Help Empower a New Generation of Sustainable Designers

SUPER BOWL! Thanks to Pepsi's decision to spend their Super Bowl ad dollars on social change grants instead of crappy TV spots, Re-nourish is now deep in the game for a $50,000 Refresh Everything grant! But we really, really need your help for this. I know you're constantly bombarded by requests for help, for money, for time, but I am shamelessly asking for your vote. It takes just a few seconds, and it could change everything for us.

If you're a graphic designer, Re-nourish is a resource built just for you to sift through the greenwash to get to the real information about sustainable design. We believe that empowering designers to integrate sustainable design thinking into their work is the key to keeping our industry competitive in a rapidly changing economy.

If you're not a graphic designer, Re-nourish is still working on your behalf by reaching out to the creators of all the printed stuff you interact with every day, helping them make it better, safer, and more responsible.

The bulk of the money will go toward overhauling and expanding Re-nourish.com—making it more user-friendly, improving the interactive tools, adding new tools and educational resources, and so on. A good chunk will also go toward launching a couple of wider initiatives to make the supply chain all of us designers depend on more sustainable. So far this has all been a labor of love, but to really reach the growing number of working designers out there, we need you.

You can read all about our plans, and then you can vote for us—once a day, every day, through the end of February if you're so inclined.

All we gotta do is make it to the top 10 by the end of the month—and we're already well within range! So, please, take just a couple of seconds if you can spare it, and don't hesitate to leave any questions in the comments below.

The Problem with Green Marketing

The following post comes from my notes for Keeping It Real Green: How to Market Your Efforts in an Age of Greenwashing. I'm expanding this e-book (the new version is currently weighing in at 25 pages and is promising to get even longer), and I find myself still struggling with a number of both philosophical and practical questions.


Genius comedian Bill Hicks liked to call marketers the "ruiners of all things good." He wasn't far off the mark.

Marketing has always been an ethically conflicted business, and the act of green marketing requires us to face this conflict head-on. Marketing has one simple purpose: to foster the exchange of money for something of value (generally a service or product). Marketers, however, have traditionally been relegated to a discrete role within an organization's hierarchy, one that is siloed off from product development, operational logistics, and so forth. The result is that the marketer ends up investing himself not in value but in perception of value.

This difference is critical, because it cuts right to the heart of why marketing has for so long embraced the tactics of smoke and mirrors, rather than the development of true value to the consumer. Marketers simply have never been considered worth including in the value creation side of the equation—and they've been perfectly happy with that. Their job is to sell what already exists, and to do that, they must make the consumer feel a certain way about it, whether or not that feeling is based on the existence of something real.

Whether or not this is good or evil is beyond the scope of Real Green, though. My concern right now is with the implications this focus on perception over substance has for green marketing specifically. If the goal of the conventional marketer is to create a perception in the mind of the consumer—rather than match the consumer to something of real value—then the goal of the green marketer must be to create a perception of socio-environmental value in the mind of the consumer—regardless of whether that socio-environmental value truly exists in the thing being marketed.

This presents an inherent contradiction: if green means socio-environmental value, but marketing means perception over value, how can green marketing legitimately exist?

I believe it can, but I'm wondering if it hinges on changing the definition of marketing to one that moves beyond creating a mere perception in the mind of the consumer. If we accept that the marketer's job is to encourage the exchange of money for value, maybe it becomes an issue of equalizing that exchange. In other words, marketers have sacrificed measurable, demonstrable value and replaced it with smoke and mirrors—because it's a hell of a lot easier than being accountable for the crap you're marketing.

But if we refuse that allowance and instead require marketers to be able to measurably demonstrate the value of what they're marketing, all of a sudden we've created a more equitable exchange (which is what the whole thing is supposed to be anyway).

This would make green marketing a "simple" matter of marketing stuff with demonstrable socio-environmental value. To make this real, of course, businesses would have to give marketers a vested interest in operations and product/service development—so that the marketer is ultimately accountable for the thing s/he is marketing. Easier said than done of course, because nobody seems to want any accountability these days.

In the book Making Meaning: How Successful Businesses Deliver Meaningful Customer Experiences, the authors call for company-wide cultural change in order to develop products and services with real value:

"The team for creating meaningful experiences should not consist solely of any one profession but should integrate representation of the company's designers, researchers, developers, marketers, and senior executives at a minimum. The right team represents each of these functions and synchronizes their collaboration toward a shared outcome. Rather than one department or function "owning" innovation, the team owns the overall design vision and ensures that its delivery is consistently coordinated across the company...This ability to foster cross-boundary collaboration and to recognize that every major department has a role to play is critical to designing meaningful experiences because it heightens the likelihood that all customer touch points of the experience will be cohesive and consistent. Pursuing this type of collaboration also helps ensure more internal buy-in of the process and its results, typically accelerating development and increasing the intensity of everyone's participation." (Emphasis mine.)

The net effect of this cross-collaborative approach—in addition to the increased buy-in from marketers among other company players—is increased buy-in from customers as well. In other words, real value benefits more people, and more deeply, than smoke and mirrors. Unless the business sector recognizes this en masse, the green movement—and green marketing along with it—will spin its wheels.


I'd love to know what you think about all this. As I mentioned, this post is really a stream-of-consciousness lifted from my Real Green notes. It's a huge subject, but one that needs to be tackled if anything substantial is going to change in the world of business, marketing, and green. what say you?

Using Design Elements to Support Meaning

Nice example of meaning manifested through a carefully chosen design element:



The postcard above accompanied a magazine insert encouraging breast self-examinations. I'll bet it would have been even more effective had the emboss been of an actual breast, requiring the reader to actually practice a sort of self-exam.



[via directdaily]

Communication Breakdown

When your communication strategies aren't working, you probably identify with one (or more) of the following:

Marketing Fail #76

Please stop "combining" your years of experience with your business partners' to make your company sound more experienced than it is. If you're claiming to have "over 85 years of combined experience" in any specialty whatsoever, you're not fooling anyone.

It's just bad math, and it makes you look like you're trying too hard.

When Second Place (or Third) Means a Win for Graphic Designers Everywhere

Well, the results are in (sort of) for the Cooper Hewitt People's Design Award. My Re-nourish team has actually waited to post anything about the results because we were trying to find out what our final ranking was. Unfortunately, the Cooper Hewitt won't actually give us that information (nor will they release how many votes each nominee received).

Doesn't matter, though. The fact is, we placed in the top three, and we gave some pretty big players a run for their money. And way more important than that is that everyone who supported us sent a message that it's high time the design industry changes how it defines "good design."

Re-nourish believes design has to expand beyond politics, personalities, and mere aesthetics, and address—in real terms—both social and environmental impacts. Please read Re-nourish's full "thank you," because I think it says a lot about why we're doing this in the first place.

And please, let us know what your thoughts are—either here, or over there.

Thank you to everyone who voted, or has otherwise supported us as we continue to bring independent tools and information to working designers everywhere!

The Fun Theory

Making an action more fun makes people more likely to do it. We seem to forget this too often.

Re-nourish wins Sustainable Organization award in AIGA competition

We got the good word this weekend that Re-nourish placed third in AIGA's (re)designAwards competition, which recognizes "those designers whose work best represents an environmentally and socially sustainable approach in every element of their professional lives." We're obviously extremely excited to be recognized for our efforts—especially among such an impressive roster of winners—yet the three of us (myself, Eric Benson and Yvette Perullo) have found ourselves wondering aloud about the real implications of such an award.



I've always been on the fence about awards competitions—I've never entered any of Roughstock's work in one because I feel like I should be able to derive confidence in my work based on my own values, beliefs, and opinions rather than a judge's. And I know I'm not the only designer who thinks these competitions tend to lie somewhere between a beauty pageant and a popularity contest.

And while all three of us readily admit to feeling the occasional yearning for a pat on the back, we haven't put in hundreds of unpaid hours into this site to rack up compliments or awards—we've done it to make genuinely useful sustainability information accessible to all. Let me say that again: this information should be accessible. To everyone. But it's a huge undertaking, and it's hard. So to really make Re-nourish work, we need to use every decent tool we can to expose more people to our message.

This is why we've embraced entering Re-nourish in competitions. The truth—calculated as it may be—is that it gives us leverage. That, to me, is the most important thing if we want to put this information into the hands of designers everywhere. In other words, entering these competitions is not a way to prove ourselves (our user statistics and ultimate influence must do that for us), but as a strategy to increase our exposure and build credibility within our target audiences.

And yes, it does feel pretty good to get that pat on the back, too.

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It should go without saying but I'll say it anyway: we're hugely grateful to our support team of developers and contributors for all their hard work on Re-nourish. This win belongs to them, too.

Fun with Film Strips: A Guide to TV Advertising

I recently discovered a treasure trove of old filmstrips archived over at AV Geeks (no doubt!). I remember being fascinated by this one when seeing it in elementary school:



I wonder how many grade schools still teach kids about media literacy and critical analysis. I also distinctly remember a mathematics filmstrip featuring Donald Duck that taught principles of geometry using a pool table.

And then there's this 1971 gem about the emotional buying habits of consumers (who is that encyclopedia salesman, anyway?):



Be sure to peruse the AV Geeks online archives; it's a celluloid goldmine!

Screen Printing Adventures Part 1: Getting My Sea Legs

I've never screen printed before. Block printing (lino cut), yes. Screen printing, no. Holy heck, it ain't easy. With a new-found respect for print pullers, I figured I would post the process just to give those of you unfamiliar with the art some idea of what goes into it.

My adventures started with a stack of old New York Times Sunday editions in the corner of the apartment and an itch to get back to the good old fashioned art projects I used to do all the time. I figured the newspaper sheets were already poster-sized, so why not put them to good use instead of chucking them into the recycle bin?

I started reading. Asking around. Collecting supplies. Anticipating all the various disaster scenarios that were likely to occur. Screwed some hinge clamps to a board so I could set up shop on the dining room table. And then finally the weekend came.

The Work Area

I knew from the get-go I'd have to run the posters off in (very small) batches, since our lil' space is limited. To start, I screwed a couple of hinge clamps to a 2'x3' board that would serve as the main printing surface. (I made sure to place the hinge clamps just far enough apart that I can use the board for both my larger 16" x 20" screen and a smaller 8" x 10" version should I get the itch for that.) My printing area is nothing more than the kitchen table wrapped in newsprint, which provides ample room to hold the printing board, the ink and squeegee setup, and a stack of newspaper sheets.



Our clothes drying rack and a crapload of binder clips would hold the prints as they came off the table. Of course, that only holds 20 or so newspaper sheets but I figure once I get the hang of things, I can always rig up a couple of temporary clothes lines to hold more.

Getting the system down

The Captain (who was to be my assistant) was called out of town at the last minute to mix the biggest-selling band in Mexico, which left me a nice empty apartment in which to make a mess, curse under my breath at my constant mistakes without hurting anyone's feelings, and play Loretta Lynn just a little too loud in the background (quick aside: this experience afforded me some excellent iPod moments, including moving from the lovely Loretta Lynn straight into Too $hort...whoa).



I'm a planner, so my process was pretty well-coordinated:

1. Set up work area.
2. Prepare newsprint.
   This involved halving the full sheets and ironing them under a pillow case to try and get the creases out. The ironing helped a little, but I half-assed it and most of the sheets were still pretty creased. That shouldn't matter much, though, right? Heh. Wrong.
   
3. Tape off screen.
   So this was a brand new screen and I didn't degrease it. Probably not smart, but I figured this first pass was just going to be a solid block of white ink to create a fresh background for my print, and I'm using a stencil instead of photoemulsion chemicals. So I just used blue painters tape to tape off the screen edges. Clever lady that I am, I ran the squeegee over the tape sans ink to be sure it would travel smoothly. Not so much (the painters tape was too thick, and the squeegee kept catching at the edge). So I slapped some clear packaging tape over the edges to create a smoother surface.
4. Set up my registration.
   In order to keep your design (in my case, a giant white rectangle) in the same place on every sheet, you need to mark where the corners of each sheet should lie on the work surface. I just used a couple scraps of tape to mark the registration. When it comes time to print the actual design, I'll use a more exact system to be described later.
   
5. Mix the paint.
   I wasn't too sure how much paint I'd need, but I'd read a calculation that with water-based paints, one should allow about 1 cup of paint for 75 square feet of coverage. My sheets were about two square feet each, and with 20 sheets that gave me about 40 square feet—or just over a 1/2 cup of paint. I poured that amount of Speedball's standard water-based acrylic into a plastic cup, added a dallop of retarder and a dallop of extender (I wasn't sure if I should just pick one, but I figured it was a life lesson and went for broke), and stirred that sucker up.

And then all of a sudden, I realized I was ready to go.

Pulling the prints

And this it where it all went to hell. Actually, I should be more accurate: it all went incredibly smoothly, but my ink coverage was pretty terrible from start to finish. I'd read a whole lot about technique; what angle to hold the squeegee at (anywhere from 10-45°), how much paint to pour out, how to flood the screen before the actual pull, how hard to push down, et cetera and so forth. Boy was I ready.

I place the first sheet at the registration marks, and pour a thick line of ink along the bottom of the screen. I hadn't left much tape around the top and bottom edges, as the newspaper sheet was pretty tall and I didn't want 6" gaps of articles still visible. So, I lift the screen off the work surface slightly, and run the squeegee over the screen from bottom to top for the first flood stroke. I push down pretty hard to make sure I get full ink coverage across the screen, and it looks good. I drop the screen onto the work surface, and pull from the top down. Completely uneven! Wacky vertical streaks, and one thick horizontal streak where the newspaper was folded through its middle. Oops.




With each subsequent print I tried making little adjustments. I tried more and less paint (didn't seem to make much difference, though I did need to be generally pretty generous with it). I tried pushing harder on the flood. I tried pushing harder on the second pull. I tried adjusting the angle of the squeegee. Nothing completely eliminated the streaks. The best prints, though, were the result of generous ink, an almost completely upright squeegee, a single gentle flood stroke, and single hard second pull.

Troubleshooting

I suspect the terrible coverage was a result of several things, not least of which was the paper choice. Newsprint is thin, and these sheets weren't completely flat. Although I was doing no-contact printing, where the screen rests about 1/8" from the surface of the paper when it's down, I got zero snap-off (which is when the screen lifts itself off the paper after the pull...I think).

But I know I was probably butchering those pull strokes. Had I had an assistant, they would have held the screen up while I pulled the flood, holding the squeegee with both hands for a nice even coat. But I only had one hand, and I suspect my pulls were a little janky. I have arthritis, and this was also a lot harder on my wrists and hands than I expected. Maybe I was pressing too hard on the squeegee, but I can't imagine doing this for much more than the 20 sheets I did.




Finally, I have to wonder if either my ink mixing was off, or if not degreasing the screen was a huge mistake. I suppose I'll have to hit up some pros for input, and adjust on the next run. All said, although my prints are all uneven, I loved the process. Hopefully I'll figure out what I was doing wrong, and the next few runs will be better. My saving grace was that the crease marks were much less visible once the ink dried, and my hope is that subsequent layers will cover them up even more.

So stay tuned for round two, in which I attempt to lay down the first layer of the design.

Keeping It Real Green: PDF Now Available

Yep, I finally got a PDF version of Keeping It Real Green up and online:



> Click to Download <

It's begging to be expanded into a full-on e-book, so if there are additional issues or subjects you'd like to see covered, do let me know.

To read about the design thinking that went into the guide, or to order a hard copy version, go here and fill out the form at the bottom of the page.

Roughstock Posters to be Published in "Designing for the Greater Good"

Just got the good news that two political posters I designed will be published in Peleg Top and Jonathan Cleveland's upcoming Designing for the Greater Good: The Best of Cause-Related Marketing and Nonprofit Design. I'm pretty thrilled to be included in a collection that celebrates the power graphic designers have to impact the world around us, and I'm particularly honored to be featured next to some incredible designers.





Designing for the Greater Good is scheduled to be published by Crescent Hill Books in January of 2010.

Four Quick Email Marketing Tips

I don't usually do the standard top five tip list rigmarole, but I get a lot of email newsletters, and I'm noticing a few not-so-positive trends lately. So in the interest of easing the in-box crunch, you might want to think about the following issues before sending out that next email blast.

1. Don't send your email newsletter on Tuesday

There's always a lot of talk about the best day to send your e-newsletter, and apparently every single email marketer recommends Tuesday. I get maybe two dozen e-newsletters on Tuesday, and I can't handle it anymore. I know why this is, though: everyone's cranky on Monday because it's Monday, on Wednesday everyone's in a bad mood because it's hump day, on Thursday everyone's scrambling to get work done before the week ends, and on Friday everyone's checked out (either mentally or physically). So, Tuesday it is.

But maybe, just maybe, you should consider the possibility that picking a less-than-ideal day of the week is still better than getting lost among two dozen other e-newsletters.

2. Don't subscribe me without explicit permission. Ever.

I don't care if you think I'd be interested in your products. I don't care if we hang out on the same forum. I don't care if you paid good money for my name on a list. Subscribe me to your email newsletter without asking first, and you're getting instantly marked as junk.

I play by the three strikes rule (and I consider that generous): the first newsletter I simply unsubscribe from, then send to my junk mail folder. The second time, I reply directly with a complaint, and go through the whole thing again. If I get a third e-newsletter with no acknowledgment of my complaint, the sender gets reported to SpamCop. And I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one doing this.

3. Make sure I can unsubscribe easily

I know, I know. This tip ends up on every "Top 5 Ways to Improve Your Email Marketing" list on the internet, but hear me out. Probably 5% of the e-newsletters I get either have no unsubscribe link at all, another 5% have an unsubscribe link that doesn't work, and maybe 20% require a whole song and dance to get off the damn list. Keep it simple: put the link at the top and bottom of your email (text smaller than 8 points is unacceptable), make sure it works (you know, actually test it), and don't require the recipient to enter their name, address, password, and favorite breakfast cereal to unsubscribe. I promise you, the animosity you save will far outweigh the number of actual unsubscribes you get.

4. Double-check your subject line

In the last two weeks, I've had three separate email newsletters or announcements land in my in-box with either "DRAFT - please review: [subject here]," or "TEST." Accidents happen, sure, but this kind of accident seems to be happening more and more. I'm really not finicky, but it just looks lazy when an oversight like this happens. The subject line is a crucial component of your newsletter, and if you're not looking at it, you're making a big mistake. Not only is your e-newsletter more likely to end up in the spam folder, you end up looking, well, less than attentive.


Now, these tips aren't going to change your life, double your click-through rate, or land you a date to the prom. But they will help keep from mildly annoying your recipients. And in the world of marketing, that's really half the battle.

Keeping It Real Green: How to Market Your Efforts In an Age of Greenwashing

Now that green has become a marketable attribute for better or worse, everybody and their brother is pushing how green they are. And, given the general standards of our fine American culture, that means greenwashing is now just as ubiquitous. I've been watching a rather sad back-and-forth, in which more and more businesses claim they or their products are "green" and consumers roll their eyes and wag their fingers, for a while now. So when I was asked to speak on a panel about greening your business for San Francisco's Small Business Week, I figured it might be helpful to provide some guidance for attendees.

The result is "Keeping It Real Green: How to Market Your Efforts In an Age of Greenwashing," a short little piece of work written to help organizations connect with their customers without lying, misleading, or otherwise confusing the hell out of people. This is a pretty big kettle of fish to fry, of course, and it was difficult to get everything into such a compact format. But believe me, I tried! There's not a lot of fluff in here; this sucker is a legitimately informative resource for any business, however deeply involved in environmental issues it may be.

Get a free guide
Request a free copy using the contact page, or just download the PDF

The pamphlet is printed to order (no wasted overruns here) on French Paper's Speckletone, a 30% PCW recycled sheet made in the U.S. with 100% renewable hydroelectricity.

If you'd like a free copy of the pamphlet, you can request one using the contact page, or give me a call at (415) 643-0121.

I will be expanding this into a PDF, but it may take some time as I'm up to my eyeballs in content for the upcoming relaunch of re-nourish.com (another exciting project I'll talk about soon). The nice thing about the hardcopy version, though, is that you can keep it in your desk drawer for reference. Let me know what you think!

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Edited 7/22/09: For those of you who might be concerned about my decision to create a printed piece, rather than only produce a PDF version of the guide, please see the comments. A lot of thought went into this, and I've explained that thought process to a commenter who took issue with my terrible choice.

Edited 8/3/09: The PDF has arrived! Download Keeping It Real Green while supplies last!

Come See Me Talk About Greening Your Organization 5/19

I'll be joining a free panel discussion this coming Tuesday about greening your organization for San Francisco's Small Business Week, and we'll be focusing on local resources like the San Francisco Green Business Program. While this is geared toward the practicalities of small businesses, the panel (and accompanying day-long workshop, should you choose to stay) will be seriously helpful to any organization, commercial or nonprofit, looking for practical resources for reducing its environmental impact.

• Date: Tuesday, May 19
  Time: 11:00 am (full day runs 8:45-2:30)
  Location: SBA Entrepreneur Center, 455 Market St. 6th Fl., SF
  Cost: Free
  Register: http://leanandgreen.eventbrite.com/
• 8:45: How I Greened My Business
  10:00: What's In It For My Business
  11:00: Local Government Support and the SF Green Business Program
  11:45: State Support
  12:30: Networking lunch

So if you've been curious about the SF Green Business Program, and you'd like to hear about how it works, how it helps, and how to make the most of it to build your business, please swing by and say hello.

Note: Although registration is recommended, I'm pretty sure you can just show up without registering.

Food Carts: Two Approaches

In one sweep of my rss feed reader last week, I came across an interesting contradiction. Mission Local recently posted an article on the rising trend of food carts infiltrating the city:

"A declining economy has helped bring about a sudden proliferation of cart-carried delicacies that has elevated street food beyond the bacon-wrapped hot dog. In recent weeks, the Misson's food carteros—generally considered outside the high-tech realm—have been Twittering all the way to the bank, or at least to a following...

Low on cost and high on quality, in just a few short weeks the carteros have created a new Thursday-night dining venue as the carts are joined by other vendors and a rapidly expanding network of customers."

Selling everything from an "amuse bouche" of bite-sized strawberry tarts for $1, to a $5 curry plate, to spring rolls and créme brulees, these unlicensed vendors are creeping up all over the Mission. Interesting that they're relegated to this most hipster of neighborhoods; I wonder how this fare would fare in, say, tony Cow Hollow (not enough foot traffic?) or Pacific Heights. I suspect that the SF police would be far quicker to respond to the lack of proper licensing.

In the very next breath, John Emerson from Social Design Notes points us to what looks like a very cool advocacy project in NYC. The Street Vendor Project supports New York street vendors, providing education, political action, and a general community (there's strength in numbers).



The organization just released Vendor Power! (pictured above), a publication aimed at educating vendors about the city's vending laws, with the intention of preventing infractions and thereby reducing the number of tickets vendors are likely to incur for otherwise overly complex or arcane laws.

In other words, NYC cops are citing street vendors up and down, while SF cops haven't much noticed the growing number of non-Latino vendors. Familiarity breeds contempt, of course, so perhaps an SF crackdown is imminent (it sure will be as soon as SFPD discovers it can milk these vendors for a few extra dollars for the city coffers).

More Adventures in Direct Mail: SF Bike Coalition

Earlier in the week, I dissected the failings of a snail mail campaign that was sent to me by a local arts nonprofit. On that same day, I received another mailing, this time from the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, who couldn't have taken a more different approach. There was nothing particularly fancy about the envelope's presentation or contents, but it was clear that the group had invested a good deal of energy making this single mailing as effective as possible. Here's how I knew that:

• Bigger envelope means more bang for the buck.
  Although it was a standard 9" x 12" manila envelope, I knew there had to be something juicy inside to warrant such a large mailer. That thing was getting opened out of pure curiosity.
• One message, many materials.
  Turns out the mailing was intended to get my business on board with San Francisco's "Bike to Work Day." Small plugs for the SF Bike Coalition were cleverly scattered throughout the materials (including a copy of the group's newsletter), but they were all directly tied to the issue at hand: Bike to Work Day (the newsletter, for example, contained a Q&A about the event, among other BTWD features). Picking one message and reinforcing it throughout the mailing kept me from getting distracted, detached or confused.
• Appealing to your audience:
  "It is a known fact that employees who arrive at their workplace by bike are alert and productive and are generally healthier employees. Their employers reduce health insurance premiums and avoid costly employee benefit expenses like parking..."
  Overcome objections in advance.
  One of the best aspects of this mailing was the use of social marketing techniques (more on that later). From the opening of the introductory letter to the content of the newsletter, it was clear the Coalition had thought long and hard about what might prevent recipients from acting on their call for participation, and heading these objections off at the pass. The messaging was framed to address common employer concerns, including costs and employee productivity, which made it really easy to be won over.
• Provide the right incentives.
  Finally, the Coalition included a ton of materials to help its audience act on its request for participation in BTWD. Don't know the best way to implement the program among your employees? Follow the enclosed checklist. Unsure of which routes to take, or how hilly the streets are? Check out the enclosed San Francisco Bike Map. Need a way to get the word out to your employees? Post the enclosed BTWD poster. Looking for a fun team project? Take the enclosed Team Bike Challenge. Concerned about safety or getting stranded without a car? No worries, just check out the enclosed pamphlet explaining the San Francisco Emergency Ride Home program. And of course, if you want more info about the event or the Coalition itself, read the enclosed newsletter. Thinking ahead has allowed the Coalition to provide the answer to every potential question in advance, making it incredibly easy to participate.
  

These last two techniques are, as I mentioned, a significant component of social marketing (not to be confused with social media marketing, which relies on web 2.0 tools like Twitter or YouTube to spread a message). Social marketing is an incredibly effective way to encourage positive behavior change in individuals within a group context. It's a little broad to get too detailed here but the SF Bike Coalition, knowingly or not, has adopted several of its most successful principles:

1. They knew their behavior goal (employer participation in Bike to Work Day).
2. They knew their audience (employers with specific concerns about how BTWD would effect their employees health and productivity).
3. They addressed potential barriers for action (not enough information, too dangerous, too costly).
   
4. They included incentives to reinforce the behavior they were looking for (maps, team challenges, emergency rides home, posters).

Now, if they follow up with a phone call asking me if I participated, then they'll really be on point (after all, you need to measure if your campaign worked to know whether it's worth the investment). I only had two real issues with this mailing, and I have to admit they're not minor:

1. They failed to vet their mailing list (although I'm a San Francisco business, I'm not an employer), leading to a lot of wasted paper.
2. They included a lot of paperwork, much of which may get tossed.

That said, it's a relief to get a direct mail piece so thoughtfully directed to its audience. By taking all of the above into account during the design and writing stages, the group has vastly increased the likelihood of a positive response rate. The next time you send something to your constituents, I hope you'll consider these points, too.

How Not to Do Direct Mail

I just received a direct mail solicitation from a wonderful nonprofit that supports local photographers through exhibitions, education and youth mentoring. I wish so much they had taken a different approach with this mailing, because I can't imagine this one will yield the kind of response they're hoping for.

The package arrived in a standard white no. 10 business envelope. It contained a one-page letter, a semi-gloss, full-color, tri-fold brochure that unfolds into a 12" x 18" poster, and a self-addressed, unstamped reply envelope. What's so wrong with this?

• Concealing the goods.
  Why drop coin on a beautifully printed poster-sized piece, and then hide it in a nondescript envelope that makes it look like junk mail? Either gussy up the mailing container, or make the poster a self-mailer that begs to be unfolded immediately.
• Address anonymous.
  "Dear Friend" is no way to address someone when you're asking for their money. In this day and age of variable printing, there's simply no excuse. And if your marketing director doesn't know what variable printing is, you've got an even bigger problem.
  
• Not quite compelling:
  "Your membership is your ticket to a remarkable range of programs and benefits."
  So much copy, so little targeting.
  The front of this single 8.5" x 11" letter included a litany of member "benefits" directed at all kinds of different people—including artists, art lovers, collectors, and who knows who else. Simply laundry listing your organization's features and hoping readers are willing to pick and choose what matters to them is a great way to make sure nobody pays attention to anything. Pick an audience, and write exclusively to them.
  
• Features do not equal benefits.
  And here's another thing: listing what you offer doesn't explain how your audience will benefit. Don't tell me about your exclusive, members-only parties, tell me how I'll make important career connections and discover new trends before they hit the mainstream.
  
• Letterhead overload.
  I understand the desire to acknowledge a nonprofit's staff, board of directors, advisory committee, and curatorial council members, really I do. But if you're printing this on your letterhead, it means you're repeating this information with every single communication you send out. Why? It might hurt to hear, but you need to ask yourself if the reason has more to do with the staff's needs than your audience's.
  

But all this wasn't enough to turn me off and convince me not to give. No, the straw that broke the camel's back was the flip side of the letter. An entire page dedicated to a collaborative art project that I (little old me) was invited to participate in! How exciting, I thought. And all I have to do to be eligible is purchase a membership and send in my own mail art submission? I looked for the cost of membership on the accompanying brochure/poster. $50 ain't bad, considering I'd also get access to the rest of those features listed so exhaustively on the front. And that's when I noticed the deadline for submissions: May 1, 2009. Receipt date of this package? May 1, 2009.

That's right, folks. I was invited to participate in a project—a project that was supposed to sell me on donating to this organization—on the day of the submission deadline, effectively making me ineligible. That's not an oversight. It's not a mistake. It's a slap in the face to your audience.

This is not a time for this kind of ineptitude, folks. Tighten up! Don't waste your marketing dollars on what has the potential to be a highly effective campaign by not thinking it through. If you need expertise, then ask. But nonprofits can't afford to be making these kinds of mistakes right now.

Finding the Right Green Certification Program

There are over 300 environmental certification programs available to organizations who, for whatever reason, feel the need to get certified. These programs vary wildly: some are nonprofit, some demand high fees, some have extremely high barriers of entry, and almost all of them have different requirements and certification processes. Finding a credible, appropriate, attainable third-party certification system can feel seriously overwhelming. But if you answer a few initial questions before looking for a particular program, the process becomes much less daunting.

What kind of organization are you?

Before you start looking for certification, it helps to do some self-reflection. On one of my email lists recently, someone asked if there were any certification programs specifically geared towards nonprofits. My response (on which this post is largely based) was that many of the actual steps you can take to green your organization are applicable to any sector, so a certification that doesn't specifically target nonprofits might still be appropriate.

Here are a few questions to consider when looking at your own organization:

Why do you want to get your organization certified?

When it comes to environmental certification, there tend to be two camps of certification seekers: those who want a formal, guided system for judging their practices, and those who feel it will help their business model in some way. Both are completely legitimate reasons.

Beyond that, though, there are additional things you should consider. Are you looking to increase credibility among your various constituents? Are you looking to save money over the long term? Does it reinforce your mission (unlike many pursuits, I believe one of this nature doesn't require absolute mission alignment)?

Answering this question will help give your search more focus (e.g. if your goal is to increase credibility, you need to look for a rigorous, respected certification body). And remember: if your main goal is to reduce your organization's environmental impact, you don't actually need a third-party certification to do so.

Do you have specialized certification needs?

Whether you're a nonprofit or for-profit organization, there may well be environmental or sustainability issues that are specific to your industry. Product manufacturers and retailers may have different considerations than service-based organizations, for example, and it may make sense for you to look for a program that addresses these issues. That said, if you can't find a niche certification, there are likely plenty of other options that are just as well-suited to your organization.

What kind of resources do you have to devote to this endeavor?

Many nonprofits (and smaller businesses) are either on a shoestring budget, or are assigning the process to an already overworked staffer. If this is the case, you'll need to find a program that won't require large financial outlays, or that will provide hands-on support. Being realistic about what your organization can and can't commit to—or, what you're willing to commit to—will help narrow your options.

Where should you look for a green certification program?

Once you've identified your own goals and limitations, it's time to start searching for an appropriate third-party program. There are two primary types:

Government-run certification programs

When it comes to government-sponsored environmental programs, most of the certification action tends to be at the local level. Many city and county governments, and sometimes state governments, are developing programs to encourage area businesses to improve their environmental practices. Be aware that these programs vary dramatically in their standards and participation requirements—you'll need to do your due diligence. Also consider whether or not a local certification will help you reach your previously identified goals. If you're looking to build credibility among your customer base, for example, they need to have heard of the program enough to value it.

Sadly, many municipalities don't offer government-run programs at all. If this is the case where you live and work, I highly recommend petitioning your local government to implement one. They need to know that business owners and nonprofit directors alike want such programs.

Finding a program: Check with your local business development agency, environmental department, or chamber of commerce. Don't forget to check at the state level, too.

Nonprofit (and for-profit) certification programs

Almost every non-governmental, third-party certification program nowadays tends to be nonprofit, as the 501(c)3 designation seems to lend an air of credibility to the certifying body. But in reality, it's the stringency of the program's requirements, and their working processes, that you should pay attention to.

And it certainly wouldn't hurt to check out who's on their board of directors, if they have any "partner" businesses/sponsors, and so forth. One particular certifying organization that was pointed out to me recently is set up as a nonprofit, and looks perfectly legitimate on first blush—yet they are affiliated with a for-profit consulting firm. This kind of affiliation isn't necessarily problematic in and of itself, but it can certainly impact the certification's credibility if:

• The for-profit affiliation isn't an entity you'd feel comfortable doing business with under ordinary circumstances;
• The for-profit affiliation exerts any influence on the certification process;
• The for-profit affiliation directly benefits from the certification process.
  

What criteria should you use to judge an environmental certification program?

You don't have to be a sustainability expert who knows how many microns of CO2 your pencil sharpener puts out, but there are some essential standards you should look for in your certification system:

1. No, or minimal, pay-to-play

Keep an eye out for costly "membership requirements" and other fees. While minor administrative costs aren't unreasonable, huge fees definitely eat into a program's credibility.

2. Full transparency and disclosure

Program processes, certification guidelines, contacts, member lists, etc. should be made available on request (good), and/or clearly posted online (better). A credible program will tell the public exactly what it asks of its member businesses.

Also, keep an eye out for programs that allow you to be a member without certification, as non-certified members often dilute the credibility of certified members thanks to public confusion/conflation.

3. Rigor

This, in my own opinion, should be the most important piece of the puzzle. First, what is their certification process? Programs that require some proof of compliance, whether on-site inspection or some kind of documentation, are far more credible than those that rely on the honor system.

Next, how expansive is their requirements list? Look for programs that address the triple bottom line (people - planet - profit). This should include at least issues like employee benefit programs and community enrichment (people) to environmental conservation and improvement (planet).

How does the program measure impact? Do they ask for hard numbers (and proof of them)? Are they asking about low-hanging fruit like day-to-day operational tasks as well as larger decision-making (like equipment, appliances, construction, business models, etc)?

How often do they require re-certification, and how do they manage that process? If you can't easily uncover any of this information, think twice about participating.

4. Support and guidance

Finally, does the program provide suggestions, help and resources or tools during the certification process? A really good program will help walk your organization through the certification process, pointing you to legitimate resources to help you implement whatever changes need to be made. This is especially important for nonprofits and other organizations who might not have huge resources to commit to the process.

Does the certification system have brand recognition within your organization's circles of influence? If you expect your customers to care about the certification, it helps if they already know what it means.

Finally, what kind of marketing support will they provide—a simple listing in their online directory usually isn't enough (since it relies entirely on search engine ranking). Do they place media ads or do PR campaigns within your circles of influence or mainstream circles? Will being a member bring your organization much cachet?

Making your decision

I've watched as the market for third-party certification has exploded, and it's amazing how many of these organizations treat it as more of a marketing tactic than a bottom-line environmental decision. It's far too easy to shell out a few bucks, and get a pretty green stamp of approval. The trouble is, if that stamp doesn't communicate anything of real value (to your business and to your customers), you've wasted both money and time. Worse still, you risk undermining the whole point of environmental certification: to provide a legitimate and rigorous public review of your organization's environmental efforts. And that's the very definition of greenwashing.

But getting certified doesn't have to be a traumatic, costly, or otherwise difficult experience. As with most business decisions, it simply requires a little due diligence before you jump into the process. Following the above recommendations will help you narrow your choices and select the most appropriate program for your organization's specific needs.


Have you gone through the certification process yourself? Have you found it useful in reaching out to your customers? I'd love to hear your thoughts and questions—please leave your comments below.

Related Posts:
The Case-by-Case for Sustainability

Write with Intent: Written Messaging in a "Design with Intent" Framework

First, have a look at Dan Lockton's 10-minute slide show on persuasive technology and design with intent, in which he describes various methodologies used to influence user behavior:



As I continue to explore the world of social marketing et al., I've been wondering about the specific role of language in these issues. Designers focus on visual and spacial cues, obviously, and with good reason. There's a strong argument to be made for the idea that modern human language is quickly moving from a verbal core to a visual one. That's a huge debate in and of itself, best left to another post. But there can be no argument that people are becoming increasingly sophisticated information processors when it comes to visual frameworks (that is, we're getting better at deriving meaning from visual cues).

So, where does that leave verbal language? And more specifically, where does that leave the role of persuasive verbal communication? To make this more concrete: copywriters have long insisted that web copy is best served by bullet points, subheads, and other visual means of breaking up text. Shorter sentences and fewer syllables are another way we're encouraged to accommodate this shift in human information processing (since readers are now more used to simply glancing at a screen and immediately deriving meaning from what they see). But is altering the visual appearance of the words the most effective use of verbal language to communicate and persuade (and, ultimately, effect behavior change)?

Using content in addition to form

Often lost in all of this is the actual content. In the case of commercial and social marketing, content is as important an influence as form on a reader's behavior. So if we worry only about the visual appearance of text, we risk failing to provide the meaning it's intended to communicate. It's the effective communication of that meaning that causes a reader to change their attitude or, better still, their behavior. There are several ways writers can increase meaning, and therefore persuasiveness, in their messaging:

1. Avoid passive language, unnecessary modifying clauses, and jargon that may dilute the meaning of your text.
   
2. Acknowledge perceived barriers to behavior change, but emphasize the benefits.
3. Use personalized examples that reinforce the sought-after behavior change (personalized to your reader, not the writer).
4. Integrate a narrative structure that leaves the reader visualizing the process of behavior change.
   

This isn't an exhaustive list. But many of these examples find counterparts in Lockton's presentation above. Number 1, for example, could be compared to the use of unadorned, light-up reminder icons on a car dashboard (a visually active and engaging cue).

Commercial marketers have long understood this, of course (the good ones, anyway). Good social marketers understand it, too (hence the focus on addressing perceived barriers to action). But I'd love to see more academic/theoretical discussion of this within the field. Or maybe it's there and I just haven't found it yet (please point me to it, if you know that's the case). In the meantime, it would serve us marketers well to remember that form and content must work in tandem to effect real behavior change.

Social Media Innovator or Same Old Corporate Snake Oil?

There's an interesting conversation going on at the Ethicurian, who posted about Monsanto's latest foray into public coercion, a.k.a. blogging. The Ethicurian's initial post was nothing more than a short blurb noting that "the biotech giant has not only launched an ad campaign aimed at food's 'thought leaders,' it's digging into its deep pockets to fund a new Facebook presence, Twitter stream, and a blog." The interesting part? Monsanto's Social Media Director chimed in in the comments. To wit:

"The reality of it is that a small group of employees, (Yes, PR people, imagine that, communications people communicating!), who thought we should be part of the online dialog. The anti-Monsanto crowd seems to feel threatened by this. We felt it was important to start offering counterpoints to some of the more factually challenged assertions about us being spread online." (full comment)

Needless to say, the Ethicurian's readers had plenty to say back. What's so intriguing to me about this exchange is not that Monsanto is using social media in their public relations efforts (every smart corporation is these days). And it's not the content of the dialogue (are we surprised that ethical eaters hate Monsanto and Monsanto is indignant that they're hated?). No, what I find so interesting about all this is that Monsanto's PR department figures it can reframe the company by appearing human.

Chris Paton, Social Media Director for the company, is careful to dissociate himself from his company, which is odd given the purpose of his role. He frames himself as an earnest, can't-be-bought free-thinker:

"Myself and the other team members in my area who are starting to participate in the blogosphere, twitter, facebook, etc.. are doing so in addition to their regular workload. It does indeed take some man(and woman) hours to do so. Even more as we're starting to attract attention for even showing up to the discussion and the cyber-pile-on starts up. I don't dispute that Monsanto has spent a good chunk of change on the ad campaign, but I'm not responsible for that, not involved with that, and wish I had a fraction of a fraction of that budget for what I personally think is a more useful effort, engaging our critics in a dialog to see if we can't make some progress...

...I'm not an expert on every thing Monsanto may or may not have done. If I make a comment one way or another about lobbyists, funding, cow health issues, etc.. it can be torn apart by people...

...I commend you for being committed to speaking out for what you belive. I'm just disappointed that people cant belive that i'm saying what i actually believe. My paycheck doesnt buy my beliefs or my soul. If i belived that Monsanto was guilty of the things i read online on a daily basis, you couldnt pay me enough to be a part of it..."

Monsanto has been struggling with their image of a monolithic, international, bully of a corporate conglomerate for years, and their reputation among so-called ethical eaters is only getting worse as our country's food issues gain coverage in the mainstream. So it's interesting to see their public relations department using social media ("a level playing field," Chris calls it) to reframe the company's brand image. Hell, maybe they are just another group of concerned individuals working for what they believe in.

It's what they believe in that scares me so much.

(As an aside, is it too much to ask of corporate America to at least attempt a little literacy when it comes to posting online?)

Harvard Medical School Misses the Point When it Comes to Fundraising

Some organizations are finding themselves mired in controversy as a result of decisions made in response to the dysfunctional economy. Take Harvard Medical School: it turns out that the school has more professors on the Big Pharma dole than anyone—including students—ever knew. About 18% of Harvard Medical professors have reported that "they or a family member had a financial interest in a business related to their teaching, research or clinical care" (and there's no way to know how many unreported relationships exist). This represents a potentially huge conflict of interest, and students are up in arms.

A struggle for research funding

Lack of endowment funding is the primary reason cited for why these professors feel it's appropriate to suck from the pharmaceutical teat without disclosing such relationships to the students they claim to be teaching:

"School officials see corporate support for their faculty as all the more crucial, as the university endowment has lost 22 percent of its value since last July and the recession has caused philanthropic contributors to retrench."

In other words, the school doesn't have enough funding to support faculty research. So faculty turn to the pharmaceutical companies. But is it appropriate for an institution tasked with teaching our nations' new doctors to allow a commercial industry to secretly underwrite those who teach?

More to the point: is this kind of financial relationship necessary?

An alternative solution

As the Times piece indicates, the potential conflict of interest, the lack of disclosure rules, and the student and public backlash are all causing real harm to Harvard Medical's reputation. It may even damage the school's ability to raise what little endowment funds are still available.

But what if the school leveraged the need to preserve classroom integrity to shore up funding sources outside of Big Pharma? What if they framed their fundraising efforts with a core message that read something like this:

We need your support to keep Big Pharma out of our classrooms, so our next generation of doctors can be trained objectively and fairly.

This would need to be supported, of course, by action. School officials would need to demonstrate that they're taking what internal steps they can to prevent such a tragedy—steps like instituting rules requiring the disclosure of financial relationships to both officials and students (or better yet, limiting or prohibiting financial relationships between faculty and industry).

With proper messaging, this controversy might just be turned around to actually solve the underlying problem causing the whole thing. Sadly, school officials will probably miss this fundraising opportunity and instead plaster a bandage over the controversy. Hopefully, it won't be a Band-Aid™ brand one.

The Good Consumer

[via Bonfire of the Brands]

Capitalizing on Restaurant Trends

I can't speak for other regional markets but San Francisco restaurant owners are facing some serious belt-tightening these days. As the economy encourages people to spend less on extra lifestyle purchases (e.g. eating out), restaurants are scrambling to keep tables filled. But recession-related gimmicks like Luna Park's Blue Plate Special (in which budget-conscious diners get to eat cheaply off a blue tray), and Open Table's recent Appetite Stimulus Plan tend to miss the mark by either alienating what's left of the customer base, or broadcasting an air of desperation. So what's a restaurant owner to do?

The trick is to embrace the changing atmosphere and use it to your advantage. Honestly look at how new dining habits are impacting your business, and allow them to inform your business model. A trend report released at the end of last quarter by restaurant research group Technomic names five trends that, if handled properly, can serve your business well during the downturn. Here are the trends, and a few of my own ideas for capitalizing on them:

1. Experimentation and innovation will flower.
   Although experimentation without context or careful financial analysis is a recipe for disaster, this is a great opportunity to look at your income streams and identify areas for change. Pay close attention to unlikely operational changes that may save money. San Francisco restaurants who compost their food scraps, for example, can reduce their garbage collection bills by up to 75%. Also look at your food costs (an area almost every restaurant can improve), supplier arrangements, menu structure, etc.


2. Ethnic flavors continue to star.
   Populations are changing, which means so are the preferences of your potential customer base. You don't need to run a strictly ethnic restaurant to take advantage of this, though. But you should use your menu as a differentiator. Do you feature ingredients from local vendors? Seasonal flavors? Organically-produced ingredients? Emphasize these features in your marketing so the public knows you're the go-to restaurant for this kind of food.
   
   
3. “Local” is the magic word.
   As consumers take active interest in where their food comes from, restaurants can use this to pull away from the crowd. Support local suppliers and communicate your support to your customers. You might even consider offering a special "Meet the farmer" night, or plan a menu around a particular supplier and provide customers with the full back story. Use press releases, targeted email blasts (no spamming!), and other methods to publicize the heck out of these events.


4. Goldilocks serving sizes: big, little and just right.
   More small plates and family-style meals are cropping up to accommodate diners' preferences for budget-friendly meals. Consider offering multiple portion sizes, and price them carefully. Look carefully at recipe costs, and offer a small and large version of popular dishes (if you price carefully, your small, budget-friendly version may very well provide better profit margins than the larger option). Some of the most low-tech research methods are called for here, like inspecting the amount of uneaten food coming back into the kitchen and frequency of doggie bags being sent home with guests.
   
   
5. Kids’ menus will be up-scaled and expanded.
   This is an interesting trend that points to parents who want to include their children in the dining out experience. Traditionally, the kids' menu (if there even is one) features a lot of grilled cheese, peanut butter sandwiches, and pasta with red sauce. Why not allow the kids' menu to reflect the adults'? Or better yet, include non-food options—why not let them order off a list of free activities to keep them busy? Imagine how much fun it would be if they could order from a menu featuring crayons, puzzles, or Matchbox cars? Remember: the happier the kids are, the happier their parents will be.

The fact is, times are tough and there is no magic bullet. But it's also a perfect time to look at the less obvious aspects of your restaurant—or any business, really—and make changes that you'll notice over the long term. And whatever changes you make, be sure to communicate them to your customers. You need to keep the conversation going with each and every table, so they have a reason to keep choosing your restaurant—and so they can keep you front of mind when making recommendations to others.

Kids'r Cute

The dork in me is totally fascinated by early childhood brain development. This is a great example of it (and it's real cute to boot):



Notice how mom asks how big is a whale? to get sonny boy to raise his arms. He understands how to react to that input, but hasn't yet appeared to make the connection between his own input and the reaction he's causing. It's also a nice example of how a single action might get both the reaction we expect, and a completely unexpected one (see this recent post about habits). Plus, like I said, it's pretty darn cute.


[via It's Nice That]

Making Sustainability Reports Work for You

As American businesses begin to feel the heat of their impact on climate change, corporate sustainability reporting has become one of the tools they use to fan the flames. Between 1997 and 2007, the number of companies producing CSR (corporate social responsibility) reports grew by more than 750%, according to Corporate Register. In real terms, just over 2,000 American companies issued reports this year alone—but who reads these things? Turns out, a new study indicates there may be some real value to issuing a sustainability report for your own organization.

Reporting Can Impact the Bottom Line—For the Better

One of the most basic findings of the study, conducted by the Global Reporting Initiative among 2,300 respondents, found that 85% of CSR report readers have a more positive opinion of the company after reading. About a third of respondents also use these reports for decision-making purposes. It would seem, then, that organizations who rely on thought leadership and increased credibility to shore up their customer base would really benefit from such reporting. I'm thinking of nonprofits, consultants and other service-based businesses in particular. But companies seeking capital funding would also stand to gain by producing reports that demonstrate their commitment to long-term sustainable strategies.

Those readers who are spurred to action after reading a company's sustainability report tend to respond with their dollars. Almost 75% of respondents say that reading a company's CSR report makes them want to either purchase the company's products or become a B2B client. That can be a potentially significant ROI, but it's dependent on a few key things:

• The report is accurate and thoughtfully produced.
• Your organization invests in distributing the report as widely as possible.
• You maximize the opportunity by directly engaging readers.

Producing a sustainability report that works for your organization

Like most projects, a sustainability report can be as straightforward or complex as you're willing to make it. But whether your report is a simple two page report or an elaborate multi-page treatise, the process needs to address the specific concerns of your readers.

Define your target audience. Reports geared toward investors will require far more statistics and detail-level information than those aimed at consumers, for example.

Gather accurate information. Knowing what standards to use, and how to accurately measure company initiatives and impact, is essential. Consider asking your audience what issues matter to them before even writing anything down, and think about how those issues dovetail with your organization's environmental and social impact on its larger communities. This will help you create a framework for content. If you skimp on this process, you risk alienating readers and undermining the whole report.

Organize information into meaningful messages. Try to balance your organization's philosophy and policy approach with real-world stories that illustrate those more abstract concepts. While the length of your report will determine just how much information you can include, you should take your cue from the framework you created in the previous step. If you have a particularly green supply chain, for example, you might outline your general purchasing policies, and also profile a specific vendor.

Engage your readers. This is where you capitalize on your report. Respondents to the GRI survey indicated that they frequently want to continue the conversation with the organization in question after reading their report. This could mean including response cards with the report itself, creating an online microsite where readers can join the conversation, or following up with a targeted campaign aimed at expanding the reporting initiative. All of these approaches give readers a specific reason to take the hand you've extended.

Towards a Truly Sustainable Strategy

If the GRI survey gives sustainability reporters cause for celebration, it also reveals a key concern: whatever reporting choices an organization makes, it must converge with an overall business strategy. Successful corporate sustainability rests on an organization's willingness to embrace entirely holistic processes; slapping together a glossy CSR brochure that trumpets your company's recycling efforts ain't gonna cut it. My recommendation is always to start with the why and the what (your organization's long-term values, approach and audience), and use reporting to communicate the how.

By treating the sustainability report as a conversation opener rather than a monologue, you have a better shot of influencing your reader and reinforcing the report's underlying message of commitment. And when your communications become a real-world tool used to engage your audience, it strengthens those relationships at a time when strong relationships can make or break a business.


Shameless Plug™: If you think your organization would benefit from some form of sustainability reporting, give me a call. We can talk about your ideas, and come up with a cost-effective solution that works for you and your audience.

Bad Habits Can Kill Your Marketing Efforts

When it comes to marketing, your problem isn't a lack of effort—even if you haven't pulled the trigger on that new website (cough), or gotten around to this year's holiday mailing. The truth is, you're marketing every day, every time you engage your customer base:

Every customer phone call and email you respond to
Every customer phone call and email you initiate
Every marketing campaign you execute
Every blog post you publish
Every forum or social networking message you post
Every time you describe what you do for a living to someone you meet
Every time you deliver a product or service to a customer
Every time you leave your business card somewhere
Every question you answer
Every payment you collect

Clearly, the problem isn't that you aren't doing enough. The real issue is that you're not putting enough thought into how you're doing these everyday things.

The Danger of Relying on Habits

When you execute the tasks above out of habit, it's easy to forget that they're actually two-sided transactions. You're delivering a message during each task, and the person on the other end is receiving that message. This is true even if you're not saying anything. Filling an order? The package the order is shipped in sends a message. The very process you've set up that your customer has to pass through sends a message—how many times they have to click through your site, how long it takes them to find your phone number, and so on. Even if you're not thinking about the message you're sending, the customer is still receiving it.

Replacing Bad Habits with Better Messages

So why do we keep perpetuating current habits? You already know: it's simply easier than identifying and transitioning into better habits. And by better habit, I mean something very specific: I mean a message that bridges the gap between speaker and listener, delivered in a way that makes it easier for the listener to understand. This is a process I'm going through myself as I redesign my now mythical website, and I really feel for organizations who are struggling with it.

Developing a thoughtful message, and then delivering it, takes deliberation. But it doesn't necessarily take pain. In fact, when you rely on a specific step-by-step process, it can be almost enjoyable (or, "a wonderful learning experience," as one of my clients once put it). The process looks something like this:

• Identify the message(s) you're currently sending
• Identify the message(s) your market wants to hear
• Take a good hard look in the mirror
• Connect the dots between what your organization provides and what your market wants
• Control each transaction so the agreed-on message gets through
• Measure the reaction to your efforts
• Adjust the messaging as much as necessary until you get it right
  

The Most Dangerous Habit of All

Obviously, developing better messaging habits takes a lot of work and a lot of insight. It can be so challenging, in fact, that most organizations end up perpetuating the worst habit of all—they skip over the discovery stages of the process and jump straight into creating new messages. If you yourself take one message away from this article, I hope it's this: don't skip the discovery.

The discovery, in which you take that good hard look at what you're doing (and what your market really wants you to do), is almost the whole point. It's the process that you've been skipping this whole time. It's what makes the habits hard to break. And if you continue to skip it, opting instead to just churn out some new marketing message based on current assumptions, you're just replacing one bad habit with another. That's a waste of time and money, and a way to miss real opportunities. So take a moment to think it all through. Research. Observe. Explore. Do it on your own, get help if you must, but do it. Because old habits die hard—but not if you kill them carefully.

Movie Posters with Product Placement

I'm not sure when "brand integration" replaced "product placement" to describe the shameless shilling of stuff in entertainment vehicles, but it has. And these posters from Antrepo Design Industry are an elegantly understated way of describing recent box office hits (click the image to view more):




[via Quipsologies]

Marketing Q&A: How Do I Move My Brand Beyond ME?

I get marketing questions through my e-newsletter, the Roundup, and occasionally my response gets to involved to fit in the short space of that email. This one's a good one, so I'm posting it here instead.


I have great products, but my brand is very caught up in me - my background, my sense of aesthetics, and my story. At some point someone else will have to do some selling. So, how do I build my brand as a separate entity from me?

Every (smart) business owner struggles with this as we begin to grow. Service businesses in particular may struggle with this because the service provider is often seen as the product being sold. And many owners play into this by defining themselves by their business. Even if they do recognize it, they often remain paralyzed with the fear of shifting the company towards a depersonalized, profit-driven approach, rather than the values-driven approach they started with.

The key to branding, though, is not to jettison the owner’s value system, but to align it with the needs and wants of the marketplace. As you're realizing, it's not enough to know who you are and what you want for your company—you also need to meet the marketplace on its own terms. This is especially true in economic times like these, when the marketplace can be exceptionally finicky.

Companies who define themselves by their owners, then, have a hard time; it's very difficult to align you as a person with the marketplace, which is about me as a consumer. Most small businesses that brand themselves as their owner find success only inasmuch as they happen to meet people who share the owner's values, personality, and aesthetics. This is an exceedingly inefficient approach that doesn’t scale up very well as the business grows. Typically, owners using this approach max out such a limited market and the business plateaus.

So, in practical terms, what does an owner do to create a brand that can stand on its own, apart from the owner? Having gone through this process with a nonprofit client earlier this year, I can tell you the most effective way to do this is to allow your personal values to inform the brand, rather than define it.

The process starts with a whole mess of research:

• Current brand audit: Take stock of your company, your products or services, the benefits and value you bring to your consumers, etc.
• Current customer audit: Identify and organize your current customer base by as many variables as possible. This includes identifying how your current customers perceive your company.
• Market research and competitive research: You can’t operate in a bubble, so you need to know what everyone around you is doing.

Now, this initial research is the part that most business owners skip. Don’t. The information you gather holds the key to your self-sufficient brand. Gathering it is, of course, a lot of work. Parsing it into a cohesive brand that accurately and effectively reflects all of the truths you’ve discovered is not just a challenge, it’s an art form (there’s a reason smart businesses outsource this to people like yours truly). But as I said earlier: it’s not enough to know what you want out of your business. You have to align those values, along with everything else about your company, with the realities of the marketplace. When done well, the results are an incredibly strong brand that resonates with consumers regardless of whether or not you’re delivering the message personally.

Is crowdsourcing dangerous to the design profession?

No!Spec is a well-known movement among graphic designers who dislike the notion of speculative work. And yet thousands of designers at both the professional and amateur level participate in speculative contents every day, and their numbers are growing. 37Signals has an interesting take from crowdSPRING co-founder Ross Kimbarovsky in which he argues, in part:

"The establishment has long held that these ‘amateurs’ – students and stay-at-home moms, freelancers and fed-up corporate refugees – are nothing more than a novelty and are not capable of competing with the ‘professionals.’ The establishment is wrong. The Internet has blurred the boundaries between professionals and non-professionals. The underdogs are challenging tradition in industry after industry. They are risk takers. They are true entrepreneurs. The underdogs compete on their ideas and their work, not education, training, and fancy offices. They make things they like and they hope that other people will like them too.The underdogs are a threat to AIGA and the NO!SPEC campaign. There are millions of them. They demand that a level playing field be created to allow them to compete. They demand the democratization of the design industry."

Incendiary stuff. He then goes on to say, "We’ve created a level playing field where experience doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is your work." Now that feels like an oxymoron. Most professional designers (including this one) would argue that experience informs your work. But more than that, it disregards the rest of what makes good design: context, relationships, research, and in-depth understanding of the client and their goals.

And this is evidenced by Kimbarovsky's disclosure that "Our overall average across all projects is about $350." For an independent creative getting paid, say $50 an hour (a very low number, given the overhead required to sustain an independent business), this means a 7-hour project. Seven hours for adminsitrative tasks, market and client research, concepting and sketching, production, and revisions. Really? It would take a highly skilled and experienced designer to produce a good-looking and effective logo, website, brochure, etc in that amount of time.

There's a lot more to say about this subject, and I'll explore some of it later in an upcoming installment of Copyrights and Wrongs (first, though, I'll be looking at the contract negotation process).

Sense or Nonsense?

When writing marketing copy, or political reportage, or educational materials, we tend to shrink from notions of creativity and color. My motor really gets running, though, when writers actually take a risk and explore the hell out of their medium. George Saunders' recent New Yorker column is a great example:

"Sarah Palin knows a little something about God’s will, knowing God quite well, from their work together on that natural-gas pipeline, and what God wills is: Country First. And not just any country! There was a slight error on our signage. Other countries, such as that one they have in France, reading our slogan, if they can even read real words, might be all, like, “Hey, bonjour, they are saying we can put our country, France, first!” Non, non, non, France! What we are saying is, you’d better put our country first, you merde-heads, or soon there will be so much lipstick on your pit bulls it will make your berets spin!" [Full essay]

Slacker Uprising: Michael Moore Film Hints at a New Future

No one can argue that Michael Moore is a polarizing figure—but that's why he is so effective. He speaks, people listen. He organizes people, people react. This is a good thing. Now he's got a new movie coming out. Slacker Uprising is clearly an attempt to galvanize America's youth during this year's momentous election:



There has been a mounting buzz about the potential power and growing engagement of America's young voters. At the same time, it's not unusual to hear 30-plussers complain that kids today are apathetic and self-centered. So which is it? Well, here are just a few statistics:

• Almost 25% of eligible voters are aged 18-30 (source).
• On Super Tuesday '08, voters under 30 turned out in record numbers, in some states quadrupling their turnout numbers over the previous election (source).
• Almost 50% of eligible under-30 voters went to the polls in the 2004 election, the highest youth turnout in over ten years. (source).

So, it looks like Moore may be onto something: the kids are getting more involved. And to encourage more of the same, he's giving his new movie away for free to anyone living in the U.S. and Canada. Sign up for the free download here.

(Thanks, Noah!)

Copywriting Case Study: How to Insult Your Audience

In a clever move to win back the support of consumers, the Corn Refiners Association decided the best way to do so would be to condescend to and insult the very people it's trying to win back.



It seems the industry trade group takes issue with those of us who give a crap about the crap they try to force down our throats. Let's just break down the horrible line of thinking that led to these ads, shall we?

Step One: Identify the Problem

Like any good advocacy group would, the Corn Refiners Association recognized that their single most profitable product—high fructose corn syrup (HFCS)—is earning itself a bad name among doctors, parents, and a whole lot of other folks. First came the whispers of "why is it in everything?" including what should be unsweet food items like turkey stuffing, salad dressing and hot dogs. Then came the study that linked high fructose corn syrup to diabetes in children, which is quickly becoming an epidemic (probably because it's in, well, everything).

This is the first thing they did right, from a marketing perspective (I won't get into the first rule of ethical marketing: don't push dangerous products).

Step Two: Join the Conversation

In many cases, companies decide to just stand pat when the rumors start whirling (this approach was particularly favored in the days before the internet gave consumers so much control over brand reputation). But as the rumors about HFCS became the subject of scientific study, the CRA apparently felt it had to step in. They must have figured, "Hey, let's set the record straight!"

What they failed to admit to themselves was that the record was not exactly in their favor.

Step Three: Frame Your Message

Both of the ads the group launched hinge on the concept that facts trump "what they say" any day of the week. Not a bad approach, if you actually have facts to back up your argument. But the ads fail to deliver on this promise, opting instead to bolster several fallacies with facts that are rather inconsequential.

Claim: HFCS is made from corn.
Truth: Yup. (Of course, I don't really want corn in my toothpaste.)

Claim: HFCS has the same calories as sugar.
Truth: Basically, yup.

Claim: HFCS is fine in moderation.
Truth: Possibly true but misleading. Americans' consumption of HFCS has increased 250% over the last 15 years (source), because it's in damn near everything; CRA member companies shipped 23,503,847,000 pounds of HFCS in 2005 alone (source). So when they tell us to consume it in moderation, it's a little bit like waiving a vial of crack in front of a junkie and then telling him to go home. HFCS has also been linked, as mentioned, to diabetes because it messes with the way the body produces natural regulators.

Claim: HFCS doesn't have any artificial ingredients.
Truth: Not exactly true, and definitely misleading. There are synthetic ingredients used in the processing of HFCS (corn starch hydrolysate and glucose isomerase enzyme preparation, to be exact), but the molecular structure of these substances are altered during manufacturing. Furthermore, the FDA itself (notoriously loose when it comes to limiting Big Business claims) does not allow companies to call products containing HFCS "natural" (source).

So if you're going to frame your message around facts, you better have good ones to support it.

Step Four: Imply Your Audience is Stupid to be so Easily Swayed By Empty Words, then ask them to believe yours

This is where the copywriting really falls apart. Setting aside the giant conceptual mistake of fact vs. fiction, it is generally a bad idea to portray your audience as being either a dumb sheep or a passive-aggressive, judgmental bitchface. Do the writers even realize that the white mother in the ad above represents the very people they are trying to persuade? She's expressing what the public is thinking—why on earth make her look like such a snot while doing it? Making your audience feel bad about themselves—or worse, self-defensive—is a terrible way to get them to do what you want.

The Lesson: Consider the person receiving your message and be nice to them

Mending a broken relationship with your customer base is no easy task. I can't say I envy the marketing minds behind these ads, given the uphill battle they've been tasked to fight. I'm not even sure I know what approach would work for them at this point. I do know, though, that winning over a naysayer requires a delicate touch. Making your audience look like a douchebag, then asking them to support you? Not so delicate.