By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News, People Helping People, Web 2.0/Social Media

Yeah, I know–viral marketing and all that. And I actually love referral marketing, but not like this.

But am I the only one offended when someone gives me a tell-your-friends page before I even see the product? It’s happening more and more lately. These unfortunates happened to be the ones to push me into ranting about this trend, but it could have been any number of others.

At least these guys were smart enough to do a “no, thank you” link where I could still get the download. But I value my reputation and I’m not in the habit of sharing e-mails of my friends with strangers who send bulk mail. Had the only way to get the report been to fill in e-mails, I’d have either given phony names or bailed out.

Maybe this is one of the factors contributing to the growth of social media at the expense of e-mail. Successful marketers can still be clueless when it comes to human relationships.

In fact, when I get to all those petition sites (and I confess, I sign a lot of political petitions), the thank-you page invariably asks for addresses of my friends. I never give them. Instead, if I find the petition worthy enough to send, I’ll forward the e-mail, bcc, to my politics list.

And at least there, I’ve had a chance to see the text, decide if it’s something I want, and pass it on. Why marketers think I’m going to feed their mailing-list fish tank before even seeing the fish… Yuck!

If you like this rant and want more about how to run and market an ethical, successful business, you may have a look at my award-winning sixth book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First. You can get the first few chapters as a no-charge download, and you don’t have to fill in a squeeze page OR a tell-a-friend page to get it. So there.

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Energy & Sustainability, Ethics in Government

Lest you think collusion between corrupt government and dubious business interests happens only in the US–read this article on the firing of Linda Keen, until recently the head of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.

Keen was fired for having the temerity to insist that the 50-year-old Chalk river nuke in Ontario stay closed until safety concerns were fully addressed.

Now, let me disclose my biases. I’ve been studying about nuclear power going back to a college report I did in 1974–and my first book, in 1980, was an expose of the nuclear power industry. In my mind,

  • there is no such thing as a safe nuke (and a wide swatch of the Ukraine is still uninhabitable, more than two decades after the accident at Chernobyl)
  • waste storage will cause problems for thousands of years
  • counting the entire fuel cycle, nukes are a net consumer of energy–so we’re not actually gaining anything by using them
  • solar, wind, and other nonpolluting, renewable technologies make a lot more sense

    • Why was the plant ordered to stay shut?

    In the inspection process, the CPSC regulators found something at the 50-year-old reactor that was terrifying:

    …the reactor had been operating for 17 months without two cooling pumps hooked up to an additional emergency back-up power system capable of withstanding a severe earthquake.

    And yes, there have been earthquakes in the vicinity. And this plant is only two hours from Ottawa, Canada’s capital city.

    But still…here is a woman who was fired because she didn’t want this ancient and probably crumbling nuke to have an accident! Best of luck, Linda in your wrongful termination court case. And thanks for doing what’s right.

    (my thanks to The Weekly Spin for alerting me to this story).
    Business and government ethics violations that directly put life and property at risk are more than just crooked collusion. They are criminal acts.

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    By Posted on Posted in Politics

    Arianna Huffington is consistently a pleasure to read. she’s smart, well-informed, and a wonderful writer.

    Arianna was once a fan of John McCain–in years past, when he still remembered he had a spine. The “new, improved” pander-to-the-far-right candidate, however, brings out the full thrust of her sharp wit as she calls for the media and independent voters to break off the love affair with McCain.

    If any of your friends still think McCain is the moderate he once claimed to be, send them this link, where they can read such comments as

    The old John McCain once stood tall as a fearless leader on immigration, co-sponsoring a humane, bipartisan reform bill with Ted Kennedy. The new John McCain, when asked during a recent GOP debate whether he would support his own proposal, replied: “No, I would not.” In other words, he was for his core beliefs before he was against them.

    What’s the opposite of a “maverick?”

    So McCain has backed an amendment that would limit the right to habeas corpus, has endorsed an Arizona constitutional amendment that would not only ban gay marriage but deny benefits to unmarried couples of any kind (lest those pesky gay people find some kind of loophole), and has discovered a newfound support for teaching “intelligent design” in schools.

    The old John McCain once tried to take the mantle of true conservatism away from George W. Bush. The new John McCain is now essentially running to give America a third Bush term – and, indeed, will even out-Bush Bush when it comes to staying the disastrous course we’re on in Iraq.

    And you should hear what she has to say about McCain’s cozy relationships with GWB and Karl Rove, and a wonderful comparison with a certain scene in “The Godfather.” Click on over and have a look.

    And then, later in the week, she says McCain’s vote in favor of waterboarding torture“should drive a stake through the heart of the McCain-as-straight-talker meme once and for all.”

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    By Posted on Posted in Arts & Entertainment, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News, Politics, Web 2.0/Social Media

    Copywriter Drayton Bird recently talked about the element of surprise. Here are two brilliant ads that harness that principle.

    First, Shirley Golub, who is a progressive candidate challenging House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for the Democratic Party nomination for Congress. Watch her video here (scroll down about half a screen).

    This is an example of how to be extremely effective on basically zero budget. One camera, one talking head, no special effects, I’m guessing a single take–and twisting a metaphor of Pelosi’s in an unforgettable way. And then spreading it through the power of social networks like the People’s Email Network, which put up that page and notified its thousands of activists.

    If I were directing the shoot, the only advice I’d give Golub is to not look down so much–put the script somewhere you can see it while appearing to look at the camera.

    On to the other ad: a slick, commercially produced, expensive (large cast), quite salacious and extremely funny bit that’s rapidly making its way around the Net. And boy does it ever harness the element of surprise (Yes, I have some issues with the politics of the surprise but to say more would spoil it–suffice it to say I recognize and criticize the issue). Don’t watch this one if you wouldn’t see an R-rated movie.

    The surprise is there, all right, and it will get tons of viral exposure–I got the whole huge Youtube video e-mailed to me, and I’m betting it’s making the rounds on MySpace, Facebook, etc. But I wonder how many people will remember the product 24 hours later. In other words, was it a good investment for the manufacturer?

    Bet someone does some research on this, eventually.

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    By Posted on Posted in Politics, Social and Economic Justice

    I’ve been waiting for people to start tossing around the word “liberal” as if it’s some kind of curse, and applying it to one or both of the Democratic front-runners.

    Today for the first time, I saw hint of it, directed against Obama–by someone who seems to be a supporter, Joan Vennnochi, writing in the Boston Globe:

    Other questions, just for the sake of political argument: Do endorsements from the liberal Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and from the ultra-liberal political action organization, MoveOn.org, come with a downside in the general election? The National Journal just released a listing that ranked Obama as the most liberal senator in 2007. Have the old labels truly lost their ability to zing?

    And why, you ask, have I been so eagerly waiting for this? Very simple: it gives me the excuse to give Barack Obama my very best advice:

    Barack, stand strong, don’t back down, and don’t be ashamed to be liberal. You were voted the most liberal Senator; make the most of it, and wear it as a badge of honor.

    I want to hear you say these words, or something similar:

    You say I’m a liberal as if it’s some sort of dirty word. Liberals shortened the work day from 12 hours to 8. Liberals made it possible for all of us to still breathe the air and drink the water, by passing the Clean Air an Clean Water Acts. Liberals brought us universal public education, the civil rights movement the idea that discrimination is wrong no matter who its target. I’m proud to be a liberal, John. In the next four years, liberals will bring us universal health care, will get us out of a war we had no business entering in the first place, will reverse the Bush Administration assault on civil liberties, and will restore our standing as a leader among nations that it had before the very unliberal Bush administration took over. John McCain, aren’t you ashamed that you’re so adamantly not a liberal?

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    By Posted on Posted in Politics

    Written before the Florida primary, Dave Barry’s comments are still worth reading. Without doing much of his usual Barryisms, he uses the painful reality to absolutely skewer the US system of nominating presidents. Heres a little taste:

    Most of the candidates ignored Wyoming and focused on the New Hampshire primary, except Rudy Giuliani, who’s following a shrewd strategy, originally developed by the Miami Dolphins, of not entering the race until he has been mathematically eliminated. After New Hampshire came Michigan, where the ballot listed all the Republicans, but only certain Democrats — including Chris Dodd, who had already dropped out if the race — but not including Barack Obama or John Edwards.

    After Michigan came the Nevada caucuses, in which Hillary Clinton got more votes but Barack Obama got more delegates. (If you don’t understand how that could happen, then you have never been to a casino.)

    Of course, there’s much more that could be said–like the way the media colludes with the party brass to force out intelligent candidates they deem “marginal.” Or the way most democracies have a system that incorporates the wisdom of smaller parties, in parliamentary coalitions–rather than our all-our-nothing two-party system.

    I’ve written about this before; here’s my seven-point plan for US electoral reform, published in this space on December 17, 2007.

    But read it and have a good laugh–and then a good cry.

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    By Posted on Posted in General Commentary, Marketing Trends/News, Shel's Personal Life

    Grrrr! If you think e-mail is reliable, you’ve just been lucky so far. The only way you can know for sure that e-mail has reached its destination is if you get a response. Nothing else is sure–and people don’t realize this!

    For several years now, I’ve encountered increasing difficulties in getting mail through. For a while, I couldn’t even e-mail my own mother! More of a problem–I had a client in Poland where e-mail between us was so unreliable it ended up causing them not to work with me anymore.

    Far too much legitimate mail is undelivered, filtered to trash, or simply lost forever. And I, for one, am totally sick of it.

    Today, I tried to respond to someone who had answered my note about a possible speaking gig. It was blocked, with a 550–we-think-this-is-spam-so-we’re-not-going-to-send-it message. And yes, I plugged it into one of the popular spamcheckers and got a clean rating. At least this time, I actually got notified that my mail wasn’t going to leave my server (this doesn’t always happen). Then I copied the entire contents into an attachment, deleted the text, and added one line about why I was sending an attachment–and that was blocked! I will have to call my recipient on Monday

    Yet somehow, even though probably at least 5 percent of my totally legitimate inbound and outbound mail never arrives, I get at least 20 up to 100 or more total crap junk spam jobs every day: “Nigerian scam” letters offering to pay me a percentage of some huge transaction…messages about account security from banks I’ve never done business with….offers to extend the size of various body parts I may or may not happen to have…procurers of various mind- or body-altering chemicals, legal or not.

    Why in heck can this total crap clog up my mailbox while the real stuff is blocked?

    It’s time for a movement of resistance. E-mail is extremely broken and it needs to be fixed. It was at one time the most effective means of communication ever devised, and it’s dying a long slow death.

    Let’s take it back! If we can send astronauts to the moon, surely we can figure out a way to block the real junk and let through the real mail. The automated tools don’t work. I’m tired of having my business interfered with by floods of junk mail and blocked real mail. I’m tired of spending huge amounts of time and effort trying to get blocked e-mail to go through, and more time deleting all those spams. I’m tired of my ISP deciding what I can and can’t read, and guessing wrong all the time. I’m tired of challenge-response systems that put undue burden on their correspondents. I’m tired of spam-filter solutions that work for a year or two and then get completely bollixed up. I’m tired of having to send only a teaser about my newsletters and forcing my readers to click to the web. I’m tired of missing important mail that does get to my inbox, but doesn’t get seen because too much garbage piles in on top of it.

    And I’m wondering if it’s time for some kind of mass movement or campaign to members of Congress (or the national legislature that governs you)–or SOMETHING!

    P.S. In my fifth book, Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World, I have a section called “Spam: The Newbies’ natural Mistake,” in which I demonstrate mathematically that spam is a really bad idea from the spammer point of view as well as from the user. https://www.frugalmarketing.com/shop.html

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    By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics

    Patrick Byers’ Responsible Marketing blog quite correctly calls attention to Pfizer’s Lipitor ads featuring artificial heart inventor Robert Jarvik–only, it turns out, in the ads featuring “Jarvik” rowing or doing other highly physical activities, it’s a professional athlete, a body double.

    There are times you could make a case that using an endorser’s double is legitimate–but not, IMHO, when you’re advertising a product for the greater physical endurance it supposedly provides, having an internationally known cardiologist endorsing it, and you replace a man who is “about as much an outdoorsman as Woody Allen. He can’t row” with an undisclosed professional athlete.

    Byers implies that this is not ethical–and I agree with his assessment.

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    By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Copywriting, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies

    Yesterday, I was listening to an interview with a very smart-sounding marketing copywriter. It was all about trust, integrity–the stuff I talk about in this blog, in my award-winning book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First, and in my ethics newsletter.

    Thinking that this was someone I needed to know, and thinking about all sorts of mutual-benefit ventures we could do, I went to the writer’s site.

    And boy, was I shocked!

    It was a hard-sell, blowhard, I-know-so-much-more-than-you snow job, and the only credibility builder was the very generous use of testimonials. Let’s just say I did NOT feel ready to trust him.

    Well, guess who I *won’t* be approaching with any partnership offers. We’ll never know what might have been, because he led me in expecting one sort of thing, and delivered something entirely different.

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    By Posted on Posted in Abundance and Prosperity, Copywriting, General Commentary, media-general

    As a copywriter, I love a good turn of phrase that makes you rethink your reality. It’s why I’m a fan of people like Sam Horn, author of books like ConZentrate, Tongue Fu!®, and Take the Bully by the Horns. It’s why I’ve written press releases with headlines like “It’s 10 O’Clock–Do You Know Where Your Credit History Is?” and “The One who Dies With the Most Toys–Is Just As Dead.”

    And it’s why I was utterly captivated to read this on Perry Marshall’s site:

    This whole “recession” thing everyone’s blathering about was merely fabricated by the media (you know, the people we trust to deliver the “news” to us) so they’ll have more to, uh, g-r-i-p-e about while they assault us with election propaganda.

    Did you know that ABC, NBC, CBS and CNN have predicted 40 out of the last 2 recessions?

    I love that: “predicted 40 out of the last 2 recessions.” It’s a completely fresh and interesting way to state that he thinks the media are lousy at economic predictions.

    Do I agree with him? Well…my own business is doing pretty well, but I choose to live in an abundant world, and the world tends to reaffirm that conviction. However, I definitely see some areas of concern about the economy–in housing, in job creation, and other factors, most of which I can easily blame on the Bush administration.

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