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The Clean and Green Club, April 2020

7 Apr, 2020  No Comment

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Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip: April 2020

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Will the Coronavirus Make Our World Better…or Worse?

We are at a crossroads. Society will be changed forever, just as it was after 9/11, World Wars I and II, the Great Depression, and the medieval Plague—and just as it was by the environmental movement, feminism, liberation consciousness, democracy emerging in many countries where it had been a stranger…

Can we shape these changes to be more like that second set of experiences? I think so, but it won’t be easy. Powerful forces are already pushing to bail out the very same economic sectors that have been bringing us to crisis: fossil fuels, tobacco, nuclear power, chemiculture-based agribusiness—and consolidating and material wealth among those who already have it, while defunding people’s needs and putting draconian programs into place to further oppress the already marginalized.

But like every other crisis, there are lots of opportunities to better the world, and ourselves. Despite the deaths and other losses, it is possible that we could come through the other side a lot closer to utopia than we are now. (This doesn’t mean we won’t have to grieve, that we won’t experience some pretty horrible things.)

I just finished reading The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis, by the chief negotiators of the Paris Climate Accord (reviewed below). The authors offer a worst-case scenario, but also a best-case. And the best case is pretty terrific. So, like catastrophic climate change, if we focus on creating the best possible outcomes, the world we inherit could actually be a pretty good place to live.

And a lot of companies and nonprofits are using this time to do good. I attended an online presentation by Whitney Dailey for Conscious Capitalism Boston, and she shared some terrific examples:

  • Voluntarily shifting manufacturing capacity to supply essentials: Anheuser-Busch is producing and distributing sanitizer, General Motors is ramping up to make ventilators, and a hotel is opening its rooms to medical personnel who need to self-isolate.

  • Helping employees who can’t work: Starbucks, Walmart, and Shopify have all committed to paying bonuses to their workers. Many smaller socially conscious businesses are also paying even furloughed workers. Our local independent movie theater, Amherst Cinema in Amherst, Massachusetts, is one such business. This is a huge sacrifice for small firms with small reserves, ongoing bills, and no customers at the moment.

  • Keeping employees working, but shifting their duties: Workers at L.L. Bean are boxing up food for a food bank in Maine, where the company is headquartered. Several big tech firms have diverted their workers to running a disease tracking site.

  • Nonprofits such as the new Restaurant Strong Fund and Boston Artist Relief Fund have provided basic living expenses for restaurant workers and artists, respectively.

  • Many companies have gotten rid of their paywalls, or limited their scope. News outlets from the mighty New York Times to small local papers like my area’s Daily Hampshire Gazette have put all their virus coverage in a non-paywall area. Cultural institutions and individual artists have released a ton of work for public view (I’m listening to a Berlin Philharmonic concert as I write this, and last night, I watched an Andrew Lloyd Weber musical—both made available at no charge).

  • Back in the last recession, Hyundai offered an innovative program: if a buyer lost employment, Hyundai would buy the car back from its customer. They are bringing it back.

These are all great initiatives. But could we find ways to leverage the virus for systemic change? Several of my favorite “practical visionaries” including Gil Friend, Christiana Figueres, Mitch Anthony, Frances Moore Lappe, and George Lakey, among others, have been talking informally about this:

  • Dominating the discussions: Is this the moment to finally achieve universal health care in the US, as most of the rest of the world has had for generations?

  • Closely following: Does the drastic reduction in pollution because fewer factories are running, fewer cars are on the road, and much less construction is happening give us a chance to press hard on climate change, at the very least meeting the Paris goals ahead of schedule (Meanwhile, the unenlightened US government is using the crisis to roll back what limited environmental protections we’ve managed to achieve). HINT: The Green New Deal already provides a pretty good roadmap. Can we get it passed?

  • Occasionally heard: Could we leverage the drastic changes to dismantle rapacious out-of-control mega-corporations that think only about profit, and instead build a system where everyone has enough to eat, a place to live, healthcare, education, meaningful work, etc., perhaps using a model of interrelated local and regional communities and ecosystems?

  • Proposed by Chris Brogan: seeing the changing world as an invitation to a pick-up ball game or an open music jam: we reinvent it as we create it and it’s never the same twice.

I’d love to get your comments on these ideas.

Discover why Chicken Soup’s Jack Canfield, futurist Seth Godin, and many others recommend Shel’s 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (and download a free sampler). Autographed and inscribed copies available.

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The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis

The Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate Crisis by Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac (Knopf, 2020)

It’s nice to read a bold, visionary well-written book by people who know what they’re talking about. These two are the chief architects of the Paris Climate Agreement, which 189 countries—almost the entire world—signed on to in 2016. When they say that changing the mindset after the epic fail of the Copenhagen summit in 2009 was the biggest shift that made Paris possible, I believe them.

The book opens with two sharply different scenarios: If we don’t bring climate change under control, we face a gloomy future of extreme pollution, extreme temperatures, mass starvation and death. But if we commit to solving this crisis correctly, we create utopia.

I LOVE the way this chapter does its visioning of the world in 2050: discussing the effects of massive tree planting, for instance, the authors see this future:

This of course helped to diminish climate change, but the benefits were even greater. On every sensory level, the ambient feeling of living on what has become a green planet has been transformative, especially in cities. Cities have never been better places to live. With many more trees and far fewer cars, it has been possible to reclaim whole streets for urban agriculture and for children’s play. Every vacant lot, every grimy unused alley, has been repurposed and turned into a shady grove. Every rooftop has been converted to either a vegetable or a floral garden. Windowless buildings that were once scrawled with graffiti are instead carpeted with verdant vines (p. 21).

The rhapsodies continue into health care, transportation, energy production, and many other areas.

Part Two gives us the beginning of a toolkit with three crucial mindsets: Stubborn Optimism, Endless Abundance, and Radical Regeneration (each with its own chapter).

Part Three is the heart of the book: about 70 pages focused on “doing what is necessary,” broke into ten specific actions:

  1. Let go of the old world

  2. Face your grief but hold a vision of the future

  3. Defend the truth

  4. See yourself as a citizen—not as a consumer

  5. Move beyond fossil fuels

  6. Reforest the earth

  7. Invest in a clean economy

  8. Use technology responsibly

  9. Build gender equality

  10. Engage in politics

And the conclusion adds 26 more actions on a timeline, but doesn’t go into so much detail.

Not surprisingly, many of the actions align closely with the UN’s own Sustainable Development Goals: an excellent blueprint. More surprising (and pleasing) to me, considering the authors are rooted in the UN’s rather bureaucratic, government-focused culture, is the number of ways individuals can create or facilitate these actions. Anyone can plant trees. Anyone can defend the truth. Anyone can refuse to tolerate gender discrimination. Anyone can participate in “rewilding,” and anyone can eat less meat (one of the best things you can do as in individual to lower your carbon footprint).

I’m already above 500 words and there’s so much more I could say! I took eight pages of notes. So I’ll just say get this book and don’t just put it in the pile. Read it, and take notes!

 

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About Shel

 

Speaker, author, and consultant Shel Horowitz of GoingBeyondSustainabiity.com helps businesses find the sweet spot at the intersections of profitability with environmental and social good — creating and marketing profitable products and services that make a direct difference on problems like hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change. His 10th book is Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World.

 

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The Clean and Green Club, February 2020

7 Feb, 2020  1 Comment

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Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip, February 2020
This Month’s Tip: An Environmentalist’s Observations from South India
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Full of contradictions and mixed messaging, India is a confusing place for an environmentalist. I spent 24 days in the four southern states of Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry (a/k/a Pudicherry), Kerala, and Karnataka last month. Here’s some of what I noticed:

Ambience

Despite numerous signs about controlling litter, reducing plastic waste, and conserving water, litter is an enormous problem. We’ve visited more than 50 countries including many parts of Latin America, and we’ve never seen littering so ingrained in the culture. Garbage is a constant, some of it quite gross and long-term. The piles are kept half-manageable by scavenging goats, cows, and crows. And by a cultural norm about squeezing the most use out of any item, so things like plastic bottles and bags often get reused (and trucks get wildly overloaded, and the roads are way over capacity). Many stores give out cheap polyester totes that can be reused, though I didn’t see many people bringing their bag into a store. I did see constant trash fires, including burning plastic bottles (extremely toxic!).

Driving, Walking, and Exercise

The most challenging part of India for us, and the most different, was the constant terror on the roads. We are New York City natives and have traveled extensively in developing countries—but nothing prepared us for India. It is the only place I can remember where we abandoned a planned destination because we reached a street that we simply couldn’t cross.

  • Lane markings in urban areas are not even suggestions; they are nothing more than wishes.
  • The culture is to honk whenever you round a blind curve or pass another vehicle.
  • Sidewalks typically exist, but too often, they may as well not—either blocked by huge piles of debris or cratered with deep holes (or both).
  • Walking isn’t valued. In most of the national parks and scenic landscapes we visited, walking is tightly restricted to small areas, with very few public trails. There is a trekking (hiking) culture for tourists, but mostly the excursions are half a day or longer—and may include armed guards to keep participants safe from wild animals. Cities often have parks and botanical gardens, some with a lake and surrounding walking trail. Otherwise, casual 1- or 2-hour hikes are rare. We occasionally found a low-traffic road to walk along in rural areas.
  • Most people will get around on a bicycle (usually a very ancient one), a motorcycle, car, tuk-tuk (3-wheeled motorcycle taxi), or the super-crowded public bus. The number of people using a vehicle will often be far more than rated. Three people on a motorcycle, a dozen in a tuk-tuk or small pickup truck bed, maybe a hundred on or hanging from a 40-seat bus. The three largest cities we visited, Chennai, Bangalore, and Kochi, all had metro systems that appeared clean, modern, and popular (we didn’t actually get to try one out). About a third of the motorcycle drivers wore helmets, but a much smaller percentage of their passengers.

Energy and Pollution

In other environmental issues, India uses a lot of mass-scale hydro, which is good on lowering petroleum use and carbon footprint but floods large areas behind a dam and disrupts local culture and ecosystems. Most of these seem to be several decades old. India is also known to use a lot of coal (although we didn’t happen to pass any coal plants).

Despite numerous emission testing stations, many vehicles belch smoke. Diesel is the preferred fuel for both cars and trucks, and the older engines were for the most part not well maintained. Our driver kept his ventilation system on recirculate almost the entire time, except occasionally on quiet country roads. Air pollution is extreme in the cities and disturbingly high even in many smaller villages.

We saw a few solar PV installations; solar is more popular for heating water. We passed one very large wind farm.

Food

Any medium sized city has dozens of pure-vegetarian restaurants, and small villages will have one or two at least. The food was savory and rich, using lots of super-fresh cardamom, cinnamon, ginger, chilis, curry leaves, coconut, turmeric, and other ingredients. The “veg meal” lunch was often an incredible bargain, including between 7 and 20 or so different foods in small portions surrounding a big heap of white rice, with refills available. In the local-oriented restaurants in South India, the meal is served on a banana leaf and eaten with your fingers, using bread or rice to pick up the food if it’s saucy, or eating it directly if it’s more solid. It’s a good idea to wipe down the leaf first with a few drops from your water bottle (bring your own or buy one with your meal). Many restaurants will bring a fork or spoon if you ask, or if they anticipate your desire.

We assumed that almost all of this bounty was not organic. We did see organic items in some stores, and also found a few stores that focused on organic—but few restaurants.

We avoided raw unpeeled fruits and vegetables and unboiled tap water as much as possible, bringing our own water bottles and refusing ice in any drinks. Some dishes contained raw cilantro or onion, or even shaved carrots; we did our best to eat around them. I once sent back a fresh pomegranate juice that was obviously diluted. We also took vitamin C and activated charcoal daily, and for the first week, an immune booster daily as well. And pretty much every day, we had at least one probiotic, usually a no-ice lassi/lessi (yogurt drink). We used an herbal, alcohol-free hand sanitizer frequently. And we never ate street food. Even so, we both experienced some very minor gastrointestinal issues.
New on the Blog
Hear & Meet Shel

Shel will be Marc Lee’s guest on his podcast, “Straight Talk with Dean and Marc,” https://www.blogtalkradio.com/Squared807 March 2, 7 pm ET/4 pm PT
View highlights from (and listen to) more than 30 podcasts ranging from 5 minutes to a full hour. Click here to see descriptions and replay links.  

Discover why Chicken Soup’s Jack Canfield, futurist Seth Godin, and many others recommend Shel’s 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (and download a free sampler). Autographed and inscribed copies available.

Turn Your Sustainability/CSR Report Into Powerful Marketing!

 
Another Recommended Book: All Hell Breaking Loose
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All Hell Breaking Loose, by Dr. Michael T. Klare (Metropolitian Books (Henry Holt), 2019)

 
While it may go against intuition, senior US military leaders may be among our strongest allies in dealing with climate change. 

In his 12th book on the intersection of resource and security issues, war and peace expert Klare makes a compelling case for why climate issues remain central in military planning even during the climate-scoffing Trump era. The military deals in reality, not political grandstanding—and the reality of the past few decades has been fraught with high-intensity natural disasters (hurricanes, wildfires, flooding, desertification, etc.), disease pandemics spreading rapidly around the world (pp. 107-111, and as the Chinese coronavirus is doing even as I write this), global migrations of people who find themselves without survival resources at home, and climate-related global unrest. All of this results in damage to infrastructure from food and water delivery systems to military bases themselves.

The military is not standing by idly. It has produced plenty of planning reports and taken action steps focused on a three-pronged strategy (p. 234), has made major progress on lowering its own enormous carbon footprint (pp. 219-220) and flooding risk that many of its facilities face (1 meter sea level rise could incapacitate 56 of the US’s domestic bases and many more in other lands, p. 181), and is preparing to deal with climate consequences on many fronts simultaneously while still focusing on its core mission of combat readiness.

Any time the military responds to a disaster, it takes away resources from something else. When faced with a series of disasters at the same time or before the relief mission of the previous one is complete, such as the 2017 quadruple whammy of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria and the burning of California (p. 59), the military’s ability to respond is stretched thin. What happens if there’s a political, resource, or immigration crisis at the same time (pp. 117-119)?

Klare lives one town over from me and I attended a talk he gave at a local bookstore. While he skirts this in the book, in his talk (November 18, 2019, Broadside Books, Northampton, MA), Klare was quite emphatic that the military’s willingness to roll up their sleeves and deal with the problem rather than be bound by the president’s skepticism provided powerful leverage for climate activists: when we discuss climate change as a national security issue, we can build common cause with conservative climate deniers who care very deeply about military readiness and security but don’t care about things like endangered species. As someone who has worked in coalition with people I deeply disagree with on various issues, I can tell you this is very powerful. Once we find the points of agreement, we can amplify and expand them, but let’s start in the areas where we already agree.
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Speaker, author, and consultant Shel Horowitz of GoingBeyondSustainabiity.com helps businesses find the sweet spot at the intersections of profitability with environmental and social good–creating and marketing profitable products and services that make a direct difference on problems like hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change. His 10th book is Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World.
Links in this newsletter may earn commissions. Please click here for our privacy and endorsement policy.

The Clean and Green Club, January 2020

3 Jan, 2020  No Comment

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Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip, January 2020
This Month’s Tip: How to Keep Them Coming Back for More
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Welcome to another decade! New possibilities, challenges, and transformations. At the end of the year, I posted some reflections on my personal 2010s in my Facebook Gratitude Journal, which I’ve been writing daily since March 2018. Here’s the link: https://www.facebook.com/shel.horowitz/posts/10157911298299919

Oh, and if you’re feeling old in the face of a new decade, it’s also a new decade in the Hebrew Calendar. We entered the year 5780 in September. By that standard, even older folks like me are still very young. Of course, in geologic time, all of human history is an instant.

Recently, a journalist asked some questions about keeping the customers you have. I kept you in mind as I answered:

  1. What should you do if you keep losing customers? First, ask them why they haven’t returned and what it would take to win them back. Second, fix any problems that come up from more than two or three people. Third, if your answers are mostly that they got the task done and don’t need you anymore, ask what else they need and develop new offerings that address this gap. Don’t forget to notify them once you’ve done so! Fourth, announce what you’ve done to fix the problem and ask them to try you again. And fifth, announce a special for returning customers and contact your whole customer base to spread the word.
  2. Why do businesses typically lose customers? Either they’ve found someone to do it better/faster/less expensively/more pleasantly—or they no longer need that product or service (or still need it but are no longer conveniently located to you)—OR you’ve simply dropped off their radar because you didn’t make the experience special, so you didn’t develop brand loyalty.
  3. What are some customer retention tips? Make the customer feel valued and special, and like they are visiting a friend when they come to you. Overdeliver—throw in something unexpected and wonderful (and not the same thing each time). Continue regular communication (e.g., email newsletter, well-targeted) so you stay in their minds.
  4. How can you gain new customers? The very best way is to actively solicit referrals—not just from existing customers, but also from people in complementary businesses that you partner with (that second part is the big success secret of many Internet marketing millionaires). These are both pieces of marketing yourself as an expert. Other ways to demonstrate expertise include speaking, being interviewed in media, networking the RIGHT way, and collecting solid testimonials.
New on the Blog
Hear & Meet Shel

View highlights from (and listen to) more than 30 podcasts ranging from 5 minutes to a full hour. Click here to see descriptions and replay links.  

Discover why Chicken Soup’s Jack Canfield, futurist Seth Godin, and many others recommend Shel’s 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (and download a free sampler). Autographed and inscribed copies available.

Turn Your Sustainability/CSR Report Into Powerful Marketing!
Another Recommended Book: Purple Goldfish 2.0
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Purple Goldfish 2.0: 10 Ways to Attract Raving Customers by Stan Phelps and Evan Carroll

Back in December, 2008, I reviewed The Customer Delight Principle by Timothy Keiningham and Terry Varva, all about winning and keeping customers by sprinkling in unexpected moments of joy. But that book was really for academics, and it was published in 2001.

So it’s nice to take a fresh look at the same subject, in a book written for ordinary business owners—especially when it dovetails so well with this month’s main article. This second edition adds Carroll as a coauthor and updates the original 2012 work, which achieved enough recognition to spawn nine other goldfish books of different colors.

The authors say there’s no such thing as meeting expectations; you either fall short or exceed them (pp. 4-6). And the work you to do retain existing customers pays off far more than the work to bring in new ones (as I’ve advocated for many years).

The book hinges on “lagniappe,” the concept of something extra popularized by New Orleans retailers for generations. In Phelps’, Carroll’s and my own view, that something extra should be unexpected and genuinely wonderful—and of course, it’s best if it costs little or nothing to implement. Think about the first time you heard one of those now-famous Southwest Airlines goofy flight announcements. Weren’t you thrilled and amazed? Didn’t it make you want to fly with them again? And if you heard a second one, then you realized it was acceptable in the corporate culture. Only 1.5 percent of Southwest flights have a humorous announcement, yet that tiny fraction triggers $138 million per year in additional revenue from happy returning customers (p. 38).

The authors see two broad categories of purple goldfish: increasing value and reducing friction—which you find out by identifying 1) opportunities to create wow experiences, and 2) fixable gaps or errors in the customer experience (p. 196). Within those two big tents, at least 10 subsidiary categories fill the fish tank: adding gifts, personalizing the service, reducing wait times or making them a lot more fun, etc. Sometimes, one purple goldfish crosses many categories: Disney uses RFID wrist bands to greet restaurant customers by name and have their orders ready when they walk in, dispense with line-waiting for tickets and photo IDs, and eliminate several other customer annoyances (pp. 123-124). This sets a pretty high bar for the theme park industry.

Once your purple goldfish becomes the norm and everyone else grabs your idea, you need to do something else to keep the appeal fresh.

My favorite section is toward the end, with detailed lists of questions and implementation steps to:

  • Help you choose the right purple goldfish for your business using first divergent (out-of-the-box) and then convergent (analytical, narrowing down) thinking, win over internal stakeholders (pp. 204-215);
  • Market your innovation internally, seeking buy-in from all stakeholders (pp. 222-224);
  • Run a pilot, measure the results, implement fully if it’s working (pp. 218-219, 226).
  • Final and very wise advice: NEVER take away an existing purple goldfish (p. 237)!
  • And my very favorite insight: a purple goldfish doesn’t have to be for the direct benefit of a customer or prospect. Helping a cause is also a purple goldfish (p. 92).

Two quibbles: First, I have to question why authors as concerned about customer delight would let this book go to print without an index. I went looking for a specific fact I wanted to retrieve in this review, couldn’t find it in my notes, and had to get myself over to Amazon to search inside the book. NOT a purple goldfish moment, and one that an index would have eliminated. And second, what “genius” came up with this awful subtitle? I’m sure they were pulling from Ken Blanchard’s Raving Fans, but this is a really unfortunate word choice. When I see “raving customers,” I think “angry.” We don’t want furious customers raving at us! We want delighted customers raving about us!
Accurate Writing & More
14 Barstow Lane
Hadley, MA 01035 USA
http://goingbeyondsustainability.com/contact/
Connect with Shel

 

 

Find on Facebook

 

 

 

 

 
 

About Shel 

Speaker, author, and consultant Shel Horowitz of GoingBeyondSustainabiity.com helps businesses find the sweet spot at the intersections of profitability with environmental and social good–creating and marketing profitable products and services that make a direct difference on problems like hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change. His 10th book is Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World.
Links in this newsletter may earn commissions. Please click here for our privacy and endorsement policy.

The Clean and Green Club, December 2019

11 Dec, 2019  No Comment

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Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip, December 2019
This Month’s Tip: How to Green the Christmas Tree Industry
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We think of Christmas trees as putting some green in a mostly white time of year, at least in the northern United States where I live. And of course, it’s eco-friendly because it’s about trees, right?

Maybe not! The Christmas holiday causes millions of trees to be cut down before they are anywhere near their full carbon-sequestering potential. And then you have to factor in transporting them large distances on diesel trucks. Finally, many of these trees, now perhaps covered with tinsel, candle wax, bits of wrapping paper, and other non-recyclable trash, are thrown in landfills.

So, as a society, we have some work to do. Fortunately, this industry is really easy to make as eco-green as its iconic product’s color. All we need is to change the way we think and act. We have to start thinking of Christmas trees as a crucial part in an international reforestation campaign that would be one of the most effective things we could do to sequester carbon and reverse catastrophic climate change.

Here’s how I would reinvent this industry:

First, grow the trees in pots. No need to cut them for harvesting. Simply pick up the pot and bring it to the resale point. Farmers could even run their operations like pick-your-own apple orchards.

Second, part of the purchase deal is that the farmer or retailer takes back the potted tree after the holiday. The farmers and retailers partner with local highway and parks departments as well as apartment complexes, landscape architecture companies, college campuses, hospitals, and other institutions, to find new permanent homes for these trees and get paid again for their work. Each year, millions of new evergreens would join the existing tree canopy. Maybe they even collect and unweave the wreaths too, and use them as indoor air fresheners, then compost them.

Third, we shift our decorations either to reusable metal, glass, and ceramic ornaments that get removed from the tree and packed away for next year, or to all-natural materials such as cranberry necklaces, pine cones, and colored leaves. Pretty as they are, we leave the tinsel strips off the trees. They could be very nice decorations on corkboards, though.

And if we start this journey now, we could have a very much more eco-friendly holiday season as soon as 2020.

Full disclosure: I am speaking as an outsider. While I enjoy attending friends’ and neighbors’ Christmas celebrations, I am a Jew and we do not have a Christmas tree in our house.

When I sent this article to my Virtual Assistant, Jeannette Tibbetts, to set up this newsletter, she was excited enough to send these comments (used with her permission). I consider her a co-author of this piece, and am pleased to share her insights with you, since she IS a Christmas insider.

I loved your main article…I’ve always thought about the ridiculous practice of trucking so many trees to areas where there are so many trees!

One idea is: BUY LOCAL…there are many tree farms in our area in Western Massachusetts; you go for a lovely walk and pick out your tree, so it’s cut down specifically for you. No thousands of trees left to die in those disgusting parking lot tree shops.

I’ve always wanted a live Christmas tree but the problem with potted trees is they cannot stay in the house for very long (i.e., only a couple of days); they dry out too much and will die. Also, you must dig a huge hole before the ground freezes so you can plant it right away. But it is definitely a great idea with some planning.

One more thing–discarding the tree: ALL cities/towns should collect trees to turn into mulch. It’s a logical and helpful solution for everyone!
New on the Blog
Hear & Meet Shel

View highlights from (and listen to) more than 30 podcasts ranging from 5 minutes to a full hour. Click here to see descriptions and replay links.  

Discover why Chicken Soup’s Jack Canfield, futurist Seth Godin, and many others recommend Shel’s 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (and download a free sampler). Autographed and inscribed copies available.

Turn Your Sustainability/CSR Report Into Powerful Marketing!
Another Recommended Book: The Future of Packaging
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The Future of Packaging: From Linear to Circular, by Tom Szaky, et al. (Berrett-Koehler, 2019)

 
You wouldn’t expect a book on consumer and industrial package to be fascinating, but this one certainly fascinated me (your mileage may vary). Packaging is its doorway to explore the entire state of sustainability in business
Compiled by Tom Szaky, founder and CEO of the amazing company TerraCycle—which has found ways to turn such items as cigarette butts and foil/plastic chip bags into usable raw materials—this book held my interest in surprising ways.

First, there was the meta-level: an anthology that isn’t so much discrete articles as a coherent, collaborative whole. Many chapters draw on the previous ones and hint at the content to follow. And those authors include C-level and senior management at Unilever, Procter & Gamble (two of the largest consumer packaged goods conglomerates in the world), and SUEZ (a major global player in waste management), as well as equally heavy hitters in thinktanks and government (from the World Economic Forum to the former head of the EPA).

Then, of course, the rich and informative content; I took six pages of notes! I learned a lot about how products are recycled, what some of the issues are, why careless “recycling” by well-intentioned consumers trying to recycle more does the opposite of what they think and consigns huge quantities of material to the landfill; the whole batch is considered contaminated. And finally an answer to something that I’d wondered about for years—WHY black plastic isn’t recyclable: because the optical scanners recycling facilities use to separate the waste stream can’t read the number indicating what type of plastic it is, and different kinds of plastic shouldn’t be mixed (p. 100). The inability to recycle black, often extremely durable material that should be able to be repurposed, has always bothered me.

And I also learned some things about how to think about packaging from an end-of-life perspective, and how to incorporate those insights at the design phase—so right from the start, packages can be designed to be easily collected, reused, and/or recycled (pp. 85-87, among other sections).

Ultimately, pretty much anything can be recycled, even used disposable diapers and menstrual pads (p. 72). But what we recycle depends on what end products we can sell profitably. And that has to do both with whether recyclers can find or create ready markets and with how much energy, how many processes, and at what cost to process the waste into something recyclable. And that makes me wonder: Is it really worth doing something like P&G’s project collecting beach plastic, running it through a dozen or more processes, and surrounding it with layers of virgin plastic in order to make a shampoo bottle (pp. 228-237)—or are the energy and infrastructure costs and the product compromises too great; is it really just greenwashing for a significant PR benefit?

It’s encouraging to see how much progress our biggest corporations have made and how creatively they’ve sought profit opportunities from thinking differently about packaging and waste. As an example, Unilever’s zero-waste strategy saves $234 million a year and created 1000 new jobs (pp. 171-172). But I had many questions; here are a few:
  • If the issue with black plastic is optical, couldn’t there be a work-around, such as human sorting or a different type of sorting machine that tests through electronic analysis of the chemical structure?
  • Rather than doing something like P&G’s beach plastic project, would it perhaps make more sense to develop enzymes that can digest plastics, and figure out a way to use the digested residue?
  • Why do we lose usability with every recycling iteration, when nature has true self-sustaining closed loops?
Despite these questions, this book is a crucial addition to the green business bookshelf, and is likely to make a positive impact on designers, manufacturers, distributors, and retailers for many years. But read Cradle to Cradle first so you’re not coming to this in a vacuum (see my review here –scroll down to the bottom article).
Accurate Writing & More
14 Barstow Lane
Hadley, MA 01035 USA
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Speaker, author, and consultant Shel Horowitz of GoingBeyondSustainabiity.com helps businesses find the sweet spot at the intersections of profitability with environmental and social good–creating and marketing profitable products and services that make a direct difference on problems like hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change. His 10th book is Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World.
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The Clean and Green Club, November 2019

5 Nov, 2019  No Comment

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Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip, November 2019
This Month’s Tip: How Can Fractionalism Reinvent Your Business?
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Chris Brogan’s newsletter recently contained a PS offering his services as a “Fractional CMO” (Chief Marketing Officer, shared among several companies according to their need).” I’m a great believer in cross-pollinating ideas from different industries and immediately started investigating whether I could market myself as a “Fractional Chief Sustainability Officer.”

I think I first came across the idea of fractional resources in 1975, when I discovered that a small intentional community in Yellow Springs, Ohio (where I went to college) had chipped in on a communal tractor instead of every household buying a separate lawnmower. And when I moved to an intentional community in Philadelphia five years later, the community had two cars available as needed for a per-mile fee (decades before Zipcar, Uber, or Lyft). Their motivation was as much reducing their environmental impact as saving some bucks, and I was struck by the way a co-op in any sector could achieve both goals.

Within the corporate world, the idea of fractional shared resources has been around at least since all those timeshare condos started springing up in the 1980s. Now, you can buy fractional interests in private jets, industrial equipment, and other things. I used this model (but not this language) in 1987 to organize a co-op of four business owners that purchased a laser printer together, back when they retailed for $7000. I found a remaindered one for $4500 and since I did the research and organized the fractional purchase, the printer lived in my office.

I had already been renting time on someone else’s laser printer, at a dollar a page. Having the machine on-site was a game-changer for my business because I could now offer while-you-wait resume services, and that gave me enormous competitive advantage in that portion of my business. I was eventually able to stop typing term papers and move on to far more interesting and better paying work as a marketing copywriter for individuals and small businesses/community organizations. This in turn gave me the space to develop much deeper levels of marketing consulting and eventually focus on green and social change businesses. So, in a sense, the business I operate today was made possible, or at least vastly easier, because of that decision to buy that printer fractionally.

How might your organization use a shared-resource model to lower costs and environmental footprint?
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View highlights from (and listen to) more than 30 podcasts ranging from 5 minutes to a full hour. Click here to see descriptions and replay links.  
Friends Who Want to Help
I fell in love with Debbie Allen’s Shameless Promoters brand when I came across it in the early 2000s. I got mentioned in her first book, Confessions of Shameless Self Promoters, in 2005, and then she included a whole chapter from me in the sequel, Confessions of Shameless Internet Self Promoters. Here’s what she told me about her newest one, which launches today:

“Finally, a ground-breaking book that reveals the no-nonsense reality and shameless secrets about success! My 9th book, published by Entrepreneur; Success is Easy: Shameless No-Nonsense Strategies to Win in Business.”

Buy the book today and get amazing bonus gifts (including one from me): http://www.successiseasybook.com/bonus

Discover why Chicken Soup’s Jack Canfield, futurist Seth Godin, and many others recommend Shel’s 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (and download a free sampler). Autographed and inscribed copies available.

Turn Your Sustainability/CSR Report Into Powerful Marketing!

 
Another Recommended Resource: Carbon Drawdown Now
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“Carbon Drawdown Now,” by Chris Magwood, Ace McArleton, and Jacob Racusin

This is the first time I’m reviewing a presentation rather than a book–but I have reviewed the occasional movie or other non-book resource in this space.

Visit https://vimeo.com/328548993 and you’ll find a presentation called “Carbon Drawdown Now,” by Chris Magwood, Ace McArleton, and Jacob Racusin, given at a Northeast Solar Energy Association conference in July of this year. Magwood is the author of Making Better Buildings (2014) and Opportunities for Carbon Dioxide Removal and Storage in Building Materials (2019).

This hour-and-a-quarter video looks at the relationships of soil productivity, buildings that sequester carbon, and economic justice/social equality. More importantly, it shows us how we can take carbon out of the atmosphere and into the materials we build with, step by step–using a whole-lifecycle approach. Although the presenters have extensive technical knowledge, they kept this presentation very accessible, with lots of helpful graphics and understandable language.

Using their methods, it’s possible to build structures that have lower carbon emissions over their entire lifetimes than conventional buildings of similar size and purpose emit just from their construction, even before counting the carbon impact of the operations (heating, cooling, lighting, etc.) over the building’s useful life. This often involves using materials such as hempcrete that store more carbon than was emitted during the hemp’s agricultural “career.”

The other reason I’m recommending this talk right now is to give more context to the fascinating book on environmentally friendly packaging issues that I’ll be reviewing next month. In some ways, these two resources are very complementary. Stay tuned for the December issue to find out more. Meanwhile, get your builder and architect friends to watch this.
Accurate Writing & More
14 Barstow Lane
Hadley, MA 01035 USA
http://goingbeyondsustainability.com/contact/
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How can you profit by putting the VALUE in your VALUES? Shel Horowitz shows how to MONETIZE your organization’s commitment to fixing problems like hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change. Shel consults individually and in groups, gives presentations, and writes books and articles including Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (endorsed by Jack Canfield, Seth Godin and others).
Links in this newsletter may earn commissions. Please click here for our privacy and endorsement policy.

The Clean and Green Club, September 2019

11 Sep, 2019  No Comment

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Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip, September 2019
This Month’s Tip: “Don’t Make Promises You Can’t Keep”
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In my teens, I had an album with a cover of Three Dog Night’s “Don’t Make Promises” (I think it was by Ian and Sylvia). The refrain, “Don’t Make Promises You Can’t Keep” is pretty good advice for marketers.

I remembered that old refrain when my eye happened to alight on the side label of a jar of Vegemite as I was feeding my cat early one morning. I saw the claim, “essential for brain function.”

Oops! I’d been all set to write a screed about Vegemite claiming their product was essential for brain function, when plenty of people who’ve never even heard of the product—let alone used it—had perfectly good brains. I would have wondered how Vegemite (a super-salty Australian sandwich spread made of nutritional yeast) could have gotten away with this outrageous claim, when even mighty Nestle was sued over far less comprehensive claims (as I share on pp. 171-172 of my latest book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World).

But when I looked more carefully as I sat down to write this article, I saw those little red bits on the left, that at 6 a.m. I’d processed as graphic accents, as what they were: names of vitamins. Vegemite was saying that Vitamin B1, which Vegemite contains, is essential for brain function.

So “good on Vegemite,” as an Aussie might say. They’re not making a promise they can’t keep.

But so many marketers DO make promises they can’t keep. They bathe you in hyperbole, and maybe add a disclaimer in 4-point type that no normal person can read. Or they twist the facts—so ads promoting nuclear power spread the falsehood that nuclear is good for the climate problem, and ads disguised as op-eds from fossil fuel giants assert that we don’t know enough about climate change.

I shouldn’t even have to state this—but why is honesty good for business? Here are four among dozens of reasons:

  1. To build long-term relationships with happy customers and fans who will “brag on you” to others
  2. To avoid a terrible reputation (see the proliferation of companysucks.com websites, or the enormously influential video, “United Breaks Guitars”, closing in on 20 million views)
  3. To stay out of legal trouble
  4. And of course, to sleep better at night and know you’re doing your part for a culture of honest, ethical caring business
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View highlights from (and listen to) more than 30 podcasts ranging from 5 minutes to a full hour. Click here to see descriptions and replay links.  

Discover why Chicken Soup’s Jack Canfield, futurist Seth Godin, and many others recommend Shel’s 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (and download a free sampler). Autographed and inscribed copies available.

Turn Your Sustainability/CSR Report Into Powerful Marketing!
http://goingbeyondsustainability.com/turn-that-nobody-reads-it-csr-report-into-a-marketing-win/
Another Recommended Book: Mid-Course Correction Revisited  
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Mid-Course Correction Revisited: The Story of a Radical Industrialist and His Quest for Authentic Change, by Ray C. Anderson and John A. Lanier (Chelsea Green, 2019)
As CEO of Interface, a global B2B carpet and flooring company, Ray Anderson took it as a personal challenge to “climb Mount Sustainability” and make his company not just green but regenerative, after an epiphany reading one of Paul Hawken’s books in 1994. By 1998, Interface was already recognized as a world leader in sustainable manufacturing—but it continued (and continues) to raise the bar. I’ve known about his work for years, but never really thought of the special challenges of taking leadership on green manufacturing when your products are made from fossil fuels. Nylon is the main ingredient in Interface’s carpet tiles. This book explores that challenge in detail.

Anderson spearheaded a dramatic change in the company culture, and created an innovation-friendly, mission-driven environment that rewarded both big systemic changes and little Kaizen-style improvements, allowing the company to make impressive strides even in those first few years. Now, it’s a model for manufacturing companies around the world. Even back in the 1990s, he set a goal to turn Interface into the first restorative industrial company (p. 9).

Anderson died in 2011. Part 1 of this book is a reprint of his original 1998 Mid-Course Correction. Part 2, the Revisited portion, is written by his grandson, the executive director of Anderson’s foundation. Hawken wrote the foreword.

Part 1 is fascinating, because Anderson and his company were inventing a whole new paradigm from scratch. If anything, the newer part is even better than the original, because it goes through the nitty-gritty of processes and recognizes that even as green business has become mainstream, regenerative business is still rare—and they benefit from their good deeds, just as Interface continues to do.

If the laws change to catch up with this new mindset, those well-adapted companies will benefit even more. As an example, if your manufacturing processes already sequester carbon, you won’t feel the pain when the inevitable carbon-output tax (p. 232) finally becomes reality.

In many instances, both authors identify concepts and processes that I discuss in my own tenth book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World. This is not a big surprise; Anderson’s brain trust includes many of the thought-leaders I drew from in my research. But it’s so exciting to see their ideas applied hands-on, in the real world, over and over, resulting in lower costs AND a more eager market. As well, to see the impact Interface has had in greening its own suppliers—even including mighty DuPont (p. 93)—customers, competitors…and the business world in general. Lanier even says, “driving waste to zero is a risk-management strategy” (p. 150). It’s also a great human resources tool: Interface’s values-motivated employees don‘t spend time on petty feuds. They collaborate across teams and departments. They don’t just innovate, but see their innovations adopted around the world (p. 167).

Both men show that going green, and then taking it regenerative (making things better than they were), can be profitable. But some of that requires changing the way we account for various pieces of the economy. In particular, we have to stop letting companies internalize the income and profit while externalizing the costs, such as the military structure necessary to rely on fossil fuels, or the health costs of those fuels—or the waste involved in processing 40,000 pounds of raw material into a single 10-pound laptop (p. 10; this was the 90s, remember).

This forward-thinking company is looking deeply at biomimicry (modeling nature’s solutions), seeing its factories as the functional equivalent of a forest (p. 230), and creating changes in the wider culture so we all start thinking differently—seeing carbon as a resource/raw material, for instance (pp. 229-230). And the little things add up, too. Interface’s Carbon Challenge for Georgia Tech students downsized a bank’s default rental car and saved them $40,000 and 45 tons of carbon per year (p. 239).

I took five pages of notes and could write three times as much. But like Interface, I’ll downsize, and just tell you to go and read it.
Accurate Writing & More
14 Barstow Lane
Hadley, MA 01035 USA
http://goingbeyondsustainability.com/contact/
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About Shel 

How can you profit by putting the VALUE in your VALUES? Shel Horowitz shows how to MONETIZE your organization’s commitment to fixing problems like hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change. Shel consults individually and in groups, gives presentations, and writes books and articles including Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (endorsed by Jack Canfield, Seth Godin and others).
Links in this newsletter may earn commissions. Please click here for our privacy and endorsement policy.

The Clean and Green Club, August 2019

13 Aug, 2019  No Comment

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Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip, August 2019
This Month’s Tip: Be Skeptical of Panaceas
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A friend posted this link to my Facebook page, about Singapore’s trash-to-energy program, and asked me what I thought. (https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=807133122991913) Please watch the short video and post a comment on THIS newsletters page—if you’re in the email copy, just click on “read more.” Up at the top, you can click where it tells you the number of comments, then scroll down to post. (If it says, “no comment,” you can still post—it just means you’re the first).

THEN read my response. And then see if you want to add a second comment indicating a change in your position. I ask that you not delete your original, but label your second post as in response to my comments.

I’m a fan of Nas and have enjoyed many of his videoblogs, especially covering Middle East peace and Israeli/Palestinian relations. But I think he may be a victim of the shiny object he thinks he sees here.

Trash is not a simple thing. To me, burning is the very last resort—what you do with the little bit of stuff you can’t do any better with. Combining all types of trash together in one big burning pile doesn’t seem like a great disposal method to me. And I’m skeptical of the claim of zero toxicity, though I’m glad they are at least isolating the waste ash from the ocean. One micron, they say—but from how much trash? One micron lodged in a lung can do some serious damage. If it’s even one micron per pound, that is a potential national health crisis.

Step 1 should be to sort all the trash.

The highest and best use is reuse. Many trashed items can be repurposed or easily rehabbed. Wood can be used again as wood, cloth can be used again as cloth, etc. This uses no energy other than to clean and perhaps repair.

Next, remove all food and other organic waste for composting and/or anaerobic digestion to produce heat and energy.

Third, remove items for upcycling: turning existing products into new ones with minimal conversion and very little energy footprint. Often these are artsy-craftsy items like jewelry and household decor items, made from old books, vinyl records, CDs, bicycle parts, or whatever.

Fourth, collect paper, plastic, metal, cardboard, and glass for recycling. Even single-use plastic bags can be turned into other products, from reusable tote bags to decking lumber. Our small side porch is made of plastic lumber from recycled materials. It needs far less maintenance than the wooden decking we have on our big deck.

Fifth, contract with TerraCycle or a similar company (or license its technology) to reuse packaging such as Nas’s chip bag and all sorts of other things remaining in the trash. That company is amazing; they’ve even developed uses for recycled cigarette butts!

Sixth, institute lifecycle costing and circular disposal laws so that manufacturers of car batteries, chemicals, and other difficult-to-dispose-of waste have to take them back. They can deconstruct the batteries, recycle the individual materials, reformulate the chemicals into their original ingredients or into other harmless and reusable compounds…

Seventh, do whatever steps I left out and should have mentioned. I’m sure there are some.

NOW, after all that, and assuming it has passed rigorous literal and figurative environmental and social “sniff tests”, the remainder (I’ll guess somewhere between 2-5% of the original trash volume) can go to that fancy trash-to-energy plant.
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Hear & Meet Shel

 
View highlights from (and listen to) more than 30 podcasts ranging from 5 minutes to a full hour. Click here to see descriptions and replay links.  

Discover why Chicken Soup’s Jack Canfield, futurist Seth Godin, and many others recommend Shel’s 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (and download a free sampler). Autographed and inscribed copies available.

Turn Your Sustainability/CSR Report Into Powerful Marketing!

 
Another Recommended Book: Thirst: A Story of Redemption, Compassion, and a Mission to Bring Clean Water to the World
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Thirst: A Story of Redemption, Compassion, and a Mission to Bring Clean Water to the World, by Scott Harrison

I picked up Harrison’s book expecting a story of how charity: water—which I support every month with an ongoing donation—came to be, and how it’s been so successful. At the book’s final edit date (it was published in 2018), this organization had taken on 28,000 water projects that brought clean water to 8.5 million people in 27 countries. (As of July 26, 2019, the website updates these numbers to 38,113 and 9,628,786, respectively.) 
I also expected that it would make the strong case for why potable water is so important: not just reducing disease and saving lives, but also freeing up many hours per day for the people (usually women) who spend most of their time gathering and carrying water from often-polluted sources many miles distant, and thus potentially changing the entire family economy.

And it talked about all those things. But what it’s really about is Harrison’s journey from financially successful but morally dissolute night club event promoter and major partier to someone motivated by a much higher cause: improving millions of lives by providing clean, safe, and nearby drinking water to millions of villagers who hadn’t had this before. His storytelling is rooted in his Christianity, and his moral awakening.

He spends rather more time wallowing in the dissolute part than I would; my first note is on page 65 and I only have two notes for the first 110 pages. And yet, despite how long it takes to get to the substance of how charity: water has made a huge difference in people’s lives, I very much recommend the book because…
  • Who and what motivated him to change his life is quite gripping
  • The stories he shares about the impact of water in places that lacked it may very well change the way you look at not just water but other resources
  • The charity he founded, ran on the thinnest of shoestrings, and built into a world-class nonprofit is simply an amazing combination of passion skill, and luck
  • He’s not shy about sharing the struggles: the challenges of fundraising, the heartbreaks when a well project fails or a child can’t be saved, even the positive lessons he took from a legal battle that almost brought down the organization
  • As an entrepreneur with a natural gift for marketing, he has many lessons to share about how to reach an audience even with a difficult subject, how to get people to open their hearts, how to keep them motivated, and much more
Accurate Writing & More
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Hadley, MA 01035 USA
http://goingbeyondsustainability.com/contact/
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About Shel 

How can you profit by putting the VALUE in your VALUES? Shel Horowitz shows how to MONETIZE your organization’s commitment to fixing problems like hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change. Shel consults individually and in groups, gives presentations, and writes books and articles including Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (endorsed by Jack Canfield, Seth Godin and others).
Links in this newsletter may earn commissions. Please click here for our privacy and endorsement policy.

The Clean and Green Club, July 2019

10 Jul, 2019  No Comment

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Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip, July 2019
NOTE: If you went to the blog post on the immigrant justice action listed in last month’s issue, I neglected to include the link to our affinity group’s blog where we posted reports as we were on the ground, including my wife Dina Friedman’s post outlining actions you can take. It’s https://jewishactivistsforimmigrationjustice.blog/
This Month’s Tip: Sometimes, We Learn Much Later that What We Did Really Mattered
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I write this on July 1, after reading news coverage of the huge Pride Marches in NYC commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising.

The gay, lesbian, and trans people who fought back against another unjust police raid had no idea they were igniting a quiet-until-then international movement, and that by 2014 it would be legal to marry a same-sex partner in every US state—something unthinkable as recently as 2000. Even by the time I came out as a 16-year-old college first-year in 1973, the energy had already shifted. We were a long way from equality, but we were recognized as existing and becoming much more public. I give them my thanks and congratulations.

(Of course, I’ve been to hundreds of actions that didn’t have long-term impact—but that’s ok.) Here are four among many actions I’ve participated in that turned out to make a difference:

  • The Seabrook occupation of 1977 birthed the US safe energy/no nukes movement and brought the massive US nuclear power program to a grinding—and fully deserved—halt (link goes to a 4-part retrospective I wrote for the 40th anniversary)
  • The movement my wife and I started that saved a local mountain—and inspired me a few years later to braid my activism and my marketing together into the consulting, speaking, and writing I now do about the intersections of profitability and regenerativity (making things better in areas like hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change)
  • The massive Women’s March on Washington the day after the current president’s inauguration, letting him know that we would resist his promised agenda based on hatred, environmental destruction, and further enriching himself, his family, and his corporate cronies—and the smaller demonstrations around the country about a week later, keeping that promise and demonstrating that the Muslim ban was racist and unacceptable (and putting that despicable project on hold for several months until he could get a toned-down version through the courts)
But here’s the thing: not all significant actions are mass rallies. Even one person can make a difference. My mom was justifiably proud of attending the March on Washington on August 28, 1963, and thrilled that she got to hear Martin Luther King deliver his “I Have A Dream” speech in person. That was a day that changed the world. But perhaps the actions she took as an individual, as a tester for the Urban League who would find out if that “already rented” apartment was really no longer vacant, or as a friend of a black family, yelling at our own landlord and accusing him of not wanting to rent to them because of their color, or as someone whose second husband was neither white nor Jewish (he was Japanese), made even more difference.

In my life, too, some of the actions I took by myself turned out to be very important. In 1984, I went to my city councilor with a concern about the need for restaurants in our town to accommodate nonsmokers. It was not a big public organizing effort. But within a few months, every restaurant was required to have a nonsmoking section. Two years later, when the US bombed Libya, I called up our most prominent local peace activist and asked where the demonstration was. She said she didn’t know of one. I said “noon at the courthouse.” I did a vigil there at noon for three days. The first day, I was out there by myself, and most passers-by were hostile. By the third day, I had a few people with me, and the mood had turned sympathetic. I like to think I had something to do with shifting public opinion in my community, and I think that’s every bit as important as being arrested at Seabrook.
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Reports from the Homestead (FL) Detention Center holding 2000+ migrant teens: In June, Shel and his wife Dina Friedman were among eight people who went from Massachusetts to Florida to see for ourselves what the government was doing in our name. They are giving public reportbacks in Western Massachusetts TONIGHT July 15 at the monthly Sanctuary Potluck at First Congregational Church of Amherst (Main and Churchill Streets, around the corner from the Black Sheep), 5:30 p.m. (probably talking around 6) and again on July 30, Edwards Church, Main and State Streets, Northampton, 6:30 p.m. You can also read the group blog about this multiday visit, including action steps, at http://jewishactivistsforimmigrationjustice.blog

View highlights from (and listen to) more than 30 podcasts ranging from 5 minutes to a full hour. Click here to see descriptions and replay links.  
YES, AMERICANS CAN STILL GO TO CUBA
As of July, 2019, 11 of the 12 ways Americans can visit Cuba still work; only people to people travel was eliminated in June. You can’t get there by cruise ship anymore, but both Southwest and JetBlue fly direct from Fort Lauderdale. Shel and his wife Dina Friedman spent a week in two Cuban cities in June, and recommend it highly. Read about their trip at
https://frugalfun.com/a-gringo-in-cuba-after-the-travel-ban.html
Friends Who Want to Help

My friend Carma Spence put together a terrific bunch of expert advice called Speaking Palooza 2019. As one of the contributors, I share 14 tips on how to grow your business while finding joy with the right public speaking: https://publicspeakingsuperpowers.com/joyfully-grow-business

And be sure to enter the sharing contest so that you can be in the running to win some fabulous prizes. You can learn more about them at https://publicspeakingsuperpowers.com/palooza

Discover why Chicken Soup’s Jack Canfield, futurist Seth Godin, and many others recommend Shel’s 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (and download a free sampler). Autographed and inscribed copies available.

Turn Your Sustainability/CSR Report Into Powerful Marketing!

 
Another Recommended Book: The Great Pivot
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The Great Pivot: Creating Meaningful Work to Build a Sustainable Future, by Justine Burt

Right in the middle of this remarkable and very factual book (p. 134), Burt quotes Robin Wall Kimmerer: “…But when you feel that the earth loves you in return, that feeling transforms…into a sacred bond.”
 
That sacred bond informs Burt’s well-researched, fact-driven, carefully-thought-out ideas to change how we think about the environment, the economy, and their interconnection.
And yes, as I’ve been saying for years, we know how to solve these problems.
Burt describes her solutions in 30 “pivots”: shifts from how we’ve done things before toward something new. Some have been gaining popularity for years—Zero Net Energy retrofits, designing for walkability and bikability, more effective mass transit. Some are less common but can easily build resilience and reduce waste simultaneously: finding uses for dead and diseased trees, creating wildlife bypass corridors to safely get past busy roads, setting up tool libraries so people can have access to ways of doing more with what they already have. Other pivots include:
  • Deconstruction of old buildings so their components can be removed—rather than demolishing, which leaves a huge, unsorted, contaminated pile of junk (this is now required for pre-1916 buildings in Portland, Oregon)
  • Using phone apps to enable new solutions such as mobility-as-a-service
  • Self-funding new sustainability jobs out of savings and revenues (as an example, a thrift shop hired a full-time fashion designer who was able to triple revenues through creative merchandising and repurposing)
Each pivot cites the types of jobs it will create; six additional pivots in Chapter 10 (pp. 223-232) focus on how to fund these initiatives. And the book is full of charts and data points that provide a graphical representation of how we can transform the negative changes we’re experiencing into positives.
Here are some random highlights from my six pages of notes:
  • Meaningful work combines what you love, what you’re good at, what the world needs, and what someone will pay you for (p. 15)
  • Employing “unemployables” such as ex-felons offers multiple benefits (p. 25)
  • We can easily reduce/recapture waste heat: 47 percent of world energy consumption (p. 41)
  • Greening systems, buildings, jobs, etc. can add significant value: a commercial building in Silicon Valley is worth $100.29 more per square foot following a $49 per square foot green renovation (p. 62); eliminating excess shrinkwrap on trucked produce saved $46,000 per year, had a two-year payback, and reduced worker injury (p. 117); divesting the New York state retirement fund of fossil fuels in 2008 would have increased the fund’s $207 billion worth by $22 billion a decade later (pp. 194-195)
  • Even the former Vice-Chair of General Motors predicts the end of fossil-fueled private cars, replaced by communal on-call electrics with 1/100 of the moving parts, three times the lifespan, and 1/3 the per-mile operating cost (pp. 74-75)
  • Greening the economy is not just about reclaiming stuff that would have been thrown away (or using less in the first place), but about reclaiming communities that have been “thrown away” (p. 94)
  • Opportunities often arise out of disruptions; the Chinese ban on importing many materials could rebirth a strong domestic recycling industry (p. 99)
  • Something as simple as state-wide tool libraries could create 1000 jobs in California alone (p. 104)
  • It’s insane to waste 40 percent of harvested food, discarding 52.4 million tons in 2016 at a cost of $218 billion per year and emitting 70.53 gigatons of greenhouse gas pollutants while 49 million Americans were food-insecure—and again, we know how to fix this (pp. 121-131)
  • Let’s recognize the at least 25 economic contributions the planet makes—and do our part by using the 13 farming techniques that restore soil and/or sequester carbon, 9 of which we can do right now (pp. 134-137), and the 9 principles of harvesting in harmony with nature (p. 171)
  • It’s time to decouple economic growth from the flawed GDP measurement, using the seven points to a “new social contract” on pp. 182-183
  • Thomas Friedman’s “four zeros” for the Green New Deal (p. 240)
Accurate Writing & More
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How can you profit by putting the VALUE in your VALUES? Shel Horowitz shows how to MONETIZE your organization’s commitment to fixing problems like hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change. Shel consults individually and in groups, gives presentations, and writes books and articles including Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (endorsed by Jack Canfield, Seth Godin and others).
Links in this newsletter may earn commissions. Please click here for our privacy and endorsement policy.

The Clean and Green Club, June 2019

4 Jun, 2019  No Comment

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Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip, June 2019
This Month’s Tip: Have YOU “Kaizened” Your Positioning?
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I listened to publicity guru Steve Harrison interview a mortgage-originator named Brian Sacks, who’s been fantastically successful at getting publicity, including 9 years with a regular spot on a network-affiliate TV station in his Baltimore market.

This gentleman is very aware of the power of the press, and was discussing the way it (and some other self-generated credentials) sets him apart from all the others in his niche. Pretty much alone, he has both customers and Realtors calling him, while his competitors are all out prospecting and trying to differentiate themselves.
But then he said something that really surprised me, because a simple little tweak would have been so much more powerful. He noted that all his other publicity and marketing reinforced his expertise by noting “As seen on” his local station.
Here’s what I would advise if he were my client: “Watch Brian Sacks discuss the home-buying process and answer your questions every Sunday morning at 10 a.m. on NBC’s WBAL-TV”
What does that simple tweak accomplish? It deepens his prospects’ perception that he’s the expert, at least three ways:
  • Anyone can get on TV, once. And anyone can buy an ad and then brag about being on TV. He’s got a regular weekly show, so the station must think he’s the real deal.
  • Instead of just bragging, he’s inviting his prime prospects to tune in for useful information.
  • This isn’t just some 2 a.m. cable show. It’s the NBC network affiliate for Baltimore.

Not bad for tweaking one sentence. It’s an example of Kaizen, the Japanese concept of increasing profitability by making lots of small improvements. Imagine the combined impact of making half a dozen changes like that!

Could YOU rewrite one sentence to deepen your own positioning? Send before-and-after examples to me. If I get interesting responses, I’ll share them with my subscribers (with a link to your site, of course). And if you’d like help with this process, I’ll give you 15 minutes on the phone, gratis.
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Hear & Meet Shel

View highlights from (and listen to) more than 30 podcasts ranging from 5 minutes to a full hour. Click here to see descriptions and replay links.  
Friends/Colleagues Who Want to Help

This is fantastic! Ryan Eliason’s unexpectedly simple way to build a lucrative career rooted in profound service. Download his Revolutionary Enterpreneur Manifesto here! https://shelhorowitz.com/go/GetRyansReport/

Discover why Chicken Soup’s Jack Canfield, futurist Seth Godin, and many others recommend Shel’s 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (and download a free sampler). Autographed and inscribed copies available.

Turn Your Sustainability/CSR Report Into Powerful Marketing!

 
Another Recommended Book: DUH! Marketing
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DUH! Marketing: 99 Monstrous Missteps You Can Use to Learn, Laugh, & Grow Your Business! By Liz Goodgold

I confess: I took this one off the shelf because I wanted a quick read to keep me entertained on a four-hour train ride. But I’m glad I did.

Using mostly big-company examples, Goodgold pairs a marketing blooper (“DUH!”) with a marketing success (“TA DA!”), half a page each—and extracts a marketing lesson from each pairing. I don’t always agree with her choices, but her lessons are generally spot-on. It’s fun to read and even entertainingly laid out.

At least five companies show up on both lists, sometimes as a pair, sometimes not. Kraft actually shows up three times, with two Duhs and one Ta Da (she doesn’t hyphenate Ta Da). I totally agree with her attack on its Grey Poupon brand’s entry into the generic-yellow-mustard category (p. 61). The whole point of Grey Poupon is to create space in mass-market channels for a gourmet brand.

But she also criticizes Kraft for a slogan, “we cut the cheese so you don’t have to,” saying this was seen in her high school as a reference to flatulence. Frankly, I’ve never heard that term used in that way. But if this is a regionalism and not something peculiar to her school (I have no idea where she grew up), then she’s right.

The Kudo for Kraft is for introducing American cheese singles made with low-fat milk (also p. 61). I agree that this is a good brand extension (but I still avoid American cheese, because I prefer my food to look and taste like food, not plastic—and Kraft’s Velveeta brand is the worst offender).

Some of my favorite lessons:

  • ALWAYS Google a name (Zyclon shoes, p. 39)
  • If you choose a name like 24-Hour Fitness, you’d darn well better be open 24 hours (p. 40)
  • You can market new uses for an existing product or new products for existing behavior patterns—but if you try to market a new product to an audience that doesn’t exist yet, it’ll be tough going (Old Spice Cool Contact, p. 53)
  • Make sure your packaging makes sense; if you sell bubble bath that looks like motor oil, some kid is going to put motor oil in the bathtub (NASCAR High Performance Bubble Bath, p. 60—and WHY would NASCAR extend its brand to bubble bath in the first place?)
  • If you’re promoting a destination, run pictures of your own island and not your competitors (Bermuda ran ads with stock photos of Hawaii, p. 77)
  • Do your research; it wouldn’t have taken much to know that Yom Kippur, a solemn fast day, is not a party holiday (Evite, p. 103)

Cleverness can work if it’s done right—such as Visa’s commercials showing how long it takes to approve a check by aging Charlie Sheen into his father Martin (p.145) and International Delight’s coffee creamer print ad asking “Why did we make our new bottle so easy to open and pour? Have you ever tried opening anything before you’ve had your first cup of coffee?” (p. 171)—but she also has plenty of examples of failed cleverness, something I railed against all the way back in my 1993 book, Marketing Without Megabucks (NOTE: DUH! Marketing was published in 2007, long before Charlie Sheen’s fall from grace)
Accurate Writing & More
14 Barstow Lane
Hadley, MA 01035 USA
http://goingbeyondsustainability.com/contact/
Connect with Shel

 

 

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About Shel 

How can you profit by putting the VALUE in your VALUES? Shel Horowitz shows how to MONETIZE your organization’s commitment to fixing problems like hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change. Shel consults individually and in groups, gives presentations, and writes books and articles including Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (endorsed by Jack Canfield, Seth Godin and others).
Links in this newsletter may earn commissions. Please click here for our privacy and endorsement policy.

The Clean and Green Club, May 2019

3 May, 2019  No Comment

Having trouble reading this as e-mail? Please visit thecleanandgreenclub.com to read it comfortably online.
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Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip, May 2019
This Month’s Tip: Turn the Question Upside-Down and Inside-Out
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Here’s a technique many Practical Visionaries (such as the ones I profiled in the December 2017, March, May, and July 2018 issues) use to get planet-changing conversations going.
Faced with resistance—denial, hostility, or just “we’ve always done it this way”—they ask two simple questions, consciously or unconsciously:

  1. What’s the best way to get from where we are to where we want to be?
  2. What are the consequences if we take no action?

I call that second question “turning the question upside-down and inside-out.” And it’s a lever to create both personal and social change. Let’s look at an example of each:

  • PERSONAL CHANGE: When an older client says, “I’ll be too old” after a career coach suggests pursuing a goal that involves extensive training, the coach asks, “and how old will you be at that time—and how much closer to becoming the _____ you always wanted to be—if you DON’T get that training?”
  • SOCIETY-WIDE CHANGE: When opponents of the Green New Deal challenge advocates about how to pay the cost, business environmentalists and global strategic thinkers should ask several questions: “And how much will it cost us to rebuild entire cities or rehouse their population when climate change makes them uninhabitable? Cities at risk include Houston, New Orleans, Miami, New York, Boston, San Diego, and many others?” (Non-US residents, please substitute your own at-risk coastal cities.) “How will you replace the millions of acres of farmland that will go unproductive because of climate change, even as people are uprooted and face mass hunger?” And even “What if the climate deniers are right—and what if they’re wrong?”

Since those two links are a lot to read, I’ll keep it short this month.
New on the Blog
Friends & Colleagues Who Want to Help

I’m really excited about the Sustainability Now Telesummit, a no-charge online event June 1 – 7 featuring ~30 experts from around the globe! Organizer Mira Rubin interviewed me last year, and she’s great. I know she’ll have brought out the best in this batch of speakers too.

The content covers many topics, from off-grid housing and energy solutions to innovations in health and medicine. Speakers will be discussing sustainability from so many different angles:

~FOOD: From production to preparation
~ENERGY: Alternative & renewables
~HOUSING: Energy efficient & off-grid
~WATER: Purification & conservation
~WASTE: Zero waste living & recycling
~HEALTH: Self-care & medical breakthroughs
~ECONOMICS: Shifting the money paradigm
~CONSCIOUSNESS: Exploring new ways of being

You’ll discover tangible actions to restore our precious planet and reclaim our health. You’ll come away with a renewed sense of hope and tools to turn inspiration into ACTION. Come and learn. Get inspired. Be the change. REGISTER at https://shelhorowitz.com/go/sustainabilitynowsummit/
Hear & Meet Shel

I will be attending Book Expo in New York City, May 29-31. If you’ll be at the show, I’m happy to schedule a meeting. If you’re in NYC but not at Book Expo and want to meet, I might be able to make it work Wednesday evening, or over lunch Wednesday or Friday. Thursday evening I’ll be attending the Evolutionary Business Council dinner on the Upper West Side. Call me on my landline, 413-586-2388 (8 am to 10 pm US ET), or email shel AT greenandprofitable.com with the subject Meet at BEA. The sooner I hear from you, the more likely we’ll be able to connect.

View highlights from (and listen to) more than 30 podcasts ranging from 5 minutes to a full hour. Click here to see descriptions and replay links.

Discover why Chicken Soup’s Jack Canfield, futurist Seth Godin, and many others recommend Shel’s 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (and download a free sampler). Autographed and inscribed copies available.

Turn Your Sustainability/CSR Report Into Powerful Marketing!

http://goingbeyondsustainability.com/turn-that-nobody-reads-it-csr-report-into-a-marketing-win/
Another Recommended Book: Overdeliver
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Overdeliver: Build a Business for a Lifetime Playing the Long Game in Direct Response Marketing by Brian Kurtz (Hay House, April 2019)

Overdeliver has deep roots in the principles I’ve advocated for decades: sticking to your ethics, thinking and acting from abundance, building relationships without looking for “gimmies,” creating massive leverage from small actions, and matching offer to audience.

Brian is a leading expert on direct marketing. Together with publisher Marty Edelston, he built Boardroom/Bottom Line newsletters to the most successful mass-market paid-subscription-based newsletter franchise in the country. And he’s not even a copywriter or a list manager (though he hires the best out there).

He is, however, a gifted writer. The book is filled with great stories told well. And nice touches—a summary of key points at the end of each chapter, thorough index—create a positive reader experience. He even got Jay Abraham to not only write a forward, but personally guarantee readers’ satisfaction. How many writers come up with a book so worthwhile that a non-involved third party will guarantee the purchase?

One thing he points out over and over again is the hidden cost of not being authentic. Don’t be seduced by quick dollars into making an offer that’s not congruent with your audience. Even one offer that feels false or out of alignment can cause massive unsubscribes. Suddenly, the list you built up for years loses half its names and 80% of its value.

For decades, Brian carefully tested, tracked and ANALYZED the results, segmented his lists, rinsed and repeated. He can even tell you the relative profitability of offers that brought high initial purchases but little repeat business, versus mailings that converted slowly at first but had vastly better renewal rates—across specific lists those two mailings were sent to.

With this data and an almost religious belief in lifetime customer value, he knew he could spend even three times the initial sale on acquiring the right customers, because they’d more than make up the difference over the next several years. He learned whether a certain list would respond to upbeat or paranoid copy, what freebies and incentives worked with which types of buyers, whether those buyers paid off in the long run, and whether they came from a list of inquiries, free subscriptions, active buyers, or ex-buyers. Tracking this granularly is far more useful than tracking demographics, and then your own list becomes golden. He lays out his testing strategy on pp. 112-113, and also some magic questions every marketer should ask, especially in Chapter 6. And he acknowledges mistakes/painful lessons.

Using this knowledge, he encourages his clients to analyze their customer acquisition and payback costs and to be unafraid of spending to acquire long-term customers if the numbers work. He even advises them to become so niched that they become “a category of one”: the only choice. But that doesn’t mean isolating yourself. Find people who will advise you, including telling you when you’re either too full of yourself or full of crappy ideas (pp. 215-216). That’s part of a relationship chapter that would be alone worth the price.

He also encourages marketers to respond to immediate changes. He removed affected zipcodes from a mailing following a hurricane, and then gave free list rental to disaster relief agencies. Related: provide superior service to win back ex-customers who become your best ambassadors. They came to you because they shared your vision and values, after all (p. 186).

Disclosure: Brian and I are friends, and I’m one of those several hundred people acknowledged (I don’t actually know why).
Accurate Writing & More
16 Barstow Lane
Hadley, MA 01035 USA
http://goingbeyondsustainability.com/contact/
Connect with Shel

 

 

Find on Facebook

 

 

 

 

 

About Shel
How can you profit by putting the VALUE in your VALUES? Shel Horowitz shows how to MONETIZE your organization’s commitment to fixing problems like hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change. Shel consults individually and in groups, gives presentations, and writes books and articles including Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World (endorsed by Jack Canfield, Seth Godin and others).
Links in this newsletter may earn commissions. Please click here for our privacy and endorsement policy.
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