Got to brag on myself here. I was deeply honored to be inducted in October, honoring my 40 years of work as an environmental activist and wrier. Now I just found out the National Environmental Hall of Fame put up a whole spiffy page about the event.
I welcome your comments about it here.
Earlier today, I was inducted into the National Environmental Hall of Fame, recognizing my 40 years of work for the environment (as a writer, speaker, and organizer). Pretty good, considering I’m only 54. Yup, I’ve been doing this work since I was 14.
Among the accomplishments NEHF cited: my work in founding Save the Mountain, an environmental group I founded in my town of Hadley, Massachusetts to protect the Mount Holyoke Range when it was threatened by a large and nasty housing development…my work in the safe energy movement (my first book was on why nuclear power makes no sense, in fact)…initiating the first nonsmokers’ rights regulations in Northampton, MA (and one of the first in the state)…and of course, my award-winning eighth book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green.
In my acceptance, I mentioned that I felt this award was really for all of the several thousand people who worked on these campaigns, and the millions who work on these kinds of causes around the world. I was delighted to accept on their behalf.
Sweetly enough, the range was visible from the award location behind (Barstow’s store)
I have only half an hour left of being 53. It seems a good time to reflect on the whirlwind year I’ve had. Professionally, a lot has gone right for me this year.
First, of course, this has been my initial year as a Guerrilla Marketing author, and the publishing world is definitely nicer to authors who have hitched their wagon to a star. The folks at Wiley have been far more collaborative and helpful than many authors experience with their big NYC publishers, and certainly more so than Simon & Schuster was with me all those years ago. I’ve been promoting the book constantly all year long, and the publisher and even Amazon have also worked on that goal. And as a result of all that effort, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green has been on the Environmental category bestseller list for at least 11 of the last 12 months—we’re not sure about March—and was #1 in the category for part of April and May. Even cooler—within three weeks of publication, a Google search for the exact phrase “Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green” brought up 1,070,000 hits—far more than I’ve ever seen for anything else I’ve been involved with. Some of those pages have come down since, but as of today, it’s still quite respectable at 551,000. And a search for my name peaked last month at 119,000, nearly double the previous high point of 62 or 64,000.
Because of the new book, I’ve also done quite a bit of speaking this year, including my first international appearance (at an international PR conference in Davos, Switzerland, home of the World Social Forum and World Economic Forum. This was a different event, but in the same venue, and it felt pretty trippy to be speaking from the same building that the likes of Bill Clinton and Warren Buffett speak from. And when you write a book called Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green, you have automatic “chops” in both the green community and the marketing world—which is great, since the book really looks at the intersection of profitability and sustainability. I’ve spoken and exhibited at quite a few green events this year (ranging from the mellow, outdoor SolarFest in Vermont to the huge Green America/Global Exchange Green Festival in the Washington, DC Convention Center) and made numerous great contacts.
And I discovered, particularly when doing media interviews, that I really do know quite a bit about going green, on a much deeper level than just “made from recycled materials” stuff. I was very pleased with the quality of some of the more than 100 interviews I did this year, finding that a number of the journalists went a lot deeper than others I’ve experienced in the past—and I was able to take them deeper still. I’m not saying this to brag, but because I didn’t actually realize how much I do know about many substantive issues around sustainability until I started answering so many great questions about it.
Part 2 will discuss the most exciting part of my year: a way to get the message in front of a much wider audience. Stay tuned.
Susan Daffron from LogicalExpressions.com selected me for an Honest Scrap Award–woo hoo! She writes,
The award has two components. You have to first list 10 honest things about yourself (and make them interesting), and second present the award to seven other bloggers.
So here are 10 honest things about me:
1. I live on a working farm at the foot of a small mountain, in a house built in 1743, and we’re only the third family to own it (we are not the farmers, though). I think we found Paradise, but we still love to travel.
2. My first act of social change activism that I can remember was quietly destroying the cigarettes of my parents’ guests at age 3–and I did this not to be malicious but because I couldn’t stand smoke.
3. I got into the peace movement at age 12, and the environmental movement three years later–been “stirring up trouble” ever since.
4. When I was 19 and just out of college, I hitchhiked across the US and Canada
5. I taught myself to read before I was four
6. One of the reasons I’m successful as a writer is that I type fast–and that’s because I have such a horrible handwriting that in junior high, my teachers started refusing to read handwritten assignments.
7. Since 1983, I’ve been married to the novelist D. Dina Friedman. We met at a poetry reading in Greenwich Village in 1978 and became a couple in April, 1979.
8. Prior to this soon-to-be-30-year relationship, my longest romance was five months!
9. I became a marketing expert because of my involvement with social change movements–since I was trained in journalism, I started volunteering to write the press releases, and it all started that way.
10. I will happily eat unsweetened dark chocolate, as long as it’s fair-trade and organic. I think 90% cocoa solids is about ideal.
And my seven other bloggers (among dozens of possibilities), in no particular order:
Patrick Byers, Responsible Marketing
Guy Kawasaki, How to Change the World
Joan Stewart, the Publicity Hound
Ryan Healy, RyanHealy.com
Kare Anderson, Moving From Me to We/Say It Better
Michel Fortin, The Success Doctor
Mark Joyner, Atomic Mind Bombs/Simpleology
If you’re on Facebook, you can read susan’s entry and nominations here.
