first read Lant’s book, show that I’ve been in this world for decades
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
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
Reference the relevant book I have out, and the one that’s coming out soon
Make a direct offer to John: the gift of an advance copy (of course, I’m hoping he will recommend it to others)
Tell him to expect a private email from me, so when he sees it, he’ll open it
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. 😉
