Tag: honesty

By Posted on Posted in Activism, Democracy, Ethics-International, Marketing Trends/News, media-general, Politics, Psychology, Social and Economic Justice Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The US presidential race is full of outsiders this year. Trump gets lots of attention in the media–but Sanders seems to be having more of an impact on policy questions, and on bringing disenfranchised-feeling voters in from outside the electoral process.

There are many parallels between Sanders on the left and Trump on the right–both of them attracting attention for being firmly OUTSIDE the mainstream, and both waging far more successful campaigns than the pundits predicted. And they both look and sound like the New Yorkers they are.

But in many other ways other ways, of course, they’re completely different: Unlike Trump, Sanders is…

1. Seriously concerned about making things better for those who are not wealthy, and basing this on a 50-year record of activism (vs. concern only about making things better for Trump and a few others of enormous class privilege).
2. Thoughtful, willing to engage on issues, analyzes more deeply than most candidates with charisma.
3. A populist fundraising champion who does not fund his campaign with–and thus is not beholden to–corporate money or party money, but from millions of ordinary people. I don’t think this has been done before on this scale (vs. Trump self-funding out of his personal fortune and claiming that this makes him honest because he’s the one doing the buying of politicians instead of being bought by them)
4. Someone who tells the truth (Trump has been caught in more lies than any of the others).
5. A successful coalition builder who has a track record of working well with people who think differently

But even Cruz and Rubio (and certainly dropouts Carson and Fiorina) are outliers too. It is scary to see the Republican Party start to coalesce around the very scary Ted Cruz, who only looks rational because Trump is so far in right field that he moves the public perception of what’s mainstream. When Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (a slasher of the safety net) is considered a centrist, we have a serious distortion in perception vs. reality.

So the big lesson I take away is this: when four out of the five most popular candidates this year are outside the mainstream, the mainstream had better look at why, and what they can do about it. With the exception of Clinton, all the mainstream candidates are out of the race–even presumptive GOP nominee (as of last summer) Jeb Bush.

Me? I agree with at least 80% of what Sanders says, and was happy to vote for him in our March 1 Massachusetts primary.

Oh yes, and let’s not forget the role of the media in king/queen making and unmaking. One of Sanders’ other strengths is in engaging millennials who are good at creating their OWN (social) media–while defeating the myth that a self-declared socialist can’t run a serious campaign for national office in the US.

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By Posted on Posted in Business Ethics, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies Tagged with , , , , ,

It happened again—the first words out of the robocaller’s synthesizer box were “press 1 for your free directory listing.”

Guess what—if that’s the first thing I hear from you, it’s also the last—because my phone will be back in its cradle before your robot even finishes the sentence. CLICK!

It’s like telling me you want to marry me the moment we first meet—before we’re even introduced. And guess what. I’m already happily married and I’m not in the market. Even if I were, that’s not how I’d want to be approached.

Sure, I’m in business, and I love free listings—useful ones, anyway, like Literary Market Place (which typically brings me a very small stream of very large clients). But I’ve also wasted a lot of time over the years filling out free listings that have zero benefit, like the gazillion Who’s Who books I got listed in back in the 1980s and 1990s.

So…when your call ID shows up as something unrecognizable (RL2 Services Co? What the heck is that?), the first thing I want to know is “who are you, really?” The second thing I want to know is “what’s the catch/the actual cost?” Then “how much time is this going to take?” And of course, “who reads your directory, how many readers are there, and how targeted is this to what I sell?”

No robocall is going to answer those questions.

I will listen to the first few seconds of a robocall, because sometimes it’s the bank’s identity theft with a security alert on my credit card, a school district telling me classes are canceled for weather, or something like that. I don’t love them but I have learned that once in a while, they’re real. But try to sell me something, anything, with a robocall and I just think you’re stupid, disrespectful, and annoying.

And some of the live operators are no better. I’m very protective of my cell number and give it out on a need-to-know basis. I got a human being calling me who told me he was calling because of a survey he filled out. I responded, “I don’t give my cell number out on surveys. Who are you really?” His response: CLICK!

Does this company really think it’s going to get on my good side with this?

I’ve had others who can’t deviate from a script. Honey, if I’m going to do business with you, we’re going to have a two-way conversation. If you’re human and you talk at me as if you are a robot, I will treat you like one. My turn to CLICK!

I continue to be amazed at the clueless, deceitful, or just plain disconnected marketing “strategies” I encounter. Presumably, businesses do these things to attract new clients. But it would be more accurate to call them “client repelling strategies,” because they do the opposite of attract.

If you would be pushed away by bad marketing when it’s done to you, why do it to others who will feel the same way?

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