Guerrilla Marketing to Heal the World

Combining Principles and Profit to Create the World We Want

Jay Conrad Levinson, Shel Horowitz

• Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781630476588
• eBook ISBN: 9781630476595
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Marketing
• Index: Business

Levinson and Horowitz show the dramatic potential for profit in not just being a green company, but in addressing the huge social problems that have stumped humankind for millennia. Instead of waiting centuries for government to get it done, business can grab the reins and accomplish more through the profit motive than through any amount of guilt-tripping. Green practices can save and make money, and deep social change can skyrocket those revenues---when marketed correctly.

PART I

THE WAY OF THE GOLDEN RULE

CHAPTER 1

BECAUSE PEOPLE MATTER

People do matter—as do animals, plants, ecosystems, and Planet Earth. You can be a successful marketer while keeping your actions ethical, aligned with environmental principles, and fostering a greater good: the end of hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change. Not only don’t you have to be crooked or mean-spirited to succeed in business, the success strategies of a business formed in an attitude of abundance and grounded in ethics and cooperation, respect for nature, and a big-picture vision of a society that works are powerful and long-lasting. These values also help you feel good about yourself as you bring in profits.

Your parents and teachers probably taught you to treat others the way you want to be treated, play fair, and cooperate. Make these principles a cornerstone of your business, and that design marketing that not only follows this precept, but brings success and abundance into your life.

Too many businesses see marketing as a weapon of war. They think that to succeed, they have to climb over their competitors, fool their customers, and herd their employees into constricted conformity. We think that’s just plain wrong.

Our whole premise is that when businesses embrace the world’s abundance, stop seeing their competitors as a threat, protect the planet, and take on a higher purpose, magic can happen. We invite you to stop thinking of business as win-lose and begin to think of it as win-win-win; design that business so that you, the community of stakeholders (customers, competitors, abutters, suppliers, etc.), and Earth all win. Think of your business not only as a stand-alone entity, but as part of an industry, a town, a region, human culture, and the whole planet.

BUSINESS CAN—AND WILL—CHANGE THE WORLD

Business has enormous potential to better the world—to overcome the huge problems that have plagued human society since the beginning of time. For the first time in history, we don’t have to let ourselves be hammered down by the threats of poverty, war, and environmental disaster. We have the technology, the know-how, to fix these things. And this book is your road map.

We make some assumptions about this throughout the book, and we want to share them with you right from the start:

• While we may differ on what that means, we all want to preserve and improve our world, which is at risk

• The measures we take to preserve and improve humanity and the planet turn out to be very profitable—and that’s a good thing

• The Triple Bottom Line (combining financial, environmental, and social metrics) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) are business success strategies—and we can go beyond them to create the world we want

• Business, creativity, and community are our three most powerful tools to eliminate or sharply reduce hunger and poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change—when we join them together, we can achieve this wonderful new world

• We are empowered individuals, and each of us can make a difference; changemakers throughout history were just as ordinary as we are; we make a bigger difference when we work with others

We’ll be exploring these ideas throughout the rest of the book.

MARKETING AS COURTSHIP

Marketing is a series of partnerships—of courtships, really. Businesses that succeed with this model understand that they have to woo their customers, just as a suitor woos for the chance to marry. And just as a successful marriage is built on years of mutual communication and meeting each other’s needs, successful marketing looks for a deep and long-lasting relationship based on meeting the needs and wants of everyone involved. That means your customers, your employees, your suppliers, and, yes, even your competitors. You can knock someone’s socks off on the first date, but if you betray that trust afterwards, you become your own biggest obstacle on the road to success.

And just like a courtship, you want to go as fast as possible but as slow as necessary. The singles scene is littered with the carcasses of relationships that never went anywhere because on the first contact, one person came on too heavy, too fast, or too self-involved. Many businesses fail when companies spend so much time crowing about how great they are, they forget to listen to their prospects.

Always remember that, like successful romance, successful marketing is about how you can add value for the other person. And the most effective way to add value is by developing a long-term positive relationship with the customer.

So stay out of marketing divorce court; be there for the long term. It takes work to achieve a successful, long-lasting marriage, but the rewards are worth it. Similarly, you have to work at successful long-term mutual-benefit relationships with all the other interest groups that interact with your business.

Remember too that in our Internet era, scandals and problems never go away. In 2015, a Google search for “business scandals 2014) turns up more than 15 million articles, with results involving Walmart, Hewlett-Packard, the National Football League, and General Motors all on the first page.² That number goes up to 36 million if we remove the date.

Google search for “business scandals 2014”

Just as a romance that’s based on false promises and miscommunication is doomed to failure, business relationships based on greed and backed by false promises aren’t going to work long-term. But the good news is that if you treat others well, they’ll become your best marketers. The better you treat others, the more they will not just to do business with you, but to bring business to you.

You make your own success by helping others succeed—you succeed without selling your soul. Think about this style of business as a practical, day-to-day expression of the old Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would like others to do unto you—a precept found in every major religion.³

Although both Jay and Shel believe very strongly in the Golden Rule, this is not a religious book. Rather, it’s based on a code of ethics. Your ethics might or might not be religiously based; the important thing is that you have an ethical basis for your professional or business behavior.

The modern business world doesn’t always assume that business should be based on ethics. But we do. We’ll assume that you’re reading this book because you really want to do what’s right; but perhaps you’ve been steeped in so many years of Nice Guys Finish Last that you aren’t sure it’s really possible to succeed, thrive, and be profitable while doing the right thing. We’re here to tell you that you can succeed and still keep your conscience. In this book, you’ll encounter many success stories that put a practical handle on this philosophy. You’ll see that others are doing very well by doing good, and that you can too.

Spend an hour or two with this book, and you may find that you no longer need to live in a dog-eat-dog world—and that in fact, when the dogs learn to work together, they can accomplish much more than any of them could on their own. Think of the incredible weight a team of sled dogs can comfortably pull across the snow—far greater than any single dog could manage. And thus, when you join forces with others—even those you’ve been trained to think of as your competitors—truly amazing things can happen.

This is an opinionated and personal book; we make no pretense otherwise. It is based on our combined 80+ years in marketing. We’ve built thriving decades-old businesses using the principles in this book. And we want you to do at least as well.

LESSONS

• Marketing is a like a romance: subtlety works better

• The Golden Rule actually works in business

• Success is not only compatible with ethics, it’s easier

• For the first time in history, we have the power to end poverty, hunger, war, and catastrophic climate change

ACTIONS

• Think about three times when you did the right thing even if it felt hard.

• Replay a time you didn’t do the right thing, and describe how you would do it differently.

2 Accessed 3/9/15.

3 Stephen Apatow of the UK-based Humanitarian Resource Institute, in his “The Golden Rule Principle: Global Religious Leaders Called to Re-Focus on This Universal Objective of the Interfaith Community,” cites 13 examples from primary religious texts, from Buddhism to Zoroastrianism http://www.humanitarian.net/interfaith/goldenrule.html, verified 4/5/15.

CHAPTER 2

BASIC CONCEPTS

THE ROAD TO YOUR SUCCESS: PROVIDING VALUE TO OTHERS

In the business world, we hear a lot about cutthroat competition and gaining advantage over the enemy. In some circles, it seems to be a game to see how best to cheat your customers.

These are the concepts of win–lose marketing, which leads eventually to lose-lose marketing. This “dinosaur thinking” won’t survive.

This book is about Marketing That Puts People First. Most of the time, everyone can win—nobody has to lose. Not only can you succeed in...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction By Jay Conrad Levinson: Green Marketing is a Mandate from Nature
• Preface by Shel Horowitz: Tastes Great AND Good for You
• Part I: The Way of the Golden Rule
• Part II: The New Green, Socially Conscious Marketing Mindset
• Part III: Green Business, Green Marketing
• Part IV: Getting Noticed in the Noise and Clutter: Hands-On with Cooperative, People-Centered Marketing
• Part IV: Using Your Business to Create a Better World
• Resources