Micah points us to this campaign from Tumi Luggage. Buy some nylon luggage, they’ll plant some trees (one tree? A bush? It’s not clear how many trees per suitcase). It’s entirely possible that Tumi’s campaign is nothing short of generous, but as a consumer, it’s awfully difficult to tell.
The easiest marketing promise to make is to say you’ll do something green if people consume what you sell. That you’ll support one green cause or another. No one is in charge of checking out your story, and my guess is that 90% of the time, it leads to a net negative–more landfill, more carbon, more waste.
I can still remember a car commercial that ran when I was a teenager… during the first big energy crisis. It touted that a certain brand of car was the one to buy, not because it got better mileage, but because it had a bigger tank! "Range," the announcer intoned, "is what you need in a car."
Consumers aren’t stupid (we’re dumb sometimes, but not stupid.) So, when the backlash hits, when every single brand has used up some green angle, then what?
Here’s what’s missing: a number. When you buy a fridge, there’s a big yellow sticker with a number about relative energy consumption. Now, we could argue all day long about how to figure out the right number (should the number on the fridge include data about the amount of energy needed to make the fridge in the first place?) but an imperfect number sure seems better than no number at all.
Drive to Philadelphia: 150.
Take Amtrak: 22.
Stick with the lightbulbs you have throughout your whole house until they burn out: 175.
Replace them all now with something better: 142.
Organic strawberries from California: 88
Frozen strawberries from California: 80
Apple from Dutchess County: 4
The power of a number is the effect we saw when they put a number on restaurants (Zagats) and wines (Parker) and gas mileage (the EPA). People notice a number, and they work to improve it. If every car sold in our country had a real-time gas consumption meter on the dashboard and the rear window, things would change very fast. The only change from the status quo would be the story (communicating impact) but marketing the story is our biggest challenge right now. Once we communicate the most efficient path, I think we’ll be delighted at how many people take it. Right now, marketers are doing a lousy job of that, devolving into short-term, often selfish come-ons. That’s not going to last and it’s not going to scale.
Marketers who truly care about the green thing should be scrambling right now to find a number or an organization that can defend the green brand. If not, it’s going to be worthless and a great opportunity for improvement is going to be lost.
May 3, 2008
Dave Pell has a brand new site.
It’s pretty simple. It gives you a popurls type view of the web for any search term you can imagine. Nicely done.
May 2, 2008
Just got some work back from a new copyeditor hired by my publisher. She did a flawless job. She also wrecked my work. Totally wrecked it.
By sanding off every edge, removing every idiom, making each and every fact literally correct, she made it boring and dry and mechanical.
If they have licenses for copyeditors, she should have hers revoked.
I need to be really clear. She’s not at fault. She did exactly what she was supposed to do. The fault lies in the job description, not the job. If the job description of your lawyer or boss or editor or client is to make sure everything is pure and perfect and proven and beyond reproach, they are making things worse, not better. (Unless you’re in the vaccine business).
Almost everything you do has some sort of copyediting filter. It might be the legal eagle or the graphic supervisor or the customer service police. They’re excellent at making round things fit perfectly through round holes.
Boring and ignored is fine with them, because no one complains.
Fortunately, copy editors have a remedy. It’s a word called STET. Which means, "leave it alone, it was fine." Time to teach that to your editors, wherever they may be. Maybe there should be a t-shirt.
If all you want is safe, have baby food for dinner. Just leave me out of it.
Chris sends us this classic "ad."
Today’s resolution: skip at least one meeting every day for the next two weeks. Watch what happens.
May 1, 2008
If it gets to the RFP stage, you lost.
Great business to business marketers (and profitable ones) make the sale long before that happens.
The RFP is an organizational punt, it’s a way of saying, "it’s all a commodity, we can’t decide, cheap guy wins."
The cheap guy, of course, never wins.
Owen Wilson starred in a really bad movie that came out a few months ago. Most notable: he didn’t go out to shill for it. No Colbert, no Daily Show, no Larry King.
Perhaps he’s nursing a bad cold, but my guess is that he didn’t want to extend his personal brand to promote a movie just because he was in it.
Here’s an interesting dichotomy:
Watch this because I’m in it
vs.
I’m in it because you’ll enjoy watching it.
Or,
I published a book so I need you to read it
vs.
There’s something you need to read, so I wrote about it.
Or
I’m fifty and I just made an album because it was time for me to make one.
vs.
These songs won’t let go of me and I want to share them with you because they matter.
The first is me-centric and explains that we’re promoting something that got made because we need to sell it. What we do is make stuff and sell it, and what you do is buy it or watch it. “I needed to make something to sell, here’s the best I could do.”
The second is you-centric. It starts with the needs and desires of the consumer and ignores the committees, the compromises and the economic realities. It says, “I found something for you, here it is.”
Most of the time, most b2b and most consumer products are sold on the basis of: Yes, there are other choices, but this is the one we make. I’m not sure that’s a good enough reason.
80% of the mail and promotion I get (and 98% of the ads) fall into this category. The enthusiasm of commerce, not of belief and pride.
[Apologies if I’ve given Owen motivations that weren’t accurate. Readers have let me know about his recent troubles, and I certainly meant no disrespect.]
April 30, 2008
Corey found this great insight into the way people think.
Twistori looks for certain words in the Twitstream.
We’re a pretty spoiled bunch (check out the ‘wish’ column).
Walter Hunt patented the safety pin almost 160 years ago.
It looks an awful lot like a fibula, which, of course, is used to hold your toga shut.
My friend Kevin has one (not a toga, a fibula). An old one. He’s very proud of it.
So, the question that Walter Hunt didn’t ask is this, "Why should I bother patenting the safety pin? It’s already been done. I mean, even John Belushi has a fibula."
Just about everything has a strike against it. It’s either already been done or it’s never been done. Ignore both conditions. Pushing an idea through the dip of acceptance is far more valuable than inventing something that’s never existed… and then walking away from it.
April 29, 2008
In radio operator lingo, you look for a strong signal to noise ratio. That’s the amount of good stuff (the message) that comes through the static (the noise.) You can use your squelch button to turn down the static, but if there isn’t enough signal, you don’t hear anything at all.
For a decade, the web kept delivering an ever better signal to noise ratio to me. I was able to hear more things, more clearly, in less time. Websites and email and my RSS reader were bringing me signals from everywhere, and processing them (and creating, I hope, new signal) was a joy.
Lately, I’m feeling noise creep.
Lately, the noise seems to be increasing and the signal is fading in comparison. Too much spam, too many posts, too little insight leaking through. I don’t use Twitter, but I know a lot of Twitter users are feeling this. So are folks who go to too many conferences. And don’t get me started on victims of Blackberry cc: disease.
I wish I could tell you the easy answer. I can’t. I just know that the faltering signal is a problem.
I just discovered that some of you recently received a piece of spam that began, "dear first name". Apparently, it was sent to people who signed up for an audio call I did several months ago.
This is obviously not my idea, and I’m really upset about it.
I have no idea who got the note, and it probably would make things worse to email everyone on the list apologizing, so instead I’m posting about it.
This is simple: Permission Marketing means delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who WANT to get them. The key word is want. Make it easy for people to sign up, but then give them exactly what you promise.
If you sign up for thing A and the fine print says you get thing B, that’s not permission.
All I can do is apologize. I’ll try to work harder to make sure that people I work with get this through and through. Sorry.
[Here’s a note I just got from my friend who sent the ouch note:
Dear Seth and Seth Godin fans,
Even the biggest Seth fans like me and supporters of Permission Marketing screw up from time to time. Today, that person is me. I have egg on my face and give your readers a glaring example of what NOT to do to communicate with a permission-based list and to build relationships with customers and clients
…I accidentally sent an email to some folks who opted in JUST for the Seth teleseminar series earlier this year. A big mistake…one that I didn’t realize until it was too late. To make matters worse, I left the standard "dear firstname" at the top of the email. What a brilliant disaster and royal mess. I did exactly the opposite of what I intended to do – to send a relevant message to a small group who gave me permission to send emails like the one I did.
I can’t undo the damage, but I can apologize and can make sure that you and your readers know that it was not intentional. I can only hope that you trust my integrity when I say that and trust that it won’t happen again.
I have learned the hard way what can happen when you send a hasty email without double-checking whether it’s going to the right people.
Moral: stuff happens. At least it wasn’t on purpose…]
April 28, 2008
