The Clean and Green Club

UnMarketing: Stop Marketing. Start Engaging. By Scott Stratten (Revised edition, Wiley, 2012)

Scott Stratten just put out a revised edition of his social media classic, UnMarketing: Stop Marketing. Start Engaging—and I realize I’d never reviewed the original. It’s one of the better books on marketing by building relationships: a mix of wise theory, concrete practice, and enough snark to make the whole thing enjoyable (be sure to read the footnotes, where most of the snark lives).

Stratten spends a lot of time laughing at the old, ineffective ways of marketing–but then he turns it on his head and shows exactly how the firm could do better. And he’s a particular master of convincing prospects—both in-person and online—that it’s in their best interest to turn over their contact information. Of course, it’s up to the company to use that information effectively once you have it, and Stratten has lots of good advice on that too.

Right at the beginning, on the second page of the introduction, Stratten declares that marketing is not a task, a department, or a job; “marketing happens every time you engage (or not) with your past,present, and potential customers…[and] any time anyone talks about your company.”

And to Stratten, that means a few key principles:

• Seize every chance to  engage with customers and prospects
• Do this in ways that build your credibility and your likability; avoid alienating your customers and prospects (e.g., by jamming “buy me” messages down their throats—or by ignoring them)
• And that means being authentic, being truly you, showing (not bragging about) how you’re different
• Build both trust and genuine engagement; it’s better to have a small list that really engages with you than to have a huge list that ignores you
• Have systems in place to scale up effectively and rapidly

I’ve been an advocate for this viewpoint for many years,and it amazes me how many companies are still completely blind about these concepts. Yet, Stratten cites numerous cases where a company took itself out of the running for some major pieces of business by being rude or indifferent in a retail environment, a trade show, or online. In once case, he was asked to recommend a six-figure software package, and the only company on his list was the single company whose reps took him seriously as he’d walked a trade show with a student registration badge, some months earlier.

I really like Stratten’s practical advice on maximizing results: whether at trade shows, in the store (read his case study of how he built engagement at a frame shop), or even on Youtube—where a simple tweak to the way people viewed his videos led to a 38% subscription conversion rate. He’s even got a three-page chapter on how to organize a successful charity fundraiser via Twitter.

Do I agree with all of his advice? No. I think, for instance, that it is still totally possible to be authentic if you prewrite some tweets and schedule them ahead. But I agree with him that it isn’t smart to puff an event you’re leading and then not be around to answer questions about it because you’ve prescheduled the tweets and are off on a no-Internet vacation.

Overall, I’d put my agreement at somewhere north of 90 percent. It’s a useful and enjoyable read, and I’d be surprised if you don’t come away with at least five or ten ideas you can implement right away in your own business.

Brains on Fire: Igniting Powerful, Sustainable, Word of Mouth Movements, by Robbin Phillips, Greg Cordell, Geno Church, and Spike Jones (Wiley, 2010)

Is there a more authentic marketing strategy than turning your fans into brand ambassadors? I’ve long been an advocate of this approach, but even so, Brains On Fire opened my eyes to possibilities I’d never thought about.

In the Brains on Fire approach, professional marketers play an important role—not as controllers or planners, but as nurturers and facilitators.

This book is about not just identifying your deep loyalists, but empowering them, supporting them, and then getting out of the way while the magic happens. It’s a refreshing change from most other books I’ve seen about word-of-mouth/word-of-mouse marketing, because these folks understand that the real marketing arises spontaneously out of the members of a community (often unpaid), and not by faking your way through tactics like recruiting pretty young women to talk up a particular product to which they have no actual loyalty.

The book focuses on several case studies, all clients of the Brains on Fire marketing agency, which we follow through every “lesson” (chapter). Examples range from a 300-year-old Swedish scissors manufacturer to the state agency charged with reducing teen smoking in a tobacco-producing state.

Along with the focus on fan-initiated, empowered marketing comes a strong commitment to ethics—and to taking the marketing vocabulary away from the war-oriented “campaign” language of crushing your opponent or defeating your customers into purchasing, and into the more sustainable world of community, inclusiveness, and mutual benefit. Scientific marketing becomes less important. Your strategy evolves toward unlocking and channeling the passion of your fans, their desire to make a difference, and their need to be valued. Ask yourself how your product or service makes it easier for your fans to do what they love. Your goal is not just participation; it’s active engagement.

Your fans will be a mix of personalities, some of whom already have a fan base, and quiet, shy others who would not traditionally be seen as influencers—yet may have a tremendous impact. And the way you interact—even something as mundane as the way you handle incoming fan mail—can have either a big positive or big negative impact, depending on how you make that person feel.

Among the many wise points in this book:

• When allowed to lead themselves, genuine movements tend to exceed the expectations of the marketers who assist them
• A brand promise is sacred; failing to keep it will have negative consequences
• Big ideas start as small, intimate conversations—and even a single person can start a movement (this is absolutely true; I’ve done it in my local community)
• At the start of a movement or community, ask the people you’ve identified as influencers to discuss their passions; if you treat them as valued experts, they will not only give you insight, they’ll also start talking you up
• You don’t get to choose your fans; they choose you
• Smart brands become fans of their fans
• Strive to put as many employees as possible in customer contact; companies with 25-50 percent of their workforce in customer contact wildly outperform those with 5-10 percent
• Strong movements fight injustice

Yes, but does all this cool and groovy stuff actually work? Yes—big time. Two among many examples:

South Carolina’s 16.9 percent smoking reduction was the largest in the nation (in the state with the cheapest cigarettes and among the lowest budget for smoking prevention programs); Brains on Fire client Rage Against the Haze (a teen anti-smoking group) had a lot to do with this

Fiskars, makers of the famous orange-handled scissors, puts the ROI for its Fiskateers community of brand evangelists at 500 percent. Fiskateers not only tracked with a 6-fold increase of online mentions, but sales doubled in the four target markets where the effort was rolled out—while the company R&D department receives an average of 13 new product ideas every month, gratis. This doesn’t even count the impact of 7000 volunteers who can defuse PR problems before the company even knows they exist.

Read this book as an excellent companion to Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green. And be sure to read the introduction, which has enormous value.

Become an Award Winning Company: 7 Steps to Unlock The Million Dollar Secret Every Entrepreneur Needs to Know, by Matt Shoup (Shoup Consulting, 2012)

It sounds like a thin premise for a marketing book: go out and win some awards. After all, I cover the subject in just a few pages in some of my own books on marketing. In one of my books, winning awards shares a chapter on credibility building with getting endorsements and reviews.

But breaking a process down step by step is often a worthy endeavor, and in this case Shoup provides good food for thought.

The bulk of the book is devoted to the good things that can happen to an award-winning company that understands how to leverage and market those awards (including a bunch of interviews with CEOs of award-winning companies about the specific ways their achievement helped their business). A smallish section at the end goes through the how-to of actually winning awards. I might have reversed both placement and proportion, but maybe that’s because I do have a very clear understanding of the benefits already (and have won quite a few awards over the years).

Shoup himself sums up the case for winning awards nicely and succinctly on page 171: “As an award-winning company, you are going to be able to go out and attain massive success, exposure, credibility, free PR, and more business.” And a lot of the book shows how he and the CEOs he profiles have done just that.

More than the specifics, where this book really shines is in three consistent approaches to the success mindset:

1. To win awards, you must achieve excellence: base your company in high integrity, wow your customers, and establish a culture that drives the best people to join your staff and succeed with you.
2. This excellence allows you to thrive in economic downturns (he has a great rant on this) and to set and achieve goals a lot more easily.
3. Success doesn’t just happen to you; you go out and make it happen, and that means when you do win awards, it’s up to you to extract the maximum possible benefit from them in your marketing.

That last is important. Used properly, awards let you de-commoditize your business, get away from the tire-kickers and bargain hunters, and establish the value of working with an excellent company and being wiling to pay for it.

One thing that puzzles me: Shoup apparently gave no thought to becoming an award-winning *author.* The cover and interior design are amateurish, and the book would have benefited from one more edit (with someone who understands when a phrase like “award winning” should or should not take a hyphen). It would have been easy enough to spend a few hundred bucks more on a better production and then enter some good awards for the book, especially if he wants to build up the coaching and speaking parts of his own business (his primary line of work is running a house painting company).

Another Recommended Book: The Underdog Edge: How Ordinary People Change the Minds of the Powerful…and Live to Tell About It, by Amy Showalter

A Theory of Social Change to Make Sense of this Book

One of my long-held theories of social change is that it’s easier to influence the power structure, and accomplish change within it, if you’re seen as the rational and reasonable negotiating partner. And in order to be perceived as a good negotiating partner, there has to be someone more extreme, who can be dismissed as the lunatic fringe, but who actually makes space for your demands to seem like a compromise.

Examples:
• Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement were able to make more progress because Malcolm X and the Black Panthers existed (very publicly).
• George W. Bush was forced to endorse same-sex civil unions even though the idea was anathema to his Fundamentalist “base”—because the alternative was same-sex marriage (this example also shows how society can evolve very quickly sometimes—we’ve moved way past civil unions now).
• Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, a radical restructuring of capitalism, was more palatable to the business/financial world because massive unrest made Communism (the destruction of capitalism) somewhat likely.
• My own outsider candidacy for my local City Council, many years ago, gave space for a more moderate progressive to win in a four-way race, and then go on to serve four terms as Mayor.

A Book for More Moderate Activists

Through this lens, I view Amy Showalter’s book, The Underdog Edge: How Ordinary People Change the Minds of the Powerful…and Live to Tell About It. Showalter targets those who want to be seen as the reasonable and rational alternative. Those who want to meet with powerful politicians and heads of corporations, and get them to change their actions.

And thus, her message about dialing down the passion makes sense. Big dogs try not to negotiate with (or concede points to) those they find threatening. But I believe that seeing the threat out there in the distance makes them more willing to come to the table with those who are more persistent than passionate, those who’ve done their homework, and those who can articulate a change program that leaves the top dog feeling he or she did the right thing.

Without that lens, the book would leave me confused, because I can point to hundreds of examples throughout history where loud, passionate, angry people made big, sweeping changes. But in many of those cases, it was a symbiosis between the loud and angry in public view and the quiet, warm and friendly, but very persistent negotiators in the background; each needed the other to succeed.

However, reasonable doesn’t mean passive. The more vivid you make your case, the more likely you are to succeed, Showalter says. And this is true whether your cause is liberal, conservative, or nonideological.

While charisma makes the struggle easier, Showalter says a much more essential quality is grit: determination, doggedness—not going away. Proximity, which she sees as the key element of vividness, is a big part of winning, because you’re much harder to ignore if you’re right there.

From “Underdog” to “Sled Dog”

But it’s not enough if you’re so ego-involved that you make it all about you. Showalter has examples that take the “dog” metaphor from underdog to sled dog. Success, she says, depends on the pack leader being collaborative and encouraging of the entire group.

Not surprisingly, those underdogs who succeed in persuading their big dogs have often built relationships with them years before they ever tried to sway them or gain a favor. Not that it’s impossible to do it cold, but it’s much, much easier if you have an existing relationship based in mutual respect.

And it is helped, as she points out, if you can win over sincere and influential converts who can be seen by your opponents as one of their own, and pave the way for a change of heart by documenting their own impetus to change.

Social change theory also says that if you start to experience heavy repression, it means the power structure is scared of you and thinks you need to be crushed. If you can hang on through the crackdown, you succeed…eventually. As Gandhi said, “First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.”

Can Social Media Spark Social Change

Gandhi, like most successful revolutionaries throughout history, did not have access to Twitter and Facebook. Showalter is highly skeptical of the role of social media in fostering change, pointing out that even Egypt’s much-celebrated revolution was primarily offline—in the streets. She notes that only a quarter of Egypt’s population even has Internet access.

I believe social media—like TV during the civil rights and Vietnam struggles, and like printed publications of an earlier era—is crucial for bringing awareness of the struggle into the public eye.

The election protests in Iran are an obvious case, even though they failed to bring about regime change. Revolution is not always quick; Gandhi’s revolution in India took decades, Ireland’s, centuries.

However, as she points out, that awareness must be accompanied by action—and action is a lot more than signing a petition or posting a status update.

And where am I on the continuum? I’ve been all over it. I’ve risked arrest several times for what I believe in, and was actually arrested once. I’ve been the militant marcher shaking my fist into the TV camera—but I’ve also negotiated privately with a developer to create a compromise that allowed him to build after failing to gain a yes vote three times, once he agreed to protect a bunch of farmland and granted other concessions to the activist community. Both approaches are effective, in their time.

If you want to communicate clearly, you have to write clearly. If you want to write clearly, you want this book.

While her focus is tilted toward grassroots and nonprofit/not-for-profit community organizations, about 98 percent of her advice is equally applicable to business—especially green, socially conscious, ethical businesses that need to communicate a bigger message than “buy my stuff.”

Massachi has a light touch that turns a could-have-been-deadly subject into an enjoyable read, and the textbook-like format is full of exercises, nice little interjections, personal experience, and such. Which makes it a lot more palatable than the grammar and style textbooks of my youth. I’d even go so far as to say that this is a book that I’d have liked to have written, and certainly one I wish I’d had when I was starting my career as a social-change and environmental action writer.

Still, I wanted to take it a little at a time, so I could absorb it properly. Now that I’ve gotten all the way through, I’m sure I’ll be referring to it when I hit a grammar snag.

Not to say the book is perfect. Some of the later chapters get a bit bogged down in grammatical minutiae, and there are a few places where I would argue with her style choices. Example: call me old-fashioned, but to me, the only time you’d use an apostrophe after a set of initials is as a possessive: “NGO’s” can *only* mean “belonging to an NGO” [Non-Governmental Organization]. But to Dalya, a generation younger than me, using that construction as a plural noun is a valid if unfortunate choice.

Be sure to read the appendices; otherwise, you’ll miss the excellent brief sections on writing for audio and video, as well as a wonderful list of “visionary” trigger words (right after a list of marketing trigger words)—these are the words that tug at our readers’ heartstrings and help us frame the narrative. And that’s something that far too often, progressives have been clumsy with.

A must for the shelf of any serious business or nonprofit writer, and even more so for employees or managers who are not writers but get thrown a writing project (if they don’t want to contact someone like Dalya or me to do it for them). Nicely indexed and crammed with resources, too. https://dfmassachi.net/

In This Issue…

• This Month’s Tip: Market With Video, Part 2
• Hear & Meet Shel
• Friends Who Want to Help
• Another Recommended Book: Predictable Revenue

Market With Video, Part 2

Last month, we looked at the culture of video making, its enormous popularity, and how easy it is to be part of it. This month, we’ll get specific with some quick pointers to keep in mind when making videos, as well as a list of content ideas (only scraping the edge of what’s possible).

Here are the production tips:

• Keep videos short if you want to be accessible to people without broadband, and if you want pass-alongs. One minute up to three minutes or so is a good goal.
• Good lighting is essential.
• Music helps.
• Cool graphics help.
• Humor helps, if it’s done well.
• Many people run videos in the background. So if your use of words is restricted to silent text images, many of your “viewers” will miss the whole point. Have a person actually say the words out loud, preferably with excitement and emotion in the delivery.
• Be sure to end with a call to action, such as an easy-to-type, easy-to-remember website URL that stays on the screen for at least 15 seconds.
• Add all the linking and sharing social media tools to make it easy for people to pass videos on: Facebook Like button, Google +1 button, StumbleUpon, Digg, etc.
• Share the video on your own blog, in your newsletter, on all your social media profiles, and in those of your Internet discussion groups where it makes sense.
• Get written permission from anyone who is visible in the video or whose material you are using (make this permission very inclusive, so you don’t have to go back again to reuse the footage some other way).
• Style can be as bold or sedate as you want, as long as YOU can feel comfortable with it. Some marketers make wild, zany videos filmed driving in a sports car, others are simply one person talking.

Now, a few of the many thematic possibilities; let your imagination run wild to generate more:

• Do a movie-style trailer for your book, or even for some other kind of product.
• Use videos to demonstrate a product’s features and capabilities (I actually had a local inventor client who did this 92-second video to show off his machine that peels industrial quantities of butternut squash).
• Collect video testimonials or endorsements from clients and from famous people (you may have to do some coaching on what makes a good endorsement, but don’t worry if your ordinary users don’t look or sound like models or movie stars–you actually want them to come across as real and authentic, though at least somewhat articulate).
• Film news events or action videos involving your product.
• Use screenshot capture software like Camtasia, Jing, Camstudio, or EasyScreenCapture to provide instructions and technical support.
• Show clips of your appearances on TV (again, make sure you have the producer’s permission).
• Create an action video for your memoir.
• Interview experts on the topic of your nonfiction book.
• Get interviewed on the subject of your expertise, and post it.
• Get interviewed about your writing process, your inspiration, the backstory of your book, etc.
• Make a call to action regarding the wider world, and tie it to your book.
• Participate as a solo speaker or in a panel at a conference, and post the video.
• Have a professional put together clips from your best speeches or author talks, and turn it into a classy speaking demo video to get more speaking gigs.

Hear and Meet Shel

• Susan Rich interviews me once again Monday, Jan. 30, 11 a.m. ET/8 a.m. PT, this time on book marketing. Listen at w4wn.com
• It’s looking like I might actually be speaking in Bangladesh at a conference in Dakka March 8-10. I should have the details ready in time for next month’s newsletter. Meanwhile, if you can get me a paying gig that I can piggyback on in India, Pakistan, or Bangladesh, you could earn a generous commission.
• Also confirmed for the Gulf Coast Green conference in Houston, May 1, and trying to also set up at least one more event while I’m out there. https://gulfcoastgreen.org/pages/default.asp

Friends Who Want to Help You

Gift for You: Publicity Planner

If you work in publicity or marketing, Paul Krupin’s annual Publicity Planner is a must-have—and it’s a gift to you with no strings attached, no registration required. It’s a monthly calendar with events you can peg news stories around, very nicely laid out, too. Get yours at https://www.directcontactpr.com/files/files/PublicityCalendar2012.pdf

Gift for You: Ethical Business Manifesto

The Internet marketing world (and the business world in general) contains far too many people who seem to have forgotten basic ethics somewhere a long the way. I get so tired of people hearing abut my books on business ethics as a success strategy and telling me, “Business ethics? That’s an oxymoron.”

No, it’s not. It’s actually a key to long-term surviving and thriving. And that’s one of the reasons I’ve always been willing to partner with Marcia Yudkin, one of the most ethical people I know, and a very successful marketer. Marcia has a new gift for you: Get yours, again, with no strings attached and no registration required, at “The No-Harm Marketing Manifesto.” https://shelhorowitz.com/go/noharmmarketing/

Book Award to Enter

One of the best ways to market a book is to be able to list yourself as an award-winning author. Dan Poynter, author of The Self-Publishing Manual and numerous other books for authors and publishers, has put together a new Global E-Book Award program. Knowing Dan, it’s likely to be known as a prestigious honor in the fairly near future. Enter by March 12 at https://globalebookawards.com

Books with Bonus Packages

Shocking betrayals at home and work. Confrontations with cancer, and corrupt businessmen. Building a business worth millions. Paul Streitz has experienced it all, triumphed, and documented everything in his new book, Blue Collar Buddha, with powerful life lessons for the reader. Check out this new book along with the big bonus package (a lot of stuff about healthy relationships and healthy families, as well as my own Painless Green e-book) at https://bit.ly/bcb1412

Are you ready to make 2012 your best year ever? Take charge of your business and your life with this easily digested book—a distillation of business wisdom from Napoleon Hill through Dan Kennedy as expressed in one entrepreneur’s life. Maybe you’ve thought about leaving the rat race and being an entrepreneur. Maybe you’ve already made the jump. Discover the power of 1 focused hour a day with Henry Evans, The Hour A Day Entrepreneur. I am very proud and excited to be a part of the launch of this new book because it is only with YOU – the entrepreneur or aspiring entrepreneur – that we will overcome these current economic times. Join in and make 2012 YOUR best year ever!  https://bit.ly/1hrbook  Bonuses include a bunch of video training, among other things, and the book itself contains links to numerous resources.

Want to shift to a new career? A new relationship? A new path in your life? Want to simply find peace of mind? Make Your SHIFT: The Five Most Powerful Moves You Can Make to Get Where YOU Want to Go is the newest book by Beverly Flaxington, who has spent over two decades working with individuals and groups as a hypnotherapist, career coach, corporate consultant, behavioral expert, and change management leader. Now for the first time, she has focused her phenomenal depth of experience and knowledge to create a groundbreaking book to help you make the SHIFT. Bev’s trademarked SHIFT Model is taught in colleges and used by corporations. Now this book gives you the tools you need to make your shift. Visit https://shiftmodel.com/ for more information and over $1,500.00 in FREE bonus offers! Includes a free offer from the author.

International journalist Judah Freed has launched his new book, GLOBAL SENSE: The 2012 Edition: A spiritual handbook on the nature of society and how to change the world by changing ourselves. Global Sense encourages an evolutionary shift of consciousness into seeing our global interdependence. This awareness of our connectivity empowers us to change the world by changing ourselves. Filled with concrete strategies and tools, this amazingly practical book brings our highest ideals down to earth where we can use them.

Disclosures: 1. I haven’t read this version, but I read and favorably reviewed the original edition several years ago. 2. Also, he cites my book Grassroots Marketing on page 228.

Judah’s not doing a bonus promotion, but if you visit his site, https://globalsense.com, he’ll give you the introduction and first two chapters. He’s a brilliant thinker and I think you’ll like this one.

Buy at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0972890580

Learn more: https://globalsense.com

Another Recommended Book: Predictable Revenue

Predictable Revenue: Turn Your Business Into A Sales Machine With The $100 Million Best Practices of Salesforce.com, by Aaron Ross and Marylou Tyler (Pebblestorm Press, 2011)

In today’s world, old-fashioned pushy selling doesn’t work any more (there’s some doubt in my mind about whether it ever did). Smart businesspeople realize there has to be a new model for selling, expressed in “heresies” like these:

• Sales works best when you and your customer are not adversaries but are working toward common, shared goals
• Pushy traditional sales approaches like “always be closing” don’t work—instead, once you make sure there’s a fit, the customer moves inexorably toward the sale, with your skilled guidance and knowledge of their situation
• Automation and systemization prevents leads from falling through the cracks; the best leads get immediate service while they’re HOT and ready to move
• Revenue not only becomes predictable—it can multiply by as much as 300%

How?

For starters, salespeople should spend their time selling; let other team members do the prospecting/lead generation and qualification, and post-sale service. For another, the whole process is one of active engagement, solving problems and advancing goals for the customer, and in the process, doing well for the sales team.

Then bring in systemization. If you only pay for leads and contacts that have been properly entered into your sales automation system, if senior execs from the CEO down adopt and publicly use the system, and if you build training and work-role customization into the migration, everyone will be using the sales automation system. This in turn helps you understand when you have a real prospect, and when you just have a tire-kicker…what leads need what kind of follow-up, and at what points in the process…and what to do with the data you’ve extracted as you manage your team.

In addition to giving you the “cold calling 2.0” process (which is actually a way of making sure that your leads are nice and warmed up before a sales person ever gets involved), Predictable Revenue is also full of great checklists and info graphics. Examples include the top 6 prospecting mistakes, questions to ask a prospect before scheduling a demo, 5 types of prospects (and three techniques), and 9 principles to “build a sales machine.”

Predictable Revenue has a ton of wisdom–such as some really great questions to ask a prospect (example: “if you were me, how would you approach this organization?”), and a whole lot on when to step back and let the prospect lead him/herself to the sale, instead of trying to force it. Individual sales and marketing people could learn a lot here, and there’s also a big section on how to manage a sales and prospecting force.

Interestingly, in that section, Ross and Tyler recommend a mix of salary and commission rather than a 100% commission model, and they also recommend that employees (as a group) be involved in designing their own compensation package, with full transparency so everyone knows what all the other members of the lead gen and sales team is making, and why. Add in some powerful cross-fertilization techniques to build skills of your internal teams and even your channel partners, and things are going to start bubbling.

Note: you can get an excerpt at no charge by visiting https://predictablerevenue.com/

Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Newsletter, February 2011

Lessons from the Ritz-Carlton, San Francisco

Ritz-Carlton has a reputation for blow-your-socks-off customer service, including the widely reported mantra that any employee is empowered to do anything to make a customer happy, as long as implementation will cost less than $200. I’ve even heard a story about a Ritz restaurant employee overhearing a mother telling her non-dairy-eating daughter that there was no soy ice cream on the menu—and going to a nearby store to purchase some.

This was the first time I got to check it out first-hand.

The gleaming white Ritz-Carlton San Francisco sits on a hilltop overlooking the confluence of Chinatown, Nob Hill, and the financial district. Looking like a 1930s-era Washington DC government administrative edifice, with its pillared entrance and huge windows in massive wooden frames, the building exterior is nicely decorated with green bas-relief. It was originally built in 1909 for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and was later Cogswell College (this information conveniently printed on the room key packet). Because of the hill, the lobby entrance is actually on the fourth floor, which is confusing if you don’t realize it. Bellmen in top hats handle the pull-through driveway, but I arrived on foot.

Staff was universally courteous and informative, yet not obsequious—and totally willing to engage as one human being to another. Maybe because this was relaxed and mellow San Francisco; I found them a lot less reserved than many other corporate hotel employees of my experience—more like what you’d expect to find at a single-location boutique hotel or bed-and-breakfast. (I was told by another guest that the staff here is in fact a lot friendlier than staff she’s experienced at other Ritz locations.)

The lobby is pleasant but not enchanting, with rather fewer plush chairs than many upscale hotels, and those mostly scattered around the periphery. The front desk was surprisingly small. I think every time I passed by, there were only one (usually) or two clerks on duty, but I never saw a line build up. The interior public spaces are well-decorated: curio cabinets at the ends of hallways featuring tasteful Asian pottery and the like, and the halls lined with paintings and photographs of San Francisco street scenes and landmarks.

My room was refreshingly uncorporate. The furnishings are simple but not sparse; my guess is that they’re relatively new but designed to look old and comfortable. (I did see a reference to a recent $12 million renovation.) The décor is anchored by round mirrors with sun’s-rays frames above each bed (too high to be usable as a mirror, but quite effective in anchoring the eye and setting the tone). The feeling, once again, was not of a corporate chain but a small and homey hotel. And since I personally relate much better to cozy than to cold or edgy, I was pleased. A classical radio station was playing softly as a walked in—nice touch.

In fact, “nice touch” was something I found myself thinking a lot. When I opened my room key packet, I didn’t notice it at first, but there was a business card saying

The Ritz-Carlton

Shel Horowitz

In Residence

with the hotel’s full contact information. Very classy, and something I don’t think I’ve ever experienced at any other hotel. I actually brought it back with me at the end of my trip.

At home, I answer my work phone line (if I don’t recognize the caller ID info) “How may I make your day special?” That business card made me feel special.

Another nice touch was the choice of both dark and milk chocolates on the room tray.

The next morning, my conference started, and here was the nicest touch of all: two concierges assigned to the conference, available for any type of assistance. Roy and Lauren were extremely facilitative. Unasked, Lauren brought my box of books to the exhibit table, and at the end of the conference, Roy took it away to reseal and ship back to me—so their suits got sweaty instead of mine. They rang the chimes at the end of every break to signal time to regather, and were there to handle any logistics issues not just for the organizers but also for all of us attenders. Their presence (for the most part, one of them at a time, but sometimes both were on duty) was beyond the expected staff who brought and removed food and beverages, etc., and made it easy to establish a personal connection between the conference and the hotel. Roy, in particular, also seemed quite interested in the subject of the conference (sustainable foods).

That evening, I called the front desk with a question about the iron, which used icons instead of labels for the controls. I’m a word guy, and I found the interface unintuitive. Rather than trying to explain over the phone, the desk clerk said he’d send someone up from housekeeping to show me—very cool. However, after 20 or 30 minutes when the staffer hadn’t arrived, and as I was fading out for the night, I figured it out on my own and canceled the staffer.

Housekeeping redeemed itself on my final morning, I reported a problem with the toilet and a staffer was at my door in less than three minutes. That’s even better than my experience at a Disney hotel a few years back.

Catering was quite good, with a lot of locally grown fresh vegetables and well-prepared desserts. Another nice touch was having the staff bring the dessert carts from our lunch spot in the courtyard tent (nice and sunny after a morning in the basement conference room) down to the exhibit area so we could continue to feast as the sessions restarted.

One thing that does need to be modernized, however, is the electricity. In this era of multiple devices each with its own charger, there was only one open outlet in my room, and it was nowhere near the desk. In order to type this on my laptop while plugged in, I’m sitting in an armchair and balancing the laptop on a tiny nightstand.

Outlets were also in short supply in our conference room, although there were a decent number along the back wall of the exhibit and food area just outside. Inside, there were none along the side walls, a few (in high demand) at the back and front.

And the elevators had minds of their own. Whether they chose to bring you to your floor without first going in the opposite direction and either opening and closing the doors or just hanging on the wrong floor for a moment with the doors closed seemed quite arbitrary.  At least twice a day, I was taken up when I wanted down, or vice versa, without anyone waiting to board at the opposite location.

And another thing that would be easy to rectify is the signage. One elevator bank doesn’t go to the rooms, but to a large and unnavigable staff work area. It took me fifteen minutes to undo the confusion and get back to my room. It would have been easy to put up a small sign saying, “If you wish to go to the guest rooms, please use the elevators on the opposite side of the building.”

These, however, are minor quibbles. In all, I found my first experience of a Ritz-Carlton quite charming, and am better prepared to believe the legends. It certainly rates as my most positive experience in a large corporate hotel chain.

So…what lessons can marketers and customer service people take away from this experience?

Lessons From Things the Ritz Did Right:

• Exceed your customer’s expectations for the experience
• Provide ongoing and consistent human points of contact (Roy and Lauren) who are not only very helpful but also genuinely interested in the customer and the agenda
• Make customers feel special with several “nice touch” flourishes
• Create a superbly pleasant ambience, including high quality fresh, interesting, and well-prepared food along with excellent service

Lessons From Things the Ritz Could Have Done Better

• Never promise more than you deliver; after thrilling me by promising to send someone up to demonstrate the iron, the no-show from housekeeping (with no call explaining the delay) was a definite downer
• Make sure the basics work. Infrastructure issues like bad signage, elevators overriding human instruction, and inadequate electrical outlets need to be addressed, because they can form the core of a customer’s experience, and undermine a lot of the good stuff if the customer chooses to focuses on them (I didn’t—but I certainly noticed).

Shel Horowitz’s latest book is Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green. He also writes the monthly columns, Green And Profitable and Green And Practical.

Pepsi: $20 MM to Community, Instead of Super Bowl Ad

It’s pretty rare that I shine the Clean and Green Spotlight on a huge corporation that’s a household name around the world. It’s a nervous-making proposition, especially since the only time I had to rescind the honor was a company in that category (BP).

However…I have learned that if I bestow the honor for a particular achievement or stance, I’m less likely to smear egg all over my face. And I like to “catch companies doing something right” and highlight them. After all, even Walmart  (a company I don’t do business with) was named, because of its amazing reaction to the Katrina flooding of 2005, and may get named again down the road because of its powerful sustainability initiatives at every level and every stakeholder interaction. Yes, I could criticize Walmart for many things—but the company earns my respect in those two areas.

This month, it’s another corporate giant: Pepsi. I am not endorsing Pepsi’s products, many of which are nutritionally dubious or worse. But I do wholeheartedly endorse the company’s decision to stay out of Super Bowl advertising this year, and instead donate the $20 million  it would have spent—an obscene amount to spend on an ad—on community fundraisng projects.

Here are a few lines from the New York Times story about the campaign:

More than $20 million in grants, ranging from $5,000 to $250,000, has been distributed to about 400 winners so far, including $25,000 for new uniforms for the Cedar Park High School band in Cedar Park, Tex., which took its campaign to win votes to Friday night football games. In Las Vegas, a new playground opened last week with a $25,000 grant won in September.

The idea is nicely interactive, involving a lot of voting mechanisms, including heavy use of social media—and spreading the wealth around many projects that could benefit from mid-range grants. It’s a cool bit of community building that also does an excellent job of brand building. And I love win-wins like that.

(My thanks to Chris MacDonald, @ethicsblogger on Twitter, for steering me to this story.)

Another Recommended Book: Bye-Bye Boring Bio by Nancy Juetten

What’s the kiss of death at a party? It’s answering the “what do you do” question the wrong way–some deadly response like “I sell life insurance.” While people will be stampeding away for anyone who answers like that, they’ll flock to someone who does the same thing, but knows how to express it creatively. To keep the same example, wouldn’t you be willing to spend a few minutes finding out about the person who responds, “I help your hard-earned money pass to your children without stopping to drop half of it at the tax offices.”

Many websites and marketing materials make the same kind of mistake. You’ve seen “about us” pages that just blah blah blah about the boring facts, or drown their unique focus in “corporatese.”

If your marketing materials suffer for that disease, Nancy Juetten has the cure. I’ve been an admirer of hers for quite some time, and have incorporated some of her thinking into the work I do with my own marketing clients.

Nancy’s the author of a wonderful book, Bye-Bye Boring Bio, that shows you how to turn on the excitement in everything from Twitter profiles to books, and then convert that excitement into monetization. Highly recommended for speakers, authors, entrepreneurs, and nonprofits–anyone, in short, who wants to convince anyone else that their product, service, or idea is exactly what the prospect needs. Your choice of e-book or spiral-bound.

https://www.byebyeboringbio.com

Hear & Meet Shel

• I’ve really enjoyed Ryan Eliason’s Social Entrepreneurship teleseminar series. In fact, I’ve really made a point of listening to the replays on the calls I couldn’t attend live, and have listened to far more than I do of most series.  Speakers include tree activist Julia Butterfly Hill, former Obama green jobs czar Van Jones, brain researcher/philosopher Dr. Bruce Lipton, the writer Marianne Williamson, Green America head Alisa Gravitz, Bioneers co-founder Nina Simons, and my eco-biz friends George Kao and Tad Hargrave. My session with Ryan airs tomorrow, February 16, 2011, 1 pm ET/10 am PST.
  –>If you want to gain access to the replays, visit https://shelhorowitz.com/go/RyanEliason to register for the no-cost live calls. Once you’ve signed up, you’ll get the information about how to buy the entire set of this excellent series.
• Yes, it’s short notice. I did mention it last month, though–I’ll be a panelist (not the same thing as a speaker, in this case) at Ken McArthur’s next JV Alert, Orlando, February 18-20. I’ve heard amazing things about these conferences, including some legendary and very profitable deals and partnerships. I’m eager to experience it.  If you’d like to go too, click here for the very impressive speaker lineup and registration link https://shelhorowitz.com/go/JVAlert

• Social Media for Terrified Authors: How to Turn Scary Into Success: Wednesday, March 30, 2 pm ET/11 a.m. PT, with Shel Horowitz and book coach/social media maven Judy Cullins.
  * Have an impact on the three major social media networks in just minutes a day: control social media and keep it from controlling you
  * Understand how to spread your content around the Internet with just a couple of clicks: more ROI for less work
  * Turn social media connections into website traffic, book sales, and client gigs without spending any money to do it.
  *Increase your credibility as a savvy expert.
  *Define and find your book’s target audience on the big 3 social media marketing sites–and market directly to the exact people who can benefit from your book.
  * Get your website or blog pages highly ranked on Google and other search engines.
  Just $19.95, and includes several valuable bonuses. Click https://www.bookcoaching.com/shel-judy-teleseminar.php to get all the details (this is not an affiliate link, but I do benefit financially from your registration).

• April 8-10 I plan to attend the National Conference on Media Reform, in Boston. I’ve attended two previous conferences and am always blown away. If you’re interested in the impact of corporate media on our culture, progressive politics, or exploring the diversified world of D-I-Y (do-it-yourself) independent media—everything from setting up a blog to running your own TV station), this is a must. And if you happen to be in the Amherst/Northampton, MA area, let’s talk about carpooling. I’m thrilled to attend one that won’t require getting on a plane!
• Saturday, April 23rd, 2011 10 AM-4 PM, my wife D. Dina Friedman and I will exhibit again at Amherst Sustainability Festival in downtown Amherst, MA
• Thursday, April 28, 1 pm ET/10 a.m. PT: Becky Cortino interviews me on Green Marketing for Biz Buzz: https://www.blogtalkradio.com/bizbuzz Becky is a master networker who has reached out consistently over time, and I’ll bet she does a terrific interview.

• Once again, I’ll be attending Book Expo America, May 24-26 in New York City, and probably IBPA University May 22- 23

Friends Who Want to Help