10 Jul, 2023
Clean & Green Club, Hear and Meet Shel
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Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip: July 2023
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What Got Left Off His List?
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In a recent newsletter, Ian Brodie discusses having a signature style for your public-facing writing: the stuff that you write to draw an audience specifically to YOU (or, fellow writers-for-hire, for your client). You might have to subscribe to see it; I had to subscribe (again) to get into the archives so I could share the direct link. He describes several possibilities in some detail:
- Cause-motivated maverick
- Serious expert
- Charming and funny
- Angry ranter
- Experienced friend
Brodie recognizes that his list is not complete. And here’s one I’d add: Passionate purveyor (PP).
I think a lot of you are probably PPs: you run some kind of artisan business where quality and craftsmanship matter far more than volume. Maybe you make the product, maybe you sell or service it. Maybe you run a retail store that showcases your curation of those kinds of products, and you don’t just put stuff on the shelves but work with your customers to understand their needs and help them sort through the offerings to find the perfect one for them at that exact moment.
Two days before writing this, my wife and I spent $2000 on a bed set from someone who did just that. Yes, we probably could have saved a few hundred dollars elsewhere—but even as frugal as I am, I wanted the guidance. (And I bought the floor model, which knocked the $3800 price down by $1800). We went to three bed and mattress stores that day, starting with the one that got the sale. The other two convinced us that we had made a good choice not just in what we bought, but in whom we bought it from.
You want to be the best so your customers and clients will fall in love with what you do (and, perhaps subconsciously, by extension you want them to fall in love with you—nothing wrong with that!). You might do this through your sales floor personnel (as the bed store did), but also with personal touches in your signage: the way you describe a certain cheese, or an incisive book, or the comfort and quality of the all-natural fabrics you use—in short, telling the product’s story in a compelling way.
My first understanding of the power of the PP approach harnessed to story-based copywriting was through Drew Kaplan’s DAK catalog in the 1980s. I think he could probably have fascinated me into wanting to buy a cardboard box. While I would only buy a few items a year from him, I would eagerly devour the catalogs, reading about products that didn’t interest me at all just to catch his enthusiasm—his passion. The link above takes you to an archive that allows you to download any of the catalogs just by clicking on the cover, no charge.
If this is what you do, make it very clear in your marketing. People will pay more to do business with experts who understand how to find the best match for each and every buyer—who understand that one size never fits all, who can make them feel special and send them home with exactly the right thing.
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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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Fantastic Fungi (Movie)
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Fantastic Fungi
Directed by Louie Schwartzberg
I’ve been fascinated by the intricacy of nature for decades and began to pay attention to non-animal natural systems around 1971, when I took high school electives in ecology and field biology. I remember discovering the book The Secret Life of Plants a few years later—and listening to Stevie Wonder’s album with the same title when HE discovered the book. At the Bioneers-by-the-Bay conference in 2005, I heard the late Dr. Lynn Margulis give a fascinating slide talk on the secret life of bacteria (the link will take you to her section of my report; only rough notes on the beginnings of her talk, as I couldn’t take notes in the dark when she ran the slide show). I’ve known for several years that trees not only communicate with each other but act in ways that benefit the forest even if that collaborative action puts the individual at risk—just as people sometimes do. And for at least a few years I’ve known that the primary inter-tree communication system is the underground mycelial network: in other words, fungi.
Neither plant nor animal, fungi are the most diverse kingdom in nature, with something like a million species. About 20,000 of those species produce mushrooms as their reproductive organs. And this movie tells some of their astonishing story—including (and this I’d never heard before) that the evolutionary tree of mammals branched off from mycelium. If it was controversial even as recently as 98 years ago to claim that humans are descended from other primates such as apes, imagine the backlash when people start hearing that we’re descended from mushroom networks!
“Fantastic Fungi” would be worth watching for the cinematography alone. Time-lapse movies allow us to see the opening and blossoming of dozens of mushrooms, often in clusters and sometimes accompanied by plants opening right next door. The natural landscapes run the gamut from dense forests to arid canyons. It’s as visually stunning as a Jacques Cousteau film.
But there’s so much more in this roughly hour-long movie (the YouTube version I saw was an hour and twelve minutes and included material before and after the actual film). The filmmakers interview a number of leading-edge scientists across several disciplines such as ethnopharmacology, as well as food writer/chef Eugenia Bone and natural wellness celebrity Dr. Andrew Weil. They also interview two cancer patients who were part of a clinical trial involving psylocibin, both of whom described the experience in deeply spiritual terms.
Are you wondering, why is Shel reviewing this movie—what does it have to with environmentally- and social-equity-friendly business or how social change happens? I would make the case that it’s directly relevant. Understanding the natural world, the complexities of interdependent species across different kingdoms and the threat to civilization if these networks are destroyed is crucial to preserving them, and thus preserving humans on Earth. And it happens that the day I watched the movie and wrote this review, I also became aware of an attempt to pass a law in Brazil that would trash the Amazon basin and evict indigenous people so the whole thing could be industrialized—cutting off the regenerative system that is probably keeping our planet alive. Understanding the fungal world seems like an important first step in protecting that natural heritage, in the Amazon and elsewhere.
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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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