13 Nov, 2023
Book Reviews, Clean & Green Club, Clean and Green Marketing Newsletter, Recommended Books
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Shel Horowitz’s Clean and Green Marketing Tip: November 2023
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Don’t Let ANYONE Tell You This is a Good Idea
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Photo Credit: Andrea Piacquadio via Pexels
I tried to watch an SNL skit sent to me by a marketing colleague. First, a hoodie ad at 2:49–so I went and did something else. I have plenty of sweaters and almost never buy from online ads. Then they hit me with a 49-minute ad for some nutritional thing. No way to fast-forward to the end, so I exited immediately. And I never got to see the skit.
Good morning, YouTube. Didn’t anyone ever tell you that pissing off your customers is not a smart business strategy?
Never mind the mismatch of message and market (I don’t purchase nutritional supplements other than vitamins)—you don’t hit ANYONE with a 49-minute infomercial when they want to watch a three-minute video. The only thing YouTube accomplished with this was that henceforth, if people ask what video platform I recommend for their content, the answer will be Vimeo. And if I were running that nutritional company, I’d be hiring a different Chief Marketing Officer. It’s totally desirable to offer a 49-minute infomercial to those who are seeking detailed information—though it would be much better to offer a dozen 3-minute videos covering specific aspects plus an overview. But it’s totally counterproductive to jam it into the eyes and ears of people who weren’t even looking for that type of product. This unfortunate company actually paid YouTube to piss me off. Ugh!
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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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From What Is to What If: Unleashing the Power of Imagination to Create the Future We Want
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From What Is to What If: Unleashing the Power of Imagination to Create the Future We Want
by: Rob Hopkins (Chelsea Green, 2019)
When I did my TEDx talk several years ago, I called it “‘Impossible’ Is A Dare!” So I was primed to love a book that looks at possibility as both an open door—and a door opener. And indeed, I loved it!
Hopkins, co-founder of the Transition Towns movement and of Transition Town Totnes (the community in the UK that created the concept), envisions a world where it’s always OK to ask questions, to try out new ideas, and to think holistically at local, regional, national, and global levels. He envisions societies that embrace—and democratize—the arts, follow patient-centered/student-centered health and educational models (including Reggio Emilia, p. 93, which was the educational model used by the elementary school my own kids attended), use biomimicry to harness nature’s wisdom develop over eons, and more.
While many of his examples are drawn from either the Transition Town movement or living experiments around the UK, he goes well beyond these sources, drawing on currents as diverse as comedy improv, art therapy, temporary takeovers of town squares and other public spaces—all leavened with a lot of play and humor—in locations as widespread as: Bolivia; rural Iceland; Jackson, Mississippi; Mexico including both extremely rural Chiapas and extremely urban Mexico City; Bologna, Italy; both modern and ancient China, to name a few. His thinking is influenced by practical visionaries from speculative fiction authors Moshin Hamid of Pakistan and Ursula LeGuin of the US to today’s Extinction Rebellion global youth movement.
Some of it we’ve heard before, like making sure to get away from our screens and devices and out into nature, get off social media and into real-world human-to-human connections. And some might be new, like the idea that “boredom is your imagination calling you” (p. 79).
A lot of it is telling the stories of people who dared to think and feel differently—and then build new and different kinds of experiences, institutions, and even entire communities out of those new thoughts and feelings—from the movement to declare all of London the UK’s first city-wide national park (pp. 62-64, 126-128) to a school system that supplies its cafeterias with student-grown organic food (p. 155) to asking the kinds of questions that create longing and wonder (p. 126).
Hopkins himself asks great questions, including how would we need to evolve democracy to replace “the imagination-devouring dragon of endless growth and economic development…with something more humane, more interesting, and better suited to meet the needs of the people and the planet?” (p. 142, and his answer posits the creation of a national Ministry of Imagination that would be involved in all aspects of governance).
Each chapter title is actually another sweeping question:
- What if we took play seriously?
- What if we considered imagination vital to our health?
- What if we followed nature’s lead
- What if we fought back to reclaim our attention?
- What if school nurtured young imagination?
- What if we became better storytellers
- What if we started asking better questions?
- What if your leaders prioritised [he’s British] the cultivation of imagination
- What if all this came to pass?
For Hopkins, imagination in all its forms, and the art across many disciplines that it generates, is essential—and he says it’s long past time for the educational system to acknowledge its importance. After noting that creative pursuits generate more jobs than aerospace, automotive, fossil fuels and life sciences together, he continues:
Being involved in art at school can increase cognitive abilities by 17 percent and improve attainment across all subjects. Students from low-income families are three times more likely to get a degree and twice as likely to vote if they do art in school. They are also more employable. (p. 88)
Ask yourself—and your government—the sorts of questions Hopkins does. And read this book. It could change your life.
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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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