The Clean and Green Club, October 2024
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The Clean and Green Club, March 2019
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The Clean and Green Club, July 2018
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The Clean and Green Club, August 2013
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Since When Are Libraries Known for Brilliant Marketing?
This month’s marketing lesson comes from one of the best examples of marketing ju-jitsu I’ve ever seen.
In ju-jitsu (a/k/a jiu-jitsu), like many martial arts, you use the strength of your opponent, rather than your own strength, and deflect it back on him or her. You get to still be nonviolent and righteous, while your opponent is lying in a heap on the floor.
Similarly, in marketing ju-jitsu (a term that may have been coined by Max Lenderman in 2001), you can overcome an opponent with far greater resources who can afford to hire wildly talent advertising agencies and saturate the airwaves with the result.
In the business world, the classic examples are car rental giant Avis’s “we’re only #2 so we try harder” campaign, Volkswagen’s Small Wonder ads from the 1960s, and of course, the legendary Smash Big Brother ad that debuted the Apple Macintosh in 1984.
In the anti-business world, the day in 1967 Abbie Hoffman and the Yippies threw dollar bills on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange comes to mind, as do many of the Adbusters campaigns, such as Buy Nothing Day.
So what does this kind of guerrilla marketing have to do with libraries? Librarians are thought of as a quiet bunch who rarely make any kind of public stink (though this is actually not true—just ask progressive author and filmmaker Michael Moore, whose book Stupid White Men was saved by a national campaign by librarians).
Well, here’s a video (less than three minutes long) outlining a particularly intense use of marketing ju-jitsu: threatened by a Tea Party campaign to defund the library, supporters created a fake campaign in favor of book burning, even saying the event would include live music and refreshments generating massive backlash. They then revealed their true agenda: to raise consciousness that “closing a library is like burning books.” This in turn resulted in a massive outpouring of library supporters on Election Day that easily defeated the defunding initiative. And both the book burning announcement and the later clarification got lots of social media buzz and the attention of thee press nationally.
Go watch it now. I’ll wait.
Back? Good.
I’d love you to share the takeaways you got in the comments, below. Here are some of mine:
- Memes have a lot of power. Revulsion against book burning is a deep-seated response to centuries of oppression. Whether in 15th-century Spain, 18th-century America, Nazi-era Germany, or the late Ray Bradbury’s fictional dystopia Fahrenheit 451, book burning is seen as an attempt to suppress and control thought.
- Reductio ad absurdumarguments—taking a line of thinking past its logical conclusion iinto the realm of the ridiculous—still work.
- Even without funding, an organized populace can defeat injustice, especially when we make it a mom-and-apple-pie issue. (This was the approach we used when we saved our local mountain.)
- Please share yours in the comments, below.
The Clean & Green Club, April 2012
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I’ve listened to several calls from ShiftNetwork’s latest telesummit, 
Become an Award Winning Company: 7 Steps to Unlock The Million Dollar Secret Every Entrepreneur Needs to Know, by Matt Shoup (Shoup Consulting, 2012)The Clean & Green Club, March 2012
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Shel Horowitz’s Clean & Green Newsletter, December 2011
In This Issue…
- Will YOU be the One to Get a Brand New $1299 Multifunction Printer from Dell?
- This Month’s Tip: Market With Video, Part 1
- Friends Who Want to Help
- Hear & Meet Shel
- Another Recommended Book: The New Relationship Marketing
Will YOU be the One to Get a Brand New $1299 Multifunction Printer from Dell?
A few weeks ago, I received a gift of a very spiffy Dell 3335dn multifunction printer, which not only prints two-sided at high resolution from any computer on our network, but also scans, copies, e-mails, and stores documents in its memory. I have to tell you, even though I’ve gotten along just fine without in-house copying and faxing capabilities, I’m finding that I really enjoy having them.
Because the company is courting the green market for this printer (which not only can print both sides of the paper but also has some cool energy management features), Dell’s promotion team came to me and asked if I’d like to give one of these printers away. Of course, I agreed. But I put a condition on it. Rather than just give one away randomly, I’ll give it to the person who submits the best sustainability tip via my Twitter account during the giveaway days.
So you’ll be rewarded for your thinking processes, and probably not facing an enormous number of entries. In other words, if you give this your best shot, you’ll have a much better chance of winning than in most contests.
And five runners-up get a copy of my very useful e-book, Painless Green: 111 Tips to Help the Environment, Lower Your Carbon Footprint, Cut Your Budget, and Improve Your Quality of Life-With No Negative Impact on Your Lifestyle.
Disclosure: as is obvious from above, I got one of these printers as a gift and have been using it steadily ever since.
By entering, you agree to both my rules and Dell’s rules for the contest. You’ll find both sets of rules posted at https://painlessgreenbook.com/win-a-1299-printer-december-16-19-2011
This Month’s Tip: Market With Video, Part 1
In this two-part series, I’ll first introduce the context of video marketing in today’s world–which is quite different from even a few years ago. Next month, I’ll follow up with specific things to keep in mind when shooting a video, and some ideas for what kind of content to create.
There are probably at least 1001 ways to promote a product or a service with video–a medium that penetrates the brain like no other (as we’ve known since the popularization of television began more than 60 years ago). Video used to require considerable technical skill and a whole pile of expensive equipment. But these days, anyone can shoot and produce a video. All you need is a pocket video camera or (for interviews) even just a Skype account with the call recorder add-on; distribution is as simple as uploading to a video sharing site like Youtube, Vimeo, Viddler, Ustream, or their many competitors.
(Note: For some purposes, I still advise professional production; the quality will be way better. Your speaker demo reel, for instance, should absolutely be done by a pro, and so should anything that you expect to go head-to-head with footage shot by big studios. But you can do a lot with homegrown videos.)
Video is enormously popular. This list of more than 300 video sharing sites <https://www.reelseo.com/list-video-sharing-websites/> includes Alexa rank (how much they get visited) and Google Page Rank (a vague indication of how much search engines like them). Astoundingly, 46 sites have an Alexa rank better than 1000. That means out of the roughly 300 million websites in the entire world, 46 of the 1000 most-visited websites exist to share video. And many of these sites allow user submissions of videos.
Alexa’s own Top Sites page gives Youtube the number 3 position in both the world and the United States, trailing only Google (which owns Youtube) and Facebook (data checked 12/12/11).
On Youtube, and presumably other sites, you can set up a branded URL for your own channel, building name recognition. You can also easily embed a video hosted on any of these sites into your own web pages and even e-mails.
And don’t forget that these sites are typically non-exclusive. You can post the same video on multiple sites, which may be especially useful if there’s a niche video site covering your area of expertise.
Friends Who Want to Help
Guerrilla Marketing Intensive–$1000 discount just for you
My co-author, Jay Conrad Levinson, “the Father of Guerilla Marketing,” has a few seats left in his next Guerrilla Marketing Intensive, at his Florida home, January 23rd-25th. 21 hours of training over three days. Normally $4997 (payable in up to four installments)–but Jay’s manager (his daughter Amy) has offered a $1000 discount to my subscribers. Limited to just ten people, so this is pretty in-depth. https://gmarketing.
To get this special rate, just click this link: mailto:olympiagal@aol.com?subject=Discount?cc=shel@frugalfun.com to tell Amy you want the $1000 off for Shel’s subscribers (Also tell her whether you prefer an online payment link or prefer to call in your payment info).
Remember the hit song, “Don’t Worry…Be happy?” But how do you GET happy without worrying? Ana Weber’s book/course, “The Happiness Thermometer,” can give you more than a few clues to increase your happiness quotient without having to worry about it. https://3bl.me/rb3y6n
Coop-themed Poetry Contest for Middle Schoolers
Know a middle-schooler who likes to write? Cheese and milk co-op Cabot is doing a poetry contest for students in grades 5-8, on the cooperative spirit. Winner not only gets a cash prize, but his or her poem on a Cabot butter box. For details: https://potatohill.com/files/20
Hear & Meet Shel
- Listen to the repay of my December 5 webinar for Ventureneer: Green Marketing: Leveraging Your Social Responsibility to Improve Profit, https://ventureneer.com/
webclass/green-marketing- leveraging-your-social- responsibility-improve-profit
- 1/4/12: Visit https://bigamericangiveaway.
com/ –I’m that day’s Massachusetts sponsor, and I’ll have some cool stuff for you: a gratis copy of my e-book Painless Green, and a $25 gift certificate good toward any consultation or copywriting. Same Deal applies to the London page of https:// bigbritishgiveaway.com on January 17.
- In negotiation to speak at conferences in Bangladesh and Switzerland. Nothing definite yet.
- 4/2/12: I’m thrilled to announce that I’ll be doing a program for The Shift Network. For a year now, I’ve been listening to many of their calls, interviewing the creme de la creme of experts in sustainability and global consciousness. I’ll be part of the Green Business track of the ambitious Spring of Sustainability program, which also features such luminaries as Paul Hawken, Bill McKibben, Hunter Lovins, David Korten, Frances Moore Lappe and Duane Elgin. You will want to sign up for this entire series. I plan to listen to as many of the calls as possible. Watch for the registration link (no cost, I believe) in a future issue.
Another Recommended Book: The New Relationship Marketing by Mari Smith
About 80 percent of Mari Smith’s new book is about social media–but I’d say the other 20 percent might be worth the closest look.
That’s because Smith is not only a believer in meeting face-to-face, but a brilliant tactician who uses her prodigious online skills to totally win over the people she meets offline (at conferences, for example)–and tells you exactly how to do the same.
Using a powerful yet very accessible set of online research tools to steer her face-to-face encounters, Smith creates quite a bit of “wow factor” by integrating online comments about her presentation directly into the speech, in real time–and to not just show up very prepared to network with other speakers and attenders, but to have impressed them so much ahead of (as well as during) the event that they actually seek you out.
Smith outlines how she does this, step by step, in Chapter 7 of her new book, The New Relationship Marketing: How to Build a Large, Loyal, Profitable Network Using the Social Web (John Wiley and Sons, 2011). She titles the chapter, Go Offline to Optimize Your Online Marketing–but I’d actually flip that around. Really, it’s about going *online* to maximize your *offline* marketing.
While that chapter alone would be worth buying the book, it’s typical of the other good stuff, all based on the idea of using “radical strategic visibility” to build real relationships in business. She encourages businesses to think beyond B2B (business-to-business) and B2C (business-to-consumer) to “P2P”–people-to-people. For instance, she talks about how to get your A-list–the people you want to impress–to see you as a valued colleague…what parts of your social media presence you should and should not delegate, and why…how to recovery gracefully and with minimal damage from a social-media faux pas…how businesses with purely local clientele (such as restaurants) can market effectively on social media…identifying and cultivating “superfans” who will advance your brand perhaps better than you can do on your own.
And it all comes from an attitude of service, perhaps best summed up by this quote from pages 193-194: “Always be thinking about how you can tap into the intelligent network of people that will allow you to bring greater value to each and every individual and your community at large. Provide a better product and better service, and consistently build your social equity to establish your brand as the natural “go-to” for your field. You can become a top industry leader by utilizing the inclusion of your marketplace. If you’re really treating people as equals–whether it’s 10 or 10 million–then you are relating to each one with the greatest of respect by including and involving them.”
The book is also crammed with resources, both in the main text and in the appendix, and features a wonderfully comprehensive index (something I desperately wish more business books paid attention to).
About Shel and this Newsletter
As a marketing consultant and copywriter … award-winning author of eight books… international speaker, blogger, syndicated columnist — Shel Horowitz shows how green and ethical businesses can actually be *more* profitable than your less-green competitors. His most recent book is category bestseller Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green: Winning Strategies to Improve Your Profits and Your Planet. Shel also helps authors/publishers, small businesses, and organizations to market effectively, and turns unpublished writers into well-published authors. He was inducted into the National Environmental Hall of Fame in 2011.
Shel began publishing his monthly newsletter all the way back in 1997, making it one of the oldest marketing e-zines (it’s changed names a few times along the way). Shel brings you a mix of actionable marketing tips, profiles of successful green and ethical businesses, and reviews of worthwhile books.
Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Newsletter, November 2011
In This Issue…
- Clean and Green Spotlight: An Avon Approach To Healthier and Wealthier Communities
- Friends Who Want to Help
- Hear & Meet Shel
- Another Recommended Book: Guerrilla Marketing Remix
Clean and Green Spotlight: An Avon Approach To Healthier and Wealthier Communities
Guest article by Olivia Khalili of Cause Capitalism, where this originally appeared.
The concept is simple and brilliant. When I came across Living Goods, my stomach flipped with the potential impact of the organization’s work. The mechanisms, intent and appeal match that of blockbuster social enterprises Kiva and charity: water.
Living Goods replicates Avon’s model of door-to-door selling, but instead of peddling lipstick and mascara to middle-class women, Living Goods’ Health Promoters sell affordable health products—from antibacterial soap to de-worming tablets to condoms to bednets—to the Ugandan poor. By providing a way for women to make a living by selling products that prevent unnecessary death from treatable diseases, Living Goods is fighting the double-headed dragon of mortality and poverty.
More than 10 million children die every year (pause for a second; that’s 27,398 deaths a day) from easily treatable conditions like malaria, TB and diarrhoeal disease. Products for prevention and treatment exist, but efficient and scalable delivery systems are lacking. Living Goods uses micro-enterprise and micro-franchising to get these products into communities and to keep them there. Health Promoters buy a business-in-a-box for $100-$250, which includes the products, as well as training, marketing and coaching. Living Goods and its partners—one of whom is the microfinance and development organization BRAC—provide affordable financing for the kits.
Malaria, as one example, deals a double blow by causing economic as well as physical suffering. Reoccurring and prolonged bouts with malaria prevent people from working. Living Goods is committed to inverting this cycle by incentivizing its Health Promoters (through profit) to make essential health products available to more people. The more a Health Promoter does this, the larger her profit and the greater the health impact she will have on her community.
Over the next five years, Living Goods aims to become financially self-sustaining and to replicate its model in other countries. Charles Slaughter, Living Goods’ founder and president, is very open to helping other social enterprises adopt or replicate the model. Partnering with the Poverty Action Lab* (PAL), Living Goods is tracking its impact through randomized control studies as it works to lower mortality rates for children under five by 15-30% in its target communities.
Child and community health, female economic development, financial sustainability, open-source replication, local support, microfinance micro-enterprise—these outcomes and mechanisms give me an adrenaline jolt. Why have I not heard of Living Goods earlier? If you’re as moved by Living Goods’ approach and mission as I am, you can sign up for its e-newsletter or make a donation. Living Goods doesn’t yet have a Twitter or Facebook presence (but I’m about to offer to help develop it for them).
*The New Yorker recently wrote a great profile on PAL and the organization’s co-founder Esther Duflo.
Friends Who Want to Help
Amazing $2500 Freebie from Sean D’Souza of Psychotactics
Of the many marketers I regularly follow and learn from, I consider Sean D’Souza one of the smartest (as well among the most entertaining). If you’ve been reading my newsletter for a while, you might remember I’ve referred to him often, and have posted several of his articles to my various websites.
Well, now Sean is giving away a 36-audio course he normally charges $2500 for—if you register for his excellent newsletter—I’ve been reading it for many years—by November 29. Not only will you get what promises to be a ton of useful information, you’ll get to listen to Sean’s quirky and enjoyable Kiwi accent (he’s a New Zealander) as he delivers it. I’ve listened to a lot of his audios over the years, and I always learn a lot about human psychology—and how we marketers can most effectively harness it.
This workshop, the Brain Alchemy Masterclass, explains why structure—not marketing—is critical to growing a business effectively.
Because he’s including so much material, Sean is rationing out the access codes over time, so he doesn’t wipe out his servers with too many people trying to download at once. (I signed up and I’m waiting eagerly for my code.) Here’s the link: https://www.psychotactics.com/
The Best-Conceived JV I’ve Seen
Do you do Joint Ventures? As I hinted last month, I’m helping to orchestrate a particularly exciting one, involving celebrities, politicians, environmental education, kids, quilts and all sorts of other cool stuff that appeals to the media and will get you coverage and contacts. We’re planning ahead on this-want to get commitments this year for ramping up early next year and a launch that ties in with Earth Day next spring-but don’t wait to get involved. If you’d like to receive an invitation as soon as we’re ready, please use this link to tell me (and let me know if you think of yourself as more of a marketer, or more of an environmentalist).
Unfamiliar with Joint Ventures? Basically, we partner with you, you tell your own contacts (like the readers of your e-zine or blog), and if people make purchases from your link, you earn a commission.
Guerrilla Marketing Intensive – $1000 discount just for you
My co-author, Jay Conrad Levinson, “the Father of Guerilla Marketing,” has a few seats left in his next Guerrilla Marketing Intensive, at his Florida home, January 23rd-25th. 21 hours of training over three days. Normally $4997 (payable in up to four installments)—but Jay’s manager (his daughter Amy) has offered a $1000 discount to my subscribers. Limited to just ten people, so this is pretty in-depth. https://gmarketing.
To get this special rate, just click this link: mailto:olympiagal@aol.com?subject=Discount?cc=shel@frugalfun.com to tell Amy you want the $1000 off for Shel’s subscribers (Also tell her whether you prefer an online payment link or prefer to call in your payment info).
Coop-themed Poetry Contest for Middle Schoolers
Know a middle-schooler who likes to write? Cheese and milk co-op Cabot is doing a poetry contest for students in grades 5-8, on the cooperative spirit. Winner not only gets a cash prize, but his or her poem on a Cabot butter box. For details: https://potatohill.com/files/20
Hear & Meet Shel
November
- November 15, 8:00 pm ET/5 pm PT, January Jones interviews me: 818-431-8506
- November 16, 7 pm ET/4 pm PT: Interviewed on Your15Minutes Radio’s “Brand This” with Shaun Walker and Reid Stone, www.your15minutesradio.com
- November 17, 11 a.m. ET/8 am PT: Interviewed by Susan Rich on “Get Noticed Now.” https://www.richwriting.com/201
1/11/shel-horowitz-on-get-noti ced-now-w4wn-com/ - November 25, interview with Susan Davis on Good and Green Radio will become available at https://wgrnradio.com/archive-
good-and-green-radio-with- as well as at iTunessusan-davis/
December:
- December 5, 12 noon ET/9 a.m. PT: No-cost webinar for Ventureneer: Green Marketing: Leveraging Your Social Responsibility to Improve Profit, https://ventureneer.com/
webclass/green-marketing- l-leveraging-your-socia responsibility-improve-profit
January
- 1/4/12: Visit https://bigamericangiveaway.
com/ — I’m that day’s Massachusetts sponsor, and I’ll have some cool stuff for you.
Also remember—if you set me up an engagement, you could earn a generous commission.
Another Recommended Book: Guerrilla Marketing Remix
Another Recommended Book: Guerrilla Marketing Remix, by Jay Conrad Levinson and Jeannie Levinson (Entrepreneur Press)
I have read many of the Guerrilla Marketing books, and written one of them (Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green)—and I have to tell you this new “best of collection” is extremely impressive. It’s really two books in one, each of which is well worth reading (and taking notes on).
Through page 158, Jay and Jeannie’s summarize their key lessons after many years in the forefront of marketing innovation. And then in part two, they’ve culled some of the best wisdom from the numerous Guerrilla books co-authored with other experts.
The Levinsons have never been afraid to be heretics, and by page 15, they’re already very much against the grain. That’s where they tell us to beware of humor in advertising—because a key Guerrilla Marketing principle (as well as a core principle of traditional advertising) is repetition, but repeated humor gets old very quickly. By the third or fourth time, it starts to be annoying.
Other insights from part 1:
- Patience and planning, rather than miracles, are key to success
- A major purpose of a marketing funnel is to “broaden consent” and get buy-in for the next step
- Honesty is rewarded; phoniness comes back to bite you (something I emphasize in several of my own books)
- You get better customers when you motivate for positive gain rather than to avoid negatives such as hurt or fear
- Go back to the well; 34 percent of your previous customers will likely try you again if you take the trouble to court them, with respect
- Use clever strategies to drastically lower the cost of advertising, and maximize the leverage you get from it (such as the one on pages 93-94)
- Never confuse revenue with profit
This whole section is rich in practical, actionable advice—much of it broken down into easy checklists, like the 200 top marketing weapons (really closer to 150, as several are restatements and variations), 5 overarching strategies, 50 reasons to advertise, and 35 advertising mistakes.
In fact, the advertising chapter is so jammed with wisdom that I would recommend to any of my marketing clients considering buying advertising that they read it, read it again three days later, and then again after a week. It’s that good.
And then there are the riches of part 2. With collaborators like Seth Godin, David Garfinkel, Laurel Langemeier, and Alex Mandossian, it’s not surprising to find many gems But don’t forget to read the folks who are not household names. Some of the best advice came from people you may never heard of, like Frank Adkins and Chris Forbes, who did Guerrilla Marketing for Nonprofits, or Orvel Ray Wilson and Mark S.A. Smith’s incredible tips from Guerrilla Negotiating. Many of these contributions are very strong as well.
Full disclosure: I am a contributor to this book, and I fully hope that the excerpt from Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green will encourage new readers t buy my book—just as I will be looking to acquire several of the other books this marvelous volume exposed me to.
Highly recommended.
Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Newsletter, October 2011
News Flash: I Was Inducted Into the National Environmental Hall of Fame
Read all about it and see a picture at https://greenandprofitable.com/i-was-inducted-into-the-national-environmental-hall-of-fame-today/ I hope to post a video next week, if the videographer sends me something I can use. Several dignitaries in attendance, too.
Contents of This Issue:
- A Marketing Ploy that Cut Through the Clutter
- Hear & Meet Shel
- Friends Who Want to Help
- Another Recommended Book: Brandwashed
A Marketing Ploy that Cut Through the Clutter
UPS dropped off a surprise package from Random House recently; it looked like a box that would be used to ship a case of books.
When I opened the box, I saw a smaller, unmarked, white box, shrinkwrapped and floating on a cushion of air-filled plastic bags. I cut the shrinkwrap, opened the box, and took out a black slipcase, unadorned except for a line of headline type saying “GUESS THE YOUNGEST AGE EVER TARGETED BY A MARKETER.” Just below and to the right, these words in a starburst: “Be the first to know with this fascinating sneak-peek.”
Finally, inside the slipcase, another, very deluxe box. The front cover answered the question on the slipcase. When I opened it, the inside cover had four panels of marketing copy, contact information, *and* a video player containing three video trailers and a screen about the size of an iPhone’s. Needless to say, the graphics on the whole thing were extremely professional. The main part of the box contained two cutouts: one held an advance review copy of a new book, Brandwashed, by Martin Lindstrom, and the other held a small red plastic infant bottle whose label, extremely reminiscent of the famous Heinz catsup bottle, declared,
“WHINES EST’D 2011 BRAND WASHING YOU’RE NEVER TOO YOUNG”
The two enclosures were topped with a custom plastic tray that had a cut out for the bottle and fit snugly but comfortably into the box.
I remembered that Lindstrom had personally e-mailed me two weeks earlier, asking if I’d be interested in reviewing his forthcoming book. He’d written,
Like you, I have long been a proponent of environmental responsibility and have sought ways to encourage others to take a more active role in making and keeping our communities more “green”. That is why I think you should take a careful look at the multi-million dollar world-of-mouth marketing experiment that I had funded and chronicled in Brandwashed. I wanted to study just how persuasive word-of-mouth marketing could be as pertaining to household decisions, and in the latter stages focused specifically on environmentally conscious products and services. The results were shocking!
I’d been impressed at the time that he not only sought me out but that he spoke directly to my key interest area: the intersection of marketing with the environment.
As book reviewers go, I’m pretty low on the food chain. Typically, I do one review a month, in this newsletter (whose circulation figures don’t exactly set the world on fire)—and then the reviews get posted on Amazon about a month later. To receive such an intricate package despite my low status in the book review world was a recognition that somebody, in this case a best-selling author and top consultant in my field, values my opinion enough to be sure he gets noticed—and that’s flattering.
I had a number of reactions to receiving this package, and as a marketer/environmentalist who educates other marketers and environmentalists, I’d like to share some of them with you. The insights you might gain from a look into my psyche may help you as you design your next campaign.
- Undeniably, it was effective. As it happened, I hadn’t yet picked out a book to review this month, and with half the month gone, I needed to start. Martin’s book didn’t even stop at the top of the pile; it went directly to my exercise bike, where I read while working out, and I started reading it that very night (see my review elsewhere in this issue).
- To make that impression cost quite a bit of money. I’m guessing the package cost at least $50 per copy to design, prepare, and send. Am I enough of an influencer to be worth that investment? It would be nice to think so, but I don’t know.
- Obviously, the campaign is reaching people who do have a great deal of influence. On October 6, less than 10 days after publication, the book not only has 41 reviews on Amazon, but the #1 and #2 slots on three subcategories for marketing books and an enviable overall rank of 283. His earlier book, Buyology, is also doing quite well at the moment, probably with a little help from Amazon’s “people who bought also bought” trick.
- While the marketer in me is quite impressed, the environmentalist part of my brain is appalled. This was a very resource-intensive effort involving unrecyclable mixed materials and weighing seven pounds. In tiny print on the back of the player box, it notes that you’re not supposed to throw this out in the trash and should return the box to the video player company for processing. Not a lot of reviewers will even see that note, and fewer still will go through the trouble to find a suitable box, address a label, and pay for the postage to return it. Reviewers get dozens of packages per day, and many cases, get them pre-opened by a mailroom employee. The slipcase and the two outer boxes can be recycled with my other cardboard, but the rest of it is problematic. This is especially ironic, given Lindstrom’s personal message to me.
- After experiencing this elaborate and expensive press kit, I am surprised by the book cover, which in my opinion is both unattractive and unimaginative. If a client came to me with this cover, I’d have advised a different concept.
- Targeting is key. This book was well-targeted to me, and Lindstrom’s personal message was even more targeted. Had I received a similar press kit for, let’s say, a book about Britney Spears’ hairstyle shenaningans, I would have been annoyed instead of intrigued, and the whole thing would have gone into the recycle bin without a second look.
How would you react if you received a package like this? Click on this link to tell me, or to make any other comments. Please tell me if I have permission to publish your comment publicly. I’m thinking of gathering the responses into a blog post (which is also an easy way for you to get a link from my site—just include your URL in the e-mail).
Friends Who Want to Help
The Best-Conceived JV I’ve Seen
Do you do Joint Ventures? As I hinted last month, I’m helping to orchestrate a particularly exciting one, involving celebrities, politicians, environmental education, kids, quilts and all sorts of other cool stuff that appeals to the media and will get you coverage and contacts. We’re planning ahead on this–want to get commitments this year for ramping up early next year and a launch that ties in with Earth Day next spring–but don’t wait to get involved. If you’d like to receive an invitation as soon as we’re ready, please use this link to tell me (and let me know if you think of yourself as more of a marketer, or more of an environmentalist).
Unfamiliar with Joint Ventures? Basically, we partner with you, you tell your own contacts (like the readers of your e-zine or blog), and if people make purchases from your link, you earn a commission.
30-minute No-Cost Consultation with Scott Cooney from Green Business Owner, and a Cool-Looking Sustainability Game, Too
Scott gave me one of these consultations, and I very much appreciated his fresh perspective. He’s also just developed a very spiffy-looking game on sustainability themes, set in Hawaiii. To get your consult, visit GreenBusinessOwner.com, and then click on the Consulting link on the top menu. For the game, go directly to this link.
Two Book-Publishing Conferences:
D’vorah Lansky’s Online Book Marketing Conference
Check out the amazing speaker line-up for the 3rd Annual Book Marketing Conference Online–I now almost all of them and can vouch for their good work. And this one has a series of free preview calls, too.
* Kathleen Gage: “Become an Online Bestselling Author in Today’s Crowded Author’s Market”
* Carolyn Howard-Johnson: “Your Awards: How to win them and then use them to set your book apart”
* Brian Jud: “Selling More Books, More Profitably to Non-Bookstore Buyers”
* Lynne Klippel: “Going Beyond the Book: Fast, Easy Product Creation for Authors”
* Jill Lublin: “Be the News”
* Connie Ragen Green: “How to Repurpose Your Existing Content to Become a Bestselling Author”
* Marnie Pehrson: “Using Social Media to Create a Buzz About Your Book”
* Penny Sansevieri: “Maximize and Monetize Social Media -3rd Annual Book Marketing Conference”
* Felicia J. Slattery: “How Authors Can Create a Signature Speech to Build Platform and Sell More Books”
* Dana Lynn Smith: “The Secrets to Planning a Profitable Virtual Book Tour”
* Steven E. Schmitt: “How I made millions by listening to my intuitive voice”
* Noah St. John: “Attract More Money Blueprint: Your Hidden Power for More Wealth and Happiness”
* Denise Wakeman: “The Secret to Author Blog Success: How to Dominate Your Niche with a Book Blog”
Get the details at: https://www.bookmarketingmadeeasy.com/center/idevaffiliate.php?id=139
Publishing Conference in Nevada Next Month
This is taken directly from a press release I received: PubWest, the leading trade association for small- and medium-sized book publishers, is pleased to announce the full agenda for the PubWest Conference 2011 in November. The programming includes notable keynotes by Len Riggio, Chairman of Barnes & Noble; Tyson Cornell of Rare Bird Lit; and Kevin Smokler, author of the forthcoming essay collection Practical Classics. Sessions include intensives on Digital Publishing and Creating EPUBS with Adobe InDesign CS5.5, Exploration and Discussion of the Chicago Manual of Style’s New 16th Edition with Alice Levine, Evaluating the Effectiveness of Social Marketing, Optimizing Digital Production Workflows, Improving Your Publishing Company’s Profitability, Product Line Branding and Permissions, “Green” Publishing, Faceoff between Traditional and New Social Media, Enhanced E-Books, Metadata and Discoverability, plus lively and interactive roundtables held by professionals in the industry.
Registration: www.pubwest.org/conference. More info: kent@pubwest.org
The Living Organization
Tough times call for better ideas – Packed with powerful insights, tools, and practices, this book is a potent resource for aspiring, emerging, and seasoned business leaders alike. Norman Wolfe reframes and broadens our understanding of how organizations can create better results. Every leader, every CEO, board member and senior executive will benefit from the practical guidance this book provides. The Living Organization – check it out: https://bit.ly/puW6nt
Hear & Meet Shel
October
- Speaking at Bioneers-By-The-Bay, wonderful conference October 21-23 in New Bedford, MA, https://www.marioninstitute.
org/connecting-for-change My talk is Sunday October 23: signing books at 12:30-1 p.m. at Bakers Books tables inside the Butterfly Exhibition Tent, then presenting Getting Buy-In: Building Stakeholder Consensus for Sustainability, at Bristol Community College, 800 Purchase St., Conference Room. Note: this is the very first time I’m giving this talk, aimed at activists, government leaders, and green business owners. Lots of good nitty-gritty stuff about how to analyze and reach your market. - October 28 and beyond, my interview on Good And Green Radio will be available at https://wgrnradio.com/archive-
good-and-green-radio-with- susan-davis/
- I’ll be walking the floor in the afternoon at the Green Expo Opportunity Fair in Springfield, MA, at the MassMutual Center. Let me know ahead if you’d like to meet there.
- November 15, 8:00 pm ET/5 pm PT, January Jones interviews me: 818-431-8506
- November 16, 7 pm ET/4 pm PT: Interviewed on Your15Minutes Radio’s “Brand This” with Shaun Walker and Reid Stone, www.your15minutesradio.com
- November 17, 11 a.m. ET/8 am PT: Interviewed by Susan Rich on “Get Noticed Now.”
- 1/4/12: Visit https://bigamericangiveaway.
com/ – I’m that day’s Massachusetts sponsor, and I’ll have some cool stuff for you.
Another Recommended Book: Brandwashed
Brandwashed: Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy, by Martin Lindstrom (Crown, division of Random House, 2011)
Both as a marketer and as a consumer, you want to understand the psychology of modern-day marketing (and especially the particular marketing subset called advertising). Without a clear picture of just how deeply manipulated we are, at a level not even dreamed of when Vance Packard wrote The Hidden Persuaders back in the 1950s, you will be defenseless against the continual assault on your wallet.
Martin Lindstrom, an industry insider who has helped big brands go deep into their consumers’ minds and come out the other end with fistfuls of money, turns his attention to explaining how these companies get inside your brains, and what they do once they get there.
While he certainly pays attention to the traditional buy triggers, like fear, sex, celebrity, spirituality, fear, and nostalgia—each of which gets its own chapter—the real news in this book is the evolution of companies’ knowledge about us, and how they manipulate every aspect of your “buyer experience,” through a huge range of tools, to create the desired effect: a ravenous, insatiable hunger for the company’s brand.
This well-written and well-researched book should give anyone pause. But perhaps the scariest part is how early it starts. Marketers have known for many years that buying habits and brand loyalties acquired in childhood can shape lifelong preferences. That’s why, for instance, computer companies value the elementary education market so highly.
But it starts much earlier than that. Literally, the music you hear, the smells you experience in the womb can influence your choices all through life. And peer pressure has been documented at 14 months old.
The positive side of this is that these sensual memories can help with things like stroke recovery. But the Big Brotherish part of it is disturbing. Add in such factors as the deliberate manipulation of fear to literally make us stupid and not only do you have a commercial marketer’s paradise, but also (here I’m extrapolating from Lindstrom) the easy ability to whip up patriotic fervor to justify evil actions by governments (think about the manufacture of anti-Jewish sentiment during the Holocaust, or anti-Muslim sentiment in the US following 9/11, with the media cheering on the crackdown in both cases).
Another key insight: when we encounter arousing images, we perceive ourselves as sexier. (This is what psychologists call “transference.”) No wonder so much of advertising features sultry women and hunky men. And according to his research, straight men are a major, if hidden, market that responds to those pictures of hunky men. Also, the male who is conscious of his own beauty and spends lavishly on personal care products/services is a hot new trend.
Celebrity marketing is related to this; we perceive ourselves as increasing our status and power when we read and watch those with high status and power—they are our idealized future selves. Celebs (including various royal families) feed into this and deliberately manage their personal brands very carefully.
Concerned about privacy? Basically, it no longer exists. Data mining is far more sophisticated now, and companies can create incredibly detailed profiles not just segment-by-segment, but person-by-person. They know who you are, what you wear, what you eat, where you work, where you are (if you use a cell phone), and how long you’ve spent on which web pages. Not only do we voluntarily reveal enormous amounts of information about ourselves to companies like Facebook and Google (and some companies have learned how to subvert the privacy safeguards and harvest this), but there’s plenty of data collection going on without our consent, too. And data mining companies sometimes require their customers to provide more data if they want the service.
But wait! There’s more!
- Some products, notably in the cosmetics industry, do the opposite of what they promise, thus feeding more purchases because the wearer thinks, “I must not have put enough on.”
- 60 percent of teens think they can buy their way to happiness with the right brands (and many of them will outright reject unbranded items)
- While brands are seen as a path to self-esteem, knowingly buying a counterfeit lowers self-esteem
- Nostalgia marketing has hooks back to our earliest childhood; we long for simpler times before we had grown up worries, and will welcome even products we ignored at the time
- GPS-like devices on shopping carts allow stores to track individual movement patterns in the store—while digital price signage allows companies to actually change prices to reflect trends at different times of day
- Receiving advice that seems to be expert shuts down our critical thinking, even if the expertise is weak or is really celebrity in disguise)—and word-of-mouth from a trusted friend or colleague *definitely* counts heavily
Lindstrom ends the book with a complex experiment he set up, giving a real family a mission to influence the buying habits of their friends. The results are shocking; go read the book to learn what happened, and to learn many more startling tidbits than I had room to describe. (See, now I just implanted a suggestion to you. I’m not being paid in any way to recommend this book and am not using my Amazon affiliate code. But I’d love to see whether my self-perception as a trusted expert translates into sales that bear out Lindstrom’s hypothesis, despite my transparency about it —so if you buy the book on my say-so, please drop me a note: mailto:shel@frugalfun.com?subject=IBoughtBrandwashed .) Please tell me if I have permission to publish your comment publicly. I’m thinking of gathering the responses into a blog post (which is also an easy way for you to get a link from my site—just include your URL in the e-mail).
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