The Clean and Green Club

The 4Cs of Truth in Communications: How to Identify, Discuss, Evaluate and Present Stand-out, Effective Communication, by Isabelle Albanese (Ithaca: Paramount Mountain Publishing, 2007)

Reviewed by
Shel Horowitz

From the Fortune 500 world of advertising comes this perky little book, and surprisingly, its advice is very applicable to small entrepreneurs with limited budgets, and translates well to many other media besides TV ads.

Albanese’s thesis is that the most effective communications embody four characteristics, all of which begin with the letter c:

1. Comprehension: how well the message gets across
2. Connection: whether the reader/listener/viewer/web visitor feels the material is relevant and emotionally arresting
3. Credibility: Is the message in tune with the customer’s perception of the brand? Is it based in ethics?
4. Contagiousness: Will the message spread with the help of its own prospects and the media?

She quotes Edward R. Murrow:

To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; to be credible we must be truthful

And then flips the statement around to say that credibiity creates believability…which creates persuasion…which results in sales.

After analyzing each of the 4 Cs, she applies them to a raft of marketing and informational messages, including e-mail (a particularly good analysis that mirrors many of the points I’ve discussed in my Frugal Marketing Tips and my various books), Instant Messaging, eBay, and even movies. Oh yes, and she shows how the 4 Cs may have influenced the 2004 presidential election. In the final chapter, she applies the formula to personal communications between lovers or spouses, and between parents and children.

Shel Horowitz is the founder of the Business Ethics Pledge and the award-winning author of Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First and six other books.

Another Recommended Book: Zentrepreneurism: A Twenty-First Century Guide to the New World of Business by Allan Holender

Not lot of business books quote Greg Palast, the sharp-witted investigative reporter who exposed the illegal removal of over 90,000 likely Democratic voters from Florida’s voter rolls ahead of the hotly-contested 2000 election. And not a lot devote significant space to the classic social/ethical business book Natural Capitalism by PaulHawken and Amory and Hunter Lovins. Even fewer are written by a self-proclaimed “recovering Tony Robbins franchisee.”

I happen to be a huge fan of both Greg Palast and Amory Lovins, and am thrilled that Holender cites them in his examination of how Buddhist principles can apply to improving the business world.

I’m not a Buddhist, and I disagree with the core Buddhist belief that life is suffering. Yet I found much to agree with in Zentrpreneurism, and a great deal of alignment with the principles of my own award-winning book, Principled Profit: Marketing that Puts People First.

Especially relevant to my conception of principles for ethical business: The Eightfold Path:
• Right View
• Right Intention
• Right Speech
• Right Action
• Right Livelihood
• Right Effort
• Right Mindfulness
• Right Concentration

Pointing out that “engaged Buddhism” works not only on finding inner peace but also on addressing social problems, Holender describes each, briefly, toward the beginning of the book. A strong sense of ethics runs through the book and especially the entire chapter on business ethics. Holender includes many quotes from the Buddha; one I especially like is “The wrong action seems sweet to the fool until the reaction comes and brings pain and the bitter frits of wrong deeds have then to be eaten by the fool.”

But not all his insights come directly from the Buddha. Here’s one of his own: “the fear of discovery [when you tell a lie] is greater than the unknown consequence of the truth.” And he raises the question of how to be compassionate and have a higher purpose when money is involved–and then answers that question with the two chapters that immediately follow, one on social entrepreneurship (he notes that aging Boomers especially are looking to find meaning as they find ways to help the world) and the other on socially responsible investing. Even a small group of investor activists, he says, can have an impact far beyond their numbers.

The book’s website is https://www.zentrepreneurism.com

Copywriter and marketing consultant Shel Horowitz specializes in affordable, ethical, and effective approaches. He is the award-winning author of Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First and six other books

So many books about the need for change are nothing but doom-and-gloom. Focusing on the successes, Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy by Hazel Henderson (with Simran Sethi) (Chelsea Green, 2006) is fundamentally about hope.

Mind, there’s plenty of information in these pages about the world’s problems and the consequences of doing nothing. And lots more about the way government and business collude to skew the system in favor of the traditional model (such as unsubsidized solar and wind energy having to compete against heavily subsidized oil, coal, and nuclear, and lifecycle costs such as disposal transferred from the manufacturer to the consumer). But the book profiles dozens of entrepreneurs in both the business and service sectors who have found a way to help humanity address that raft of problems. If the entire world adopted the solutions modeled and piloted by these visionaries, it would go a very long way toward reversing negative climate change (a/k/a global warming)…reducing poverty…creating economic support systems that lift up not only the middle class but also the very poorest–and do so without government handouts.

Henderson, whose many websites include EthicalMarkets.com, has been taking a leadership role in the environmental/activist/ethical investor sector for decades (I have a book of hers that was published in 1978; this book is based on a PBS TV series she produced.

The ultimate message is that we, not only as consumers but as citizens (yes, there is a difference!) can impact the world of business and shape it away from the rigid single-bottom-line, profit-at-all-costs model popularized by economists like Milton Friedman, in favor of a more humanistic triple-bottom-line approach that is shaped to benefit all stakeholders, not just those who happen to own stock.

Ironically, but perhaps not surprisingly, socially responsible companies tend to perform better. As I discuss in my own award-winning sixth book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First, and as Henderson points out over and over again, these companies are better managed, they’re not embroiled in costly lawsuits, and they’ve made strides to reduce their own environmental footprint in ways that actually lower costs.

And Henderson tracks probably hundreds of ways that this attitude has filtered from the hippie pioneers of the 60s and 70s into the mainstream business world–not only through the successes of companies that were built from their founding on social and environmental responsibility (e.g., Greyston Bakery, Grameen Bank), but also in how this ethic is slowly spreading into even the largest of traditional businesses, even to the likes of auto companies, oil companies, General Electric, Wal-Mart, and so forth.

The book is wide-ranging, with chapters covering not only the obvious (energy, environmental impact, fair trade) but also the pervasive areas of society that need to–and are starting to–shift (health and wellness, joy at work, investing). Henderson identifies four pillars of socially responsible investing (a field where she has had major influence through her work with Calvert and other organizations): social and environmental screens, community investing, shareholder activism, and socially responsible venture capital. She also wants us to place economic value on “the love economy” (work done for free, in the home or as volunteers).

In short, despite the mess we’re in, many, many trends are positive. She even finds support in the writings of those two writers whose works have often been used to justify the worst aspects of the corporate oligarchy: Adam Smith, 18th-century author of The Wealth of Nations, and Charles Darwin, 19th-century author of The Origin of Species.
A few specific examples of positive change among the many she cites:

• Socially responsible investments in the U.S. and worldwide now total $2.3 and $5 trillion, respectively
• Socially screened companies outperform the S&P 500 and similar indices around the world–and that may have something to do with why socially responsible mutual funds grew 156% in five years (to $32 billion) while that market as a whole grew only 22%

• In Brazil, about 1/3 of the nation’s GDP is accounted for by companies that have joined an ethical-principles umbrella organization–and the country’s celulosic (i.e., not from diverted food sources such as corn) ethanol production has made it energy self-sufficient
• Fair-trade coffee consumption in the UK multiplied 400% from 1998 to 2005
• Green venture capital is growing at 36% per year; wind power is growing at 29% per year; solar grew by 63% from 2004 to 2005, and countries such as China are becoming major players (very hopeful for those of us who worry about the environmental disaster that would happen if China adopted traditional, polluting, resource-hogging technologies to achieve Western living standards)
• At least some clothing companies have rejected sweatshops in favor of production that is certified under the Social Accountability 8000 standard (mentioned in a profile of one of those companies, Eileen Fisher)
• Technology exists to supply all the power California currently generates with traditional powerplants, just by switching four percent of the state’s vehicles to fuel cell power
• Shareholder activists have achieved numerous victories, from switching McDonald’s off polystyrene containers to getting Home Depot to carry sustainably-forested wood

Another Recommended Book: All Marketers Are Liars, by Seth Godin (Penguin Portfolio, 2005).

Seth Godin, author of such classics as Permission Marketing, Purple Cow, and Unleashing the Idea Virus (and founder of the social networking site Squidoo), continues to display his chops as one of the freshest and most visionary marketing minds in the English-speaking part of the planet.

In this book, he looks deeply at the power of story in marketing–with some insights I haven’t seen elsewhere.

Why does wine actually taste better in a $20 glass than in a $1 glass? The wine is no different–but the story makes it feel different–and people buy the story (and the glass).

The trick, says Godin, is to tell a new story, often to a new audience. Look for a market segment that feels ignored, that its worldview isn’t being heard–and tell a story that reaches them. Don’t try to bang your head against the wall telling a modified familiar story to the same old familiar audience that’s already been buying from someone else. While your story should not contradict facts, the facts are much less relevant to the marketing than the narrative you weave around it.

Specific examples?

The rock band Wilco rejected the classic record-industry story that illegal music downloads are a destructive force. The band released its repertoire for free download and watched CD and concert ticket sales shoot through the roof.

Cereal maker General Mills responded to the Atkins low-carb diet craze of several years ago with a rapid switch to 100% whole grain for all its cereals–and was able to tell a story about health in a world where healthy foods had become relevant. Godin doesn’t mention this, but from a marketing/public perception point of view, that switch was relatively easy even for a giant conglomerate, because several of its most popular product lines (Cheerios, Wheaties, Total) had been telling a story about health for decades.

By contrast Interstate Bakeries, whose iconic brands like Wonder Bread and Hostess Twinkies were widely perceived as non-nutritive, was not able to be convincingly healthy in that market and went bankrupt. Which is especially interesting because Wonder has tried to tell a health story for over 50 years, with its “Helps build strong bodies 8 (later changed to 12) ways” tagline–but the product sure didn’t feel healthy, despite its added vitamins.

Yet Wonder is still trying to tell a health story to a skeptical world that has discovered in the meantime what real bread looks, tastes, and feels like. This is on the company’s website as of June 15, 2008:

Wonder has helped America build strong bodies for over 80 years. It provides essential vitamins and minerals, an important part of your family’s healthy diet. And today Wonder is more nutritious than ever before. Every slice is an excellent source of calcium and a good source of folic acid.

Back to Godin, speaking of health:

Marketers have a new kind of responsibility…If you make a fortune but end up killing people and needlessly draining our shared resources, that’s neither ethically nor commercially smart, is it? Nuclear weapons have killed a tiny fraction of the number of people that unethical marketing has…I refuse to accept that there’s a difference between a factory manager dumping sludge in the Hudson River (poisoning everyone downstream) and a marketing manager making up a story that ends up causing similar side effects.

Among many other examples, he comes down hard on food giant Nestle for telling a story in the 1970s that got mothers in desperately poor nations to switch from breastfeeding to infant formula, under conditions that made failure–and thus, dead babies–inevitable. In his words, there’s a difference between a harmless marketing fib that the consumer tells him/herself in order to believe the story, and an outright fraud with harmful consequences, and Nestle was guilty of the latter, until an international boycott made it hurt too much.

On a related note, Godin also points out the importance of making sure the customer experience delivers on the promise of your story. Cold Stone Creamery, the ice cream chain is one of many businesses he faults for breaking the promise:

Scoopers at Cold Stone Creamery occasionally break into song. They’ll sing for tips and they’ll sing about the joy of ice cream. At my neighborhood Cold Stone, though, they don’t sing. They sort of whine a funeral dirge. It’s obvious that someone ordered them to sing, and they don’t understand why and they certainly don’t care…They are in the business of telling a story. And the song and the smiles and the staff are a much bigger part of that than the ice cream…Soon the hordes will stop coming when they find that the experience leaves them hollow.

Final advice from Godin:

• Marketing must take responsibility to be authentic and have integrity (something I talk about at great length in my own book Principled Profit: Marketing that Puts People First)
• When people shift their pre-existing worldview, they’re ready to hear a story that reinforces the change
• Powerful stories can often be found at the junctions of apparent oxymorons like “socially conscious investing,” “adventure cruise line” or even “compassionate conservative”

Truth: The New Rules for Marketing in a Skeptical World by Lynn Upshaw (Amacom, 2007) is one of the few books I’ve seen that really addresses ethics from a marketing point of view.

Upshaw argues convincingly that companies should be ethical, transparent, and engage in what he calls “practical integrity” (which in his view has more to do with product quality and service than with the “traditional” integrity issues). He repeatedly cites the same examples (among them Timberland, Trader Joe’s, John Deere, Herman Miller and Patagonia)–and shows how these companies reap handsome rewards in the marketplace because of, not in spite of, this commitment. Unfortunately, with a pub date of 2007, the book was probably written in 2005–and a couple of his examples (Whole Foods, with its CEO sock puppeting, and Southwest, with its recent inspection issues) have been somewhat tarnished in the meantime. This is always a danger when writing about ethics; I’ve been burned a couple of times, as well, and I don’t hold a grudge that the facts changed since Upshaw turned inhis manuscript.

Upshaw makes many excellent points. Among my favorites:

• 6 characteristics of “integrity heavy-users”
• Quantification in dollars and other metrics of the consequences to Ford and Firestone of their stupidity in the Explorer rollover scandal
• The idea that great employees actively seek out great companies to work for (Upshaw doesn’t elaborate, but to me, that means these companies have much lower recruiting expenses)
• A tarnished brand can, with effort, rehabilitate itself (example: a few years ago, Gap was widely condemned for its use of sweatshops and child labor; now, the company actually pits vendors against each other to show who has improved working conditions the most)
• In one of several appendices, a sample “integritomter” showing how a company can rank itself for promises kept, guarantees honored, and other factors.

A couple of minor negatives: I found some of the visuals and sidebars (particularly the invented conversations) distracting and irrelevant–and I found it deeply ironic that the cover flap (which I’m sure the author didn’t write)–engages in exactly the same sort of unfounded claim that he chastises other companies for: “The first book of its kind, Truth takes a practical business-building approach to marketing with integrity.

While Upshaw is writing more for a corporate audience and less for the small entrepreneur, I covered much of the same ground in my own award-winning sixth book, Principled Profit: Marketing that Puts People First, published a full four years earlier. And in the nearly four years I’ve been writing this column, I’ve reviewed several others that also cover this territory.

Despite these minor flaws, this book is a rich collection of values/profit-oriented advice, and I definitey recommend it.

Another Recommended Book: The Speed of Trust by Stephen M.R. Covey with Rebecca R. Merrill

It’s good to see an important and well-promoted book on business ethics coming out of a major New York house (in this case, Simon & Schuster’s Free Press imprint).

Coveys basic thesis, peppered with lots of examples from his own and his famous father’s life and career as well as the business world in general, is that when people trust you, business gets transacted a lot faster, more smoothly, and less expensively.

He notes that almost every action either increases trust–creating what he calls a “trust dividend”–or deceases it, imposing a “trust tax.”

Covey identifies a number of factors leading to increased trust, and they basically break down to two key principles embodied in “4 Cores”: character (subdivided into Integrity and Intent), and competence (Capabilities and Results. It’s not enough to offer just one of those two. If you are good at what you do but people have reason to mistrust your ethics, you pay a penalty. But also, you can be a model of integrity, and if you’re not good at doing what you commit to do, you’ll pay a trust penalty there as well.

Building from those four core attributes, he identifies 13 specific behaviors that build trust, and spends a chapter on each:

• Talk Straight
• Demonstrate Respect
• Create Transparency
• Right Wrongs
• Show Loyalty
• Deliver Results
• Get Better
• Confront Reality
• Clarify Expectations
• Practice Accountability
• Listen First
• Keep Commitments
• Extend Trust

When evaluating these behaviors, in yourself or in others, it’s important to fid the “sweet spot” where distrust is overcome but judgment comes into play so you don’t get burned. And in that process, it’s important to recognize that each of these 13 behaviors has “counterfeits” that look on the surface like they’re building trust, even as they actually undermine it. As an example, flattery is one of several counterfeits to straight talk.

Like my own book Principled Profit, Covey repeatedly demonstrates that high-trust environments, based in both character and competence, wildly outperform the traditional hierarchical micromanaged corporate environment. Trust, in other words, is very good for business. It’s why all the local McDonald’s were left untouched during the Los Angeles riots–because McDonald’s had shown itself as a concerned community partner, for years. It’s why Johnson & Johnson is one of the only pharmaceutical companies that has a reputation for genuinely caring about its customers. It’s why when an IBM executive who had lost the company $10 million expected to be asked for his resignation, founder Tom Watson Sr. responded, “You can’t be serious. We’ve just spent $10 million educating you!”

My favorite chapter is toward the end of this substantial book: “The Fifth Wave–Societal Trust: The Principle of Contribution.” Spiraling out from previous chapters about trust within an organization (built around the concept of alignment: the messages reinforce the desired behaviors) and within a market (where the key element is reputation)–these are the third and fourth waves–the fifth wave is about “conscious capitalism,” a/k/a social responsibility: the idea (and the statistics to back up the claim) that making a difference in the world is good for the soul, and also for the bottom line. And the key principle is contribution–doing things specifically to improve the lives of others.

This is one of the most important business books I’ve read in a long time, and a complete validation of the points of view I’ve been promoting for years. Strongly recommended.

Growing Local Value: How to Build Business Partnerships that Strengthen Your Community, by Laury Hammel and Gun Denhart
Reviewed by Shel Horowitz (Berrett-Koehler, 2007)

Another wonderful title in Berrett-Koehler’s Social Venture Network series, Growing Local Value profiles a number of successful companies who see themselves as partners witht heir communities–and shows how these businesses can market successfully by distinguishing themselves from faceless corporate competition. Examples: An independent bookseller in Utah who says, “the real pleasure in bookselling comes in pairing the right book with the right person”…a San Francisco chain of boutique hotels, restaurants and day spas where each unit provides a completely different experience, and where a “hotel matchmaker” channels guests into the facility that best matches their tastes: concerning itself with “creating wonderful dreams” rather than providing a mere place to sleep…a large bakery that provides jobs to people formerly seen as unemployable (and got the contract to supply Ben & Jerry’s, probably as a direct result of this social commitment), and does so in such a way that the company is protected, and the employees can get away from the poverty, prison, and drug problems of their pasts…a garden supply company that helped revitalize the blighted neighborhood it called home.

All of these, and most of the other numerous examples in the book, were good for the community AND highly profitable.

Different chapters look at

• Putting the customer and community first
• Financing without compromising values
• Making employees into partners
• Partnering with other local businesses, government entities, and nonprofits (separate chapters)
• My favorite chapter, on turning sustainable principles into competitive advantages (which I also talk about in my own award-winning book, Principled Profit: Marketing that Puts People First)

Another Recommended Book: Ally Relationships: The Key to Sustained Success for Your Service Business, by Anthony O. Putman (Burns Park Publishers, 2007)

Those of you who’ve read my award-winning sixth book Principled Profit know that I’m a big fan of marketing through relationships–and of marketing approaches that move your offering out of the realm of commodity, and into the realm of value.

Anthony Putman is very much in alignment with this approach, pointing out that any service business’s biggest asset is the willingness of the customer to buy from you–and that building strong relationships is a very good way to protect that asset. “You cannot differentiate a service…but you <i>can</i> differentiate a relationship,” he says.

I’m not convinced that services can’t be differentiated. At least some of them can be; that’s the whole concept of the unique selling proposition. However, it’s always going to be much easier to highlight the strengths of your offer when you do in fact differentiate the relationship.

In Putman’s view, a business relationship will have one of three levels:
* Service source–a vendor, pure and simple
* Solution provider, there to solve your client’s problems
* Ally: a strategic partner who is <i>thoroughly committed to your clients’ growth and success</i>, and who is always thinking about ways to grow the relationship by being more helpful

It’s not about selling–but about being seen as the go-to person for trusted advice, and thus products. Allies, of course, make themselves indispensable–and thus not only recession-proof, but also protected against clients jumping ship or price-shopping because they may be satisfied, but they’re not inspired.

One way to be seen as an ally is to decline business that isn’t right for you, and couple that with a referral to someone who specializes in that need. There are many other paths as well, which involve your ability to refrain from traditional selling, think about your clients’ needs instead of your own, and ask the questions that make the client understand how to grow (rather than those that lead toward a one-shot sale).

While it may be easier to build ally relationships with new clients, Putman also includes specific steps to push you up the ladder with existing clients, one person at a time–and with often-dramatic results as clients subconsciously but happily accept the “free upgrade” in their status.

One final point: this approach is rooted in high ethical standards. As Putman says, there is “no place for deceit or spin.” In short, this is an excellent complement to my own award-winning book Principled Profit, especially if you’re in sales.

Click to order ALLY RELATIONSHIPS from Amazon

Another Recommended Book: Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath (Random House, 2007)

If I wanted to follow one particular principle in this book, I’d put my last line first–but for this article, I’m following a different one. See if you can guess the one I followed and the one I didn’t. [Quiz answer is below the review, in brackets]

I’ve long been fascinated by the study of influence: what changes an individual’s mind? What changes the direction of a whole society?

This is something I look at in my own organizing and writing, and when a book discusses what makes ideas last–or “stick,” in the authors’ parlance–I want to take a look.

It wouldn’t be the first book I’d recommend on the topic, but there’s some great stuff here, all built around a formula spelled SUCCES (just one s at the end), each with its own extended chapter:
Simplicity
Unexpectedness
Concreteness
Credibility
Emotions
Stories

Oh, and to increase the stickiness of their own messages, the authors end with a sound bite/bullet point recap of the whole book in outline form. I may try that on my next business book.

For me, the two most compelling chapters by far were Unexpectedness (which includes creating insatiable curiosity) and Emotions–and Stories create a path to those other attributes. Some key insights from the former:
* The best “‘aha’ moments” may be preceded by “‘Huh?’ moments”
* When creating a message, don’t think about what you need to convey–instead, think about what questions you want your audience to ask
* Keep things simple–don’t do brain dumps but focus on your key point, and make sure the core message is in front
* Big ideas are audacious–but not insurmountable (Like President Kennedy setting a goal of a man walking the moon within ten years; a manned mission to Mercury would have been too difficult)

And from the Emotions chapter:
* Concepts lose value when they become clichés through overuse–but concepts can also be made fresh–as in the algebra teacher who told his students that algebra was like weight training for the mind–it wasn’t about needing the math skill but about exercising and challenging the brain to keep it in shape
* Talk to people where they can hear you, as the creators of “Don’t Mess With Texas” did: a macho anti-littering campaign designed to appeal to Texas rednecks–but don’t insult them, as did researchers who tried to bribe firefighters into considering a safety program not by appealing to the desire to save lives, but by offering popcorn poppers
* The Abraham Maslow hierarchy of needs isn’t a ladder; we pursue all of them at once–so don’t let your ideas get stuck in the basement–don’t be afraid to tap into human desires for greatness
* Making benefits (or problems) tangible and personal is more successful than making them big
* My favorite of all: *Principles can trump self-interest*

QUIZZ ANSWER: [Did you guess? I buried the lead at the bottom, but I at least hope I created curiosity}

Another Recommended Book: Working Ethically…On a Shoestring: Creating a Sustainable Business Without Breaking the Bank by Lorenza Clifford, Tim Hindle, Nick Kettles, Carry Somers, and Lesley Somers (London: A.C. Black, 2007)

Although this book is thin and easy to read, it’s actually quite substantial–just concise. And necessary.

In a world where 56 percent of US MBA students admit cheating (p. 9), and where companies that claim social/environmental responsibility but don’t measure up can face a strong backlash, a little handbook of practical stories that show how ethics works and doesn’t increase the price of doing business may be just the ticket.

It’s also good for those of us who are American to see outside perspectives. In this case, the authors are from the UK.

Among the points I appreciate:

• As you increase your ethical commitments, give your suppliers a chance to walk that path with you
• Early adoption of Green/ethical principles provides a marketing advantage (something I say over and over again in Principled Profit: Marketing that Puts People First)
• Specific steps to take in making an environmental audit
• Ethics quandaries can become opportunities
• Actual numbers on the cost savings and environmental benefits of turning computers off at night versus leaving them running

If the book has a flaw, it’s that the focus is weighted so heavily on environmental issues. Greening a company is certainly a major concern in ethics work, but the book could address more clearly some of the non eco-related aspects of business ethics.

Disclosure: one of the authors, Nick Kettles, is a fan of mine and provided some gratis (and very useful) consulting. Also, I am cited in the book.

Order a copy from Amazon.