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The Clean and Green Club, February 2022

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Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip: February 2022

A Marketing Lesson from Bad TV

Licensed under Creative Commons

So many times, I hear some buzz about a TV show that some of my friends are raving about. But when I watch the first episode, I’m either not moved, or moved to disgust. My friends tell me, “Give it a chance, it gets better.” They tell me that it takes time for the writers, actors, and directors to work the kinks out and figure where the story is going.

Here’s the thing: my time is valuable to me and I don’t find watching TV physically comfortable in the first place (I get headaches, tired neck and upper back, and tired eyes). So, if you want me to keep watching, you’ve got to make it worth my while in the first episode, and keep it worth my while. TV is never going to be a have-to for me. I lived completely without it from age 10 to 12. When my mom finally got a replacement set, I watched constantly for about a month and then went back to watching almost no TV. The exceptions were “All in the Family” and occasionally, “Laugh-in.” I would have liked SNL, but those were the days when you had to watch in real time, and as a morning person, it was too late in the evening for me.

Three things happened that brought me back to TV: first, in December, 2019, my son-in-law gave me a Google Chromecast device, letting me display anything I can see in the Chrome browser on my laptop on the single TV we own, with a bigger, clearer screen and better speakers than any of our computers. Next, the pandemic hit, and all of a sudden, we weren’t going to concerts, plays, or parties—and I finally started using the Chromecast: watching London theatre, archival superstar rock concerts, and European orchestras on the big screen. And third, after living with us for a few weeks in May, 2020 (and turning us on to the first series we watched all the way through), our other child’s partner added us to his Netflix subscription. So now, typically, we turn on the tube once every week or two.

TV has improved enormously since I last watched regularly (when my kids, now 34 and 29, were toddlers). We were enchanted with “The Good Place” and watched all four seasons, despite my skepticism of the big plot flip after the first season. We watched a fascinating four-episode show called “Unorthodox,” about a Chassidic woman who leaves her community in Brooklyn to create a secular life in Berlin. And we made our way through “The Queen’s Gambit,” with its feminist/youth empowerment themes and window into the very odd world of professional chess. Now we’ve just finished the second season of “Orange is the New Black,” with its deeply psychological and sociological approach to the diverse characters within a women’s prison. It took us about a year to get through the first two seasons.

But even though I knew they’d get better, after just one episode, I rejected “West Wing” because even as a politics junkie, I found the situations dated and less-than-intoxicating, and “Schitt’s Creek” because I didn’t want to waste one more minute hanging around with an unpleasant, dysfunctional, narcissistic family of formerly wealthy people in a retelling of “Green Acres.” I rejected several others after one or two episodes.

I recognize that many people are more patient than I am about this, and will invest time into four or five bad episodes to start getting the good ones. Outside of the TV world, I’m actually a very patient person. I’m the one who will scrape the last bit out of a jar or out of the food processor. And that same patience underpins my huge faith in the transformational power of business and in the ability of ordinary people to create a society that works well for everyone—beliefs that require extreme patience!

But despite my impatience with bad TV, I’m actually the kind of viewer that producers and broadcast outlets should woo. I am considered an influencer. I write books, publish newsletters, and give talks. I’ve just told 4,000 of you about four TV shows you might want to watch and two more that I didn’t feel were worth my time.

So maybe TV producers should spend a bit more effort providing an experience that people like me not only will sit through, but enthuse over. Next month, we’ll look at some brands that figured that out and created such a positive user experience that it built their entire brand.

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.

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.

Influence People

Influence People: Powerful Everyday Opportunities to Persuade that are Lasting and Ethical by Brian Ahearn

Because Ahearn is only one of 20 people in the world who’ve been personally trained and certified by Robert Cialdini, I was attracted to this book. Cialdini is considered one of—and possibly THE—world’s leading experts on influence. I’ve known of his work for many years. But his book has a reputation for being a challenging, slow read, and I’ve never gotten around to it. The promise of a much more easily digested version was persuasive.

Ahearn starts right in on page 3 by turning PEOPLE into an acronym: Powerful, Everyday, Opportunities, Persuade, Lasting, Ethical. In Chapter 2, he introduces seven influence principles: Reciprocity, Liking, Authority, Consensus, Consistency, Scarcity, Unity (pp. 12-25). These two groups of words provide focus points throughout the book. Much later, he introduces a third: PAVE—Public, Active, Voluntary, Effort (pp. 128-130).

Some of my favorite tips and insights:

  • Likeability is reciprocal; the things you like about someone help them like you as well (first introduced on p. 16 and brought back several times including the very end, on page 144).
  • Asking rather than ordering someone will often achieve better results (pp. 21-22) and creates a sense of commitment, of buy-in (p. 122).
  • Shared identities, interests, actions, or experiences lead to feelings of unity, consensus, and likeability (first introduced on pp 24-25).
  • In pricing negotiations, the person who makes the first offer is in a position of strength, provided that person has a better offer already prepared (p. 28). Interestingly, this is the opposite of the advice in much sales training.
  • Consistency is about THEM; authority is about YOU (p. 29).
  • If we lead our persuasion attempts with research, we have much more authority, and better odds (p. 49).
  • Right and wrong ways to respond to a thank-you, and why (p. 52).
  • Different synonyms are treated differently: people are more likely to say they’d like to buy an inexpensive rather than a cheap car—and I remember a real-world video survey that asked people if they’d rather have the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare. ACA won out by a large margin—but they were two names for the same law (p. 70).
  • An advance gift, even a nearly worthless one (like address labels in a charity mailing) stimulates reciprocity more than a promise of later, much greater benefit (pp. 75-76).
  • The cost and value of advice depends a lot on who is giving the advice; expertise builds authority (p. 85)—but so does social proof (p. 90).
  • Our careers are central to our identity; we don’t believe a back-stabber who tells us it’s just business, nothing personal (p. 99).
  • There are techniques to “armor plate” your customer’s loyalty to you, based on the seven principles (pp. 100-101).
  • Living up to our personal branding raises the bar and forces us to be better people (p. 105).
  • Acknowledging weakness/mistakes and apologizing can be very powerful (he tells a great story of a personal experience of this) (p. 106).
  • If you want results from social proof, frame things positively. My extrapolation, which Ahearn stops short of, would be to focus on the bravery and foresight of the small minority—make them feel special (p. 110). He also brought in a great interpretation of a study that showed older people more honest than younger cohorts. Instead of dissing the later generations for their lack of honesty, he wryly notes that as people age into more wisdom, they trend toward more honesty (pp. 138-139).
  • Do the groundwork: what Cialdini calls “pre-suasion” (p. 124).
  • When creating products, bring in the demographic of your target market; if you’re writing a book for teenagers, have a teen co-author, for example (p. 127).
  • Reinforce good outcomes by focusing on what the person is doing RIGHT (p. 139)

I have issues with some of Ahearn’s advice and conclusions. He, an insurance salesman, derisively described a pair of canvassers who knocked on his door, got him to sign a petition, and then to his apparent shock, used Cialdini-esque social proof strategies to try for a donation. Perhaps he didn’t realize that canvassers are usually commissioned salespeople who get paid based on what they collect for the organization—and that they were using the very techniques he extolls. Similarly, I was shocked by his suggestion not to make eye contact on the streets. I make eye contact and I SMILE at people, and most of them smile back. It brings light into the darkness and fosters a human connection, however brief. Inferring from context, he’s talking about situations in which eye contact is likely to lead to an unpleasant interaction—but he neglects to clarify that and could be misinterpreted.

Connect with Shel

Turn Your Sustainability/CSR Report Into Powerful Marketing!  http://goingbeyondsustainability.com/turn-that-nobody-reads-it-csr-report-into-a-marketing-win/

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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