No-Harm Marketing Ethics by Marcia Yudkin
I’ve been following Marcia Yudkin for a long time. We met in the 1980s when I hired her to do some freelance editing. I watched her marketing career evolve, and we were two-thirds of a three-person mastermind group that met regularly for a couple of years. I was one of the presenters for her first No-Hype Copywriting summit.
I’ve always admired her for:
- Authenticity
- Willingness to buck the trends and stand up for integrity
- Highlighting the introvert’s perspective that too many marketers ignore
- Positive focus in her marketing copy
- Intense study of the marketing world—so her many diversions from “the way marketers do things” are deliberate opposition to the wrongs she sees.
This brief ebook took me well under an hour to read—time well-spent.
She starts by noting that she had wrestled with the question of whether marketing is innately evil—but concluded that it’s not marketing itself that’s evil, but marketing that’s out of integrity with the marketer or the client—that represents the product, the marketer, or the prospect in inauthentic, condescending, or untruthful ways.
Then she moves into 12 no-harm marketing principles, which make up the bulk of the book. Her advice includes discouraging buyers whose needs won’t be met by the product (including those who want to buy something similar to what they’ve already bought but haven’t implemented yet), rejecting manipulative practices and sneaky return-discouraging tricks, marketing through positive benefit rather than fear or other negative emotions—and building personal customer/client relationships based on mutual trust. And of course, being scrupulously honest in your copy and all your client interactions.
I also appreciate the attention Yudkin puts into environmentally- and user-friendly packaging, promoting social justice values and common humanity, and encouraging diversity—areas that far too many marketers ignore.
From her introvert perspective, she has a fascinating insight into the much-ballyhooed concept of social proof—the idea that so many others have taken the step, so of course, you should too. She describes the unintended consequences when marketers’ social proof attempts caused her to back away from the purchase because she didn’t want her purchase displayed for others to see. Social proof has its place, but it’s certainly not a panacea. And it can be used in ways that don’t compromise privacy—such as my own use of testimonials or guest essays—with full permission—by credible experts like Seth Godin, Frances Moore Lappe, and Jack Canfield in my own 10th book, Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World.
After admonishing marketers to know and follow the laws and best practices in their industry, she ends with a simple but brilliant 8-point checklist: if you can answer yes to the first four questions and no to the last four, chances are you’re good to go.
You can get your choice of PDF or Kindle format at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1044614