Archive for the ‘Books’ Category
Marketing in a world of eco-intelligent consumers
Many marketers don’t feel obligated to know or otherwise take responsibility for the entire environmental and social story of the products they help develop, promote and sell. If they’re not careful, their customers may know the full story before they do, leaving them with a potential sales and reputation mess to clean up.
Daniel Goleman, author of the popular book “Emotional Intelligence,” explains the growing empowerment of eco- or social-minded shoppers in his new book “Ecological Intelligence: How Knowing the Impact of What We Buy Can Change Everything.” Goleman says consumers face an information gap that prevents them from easily knowing and comparing the personal, social and environmental health impacts of individual products they are considering for purchase. That gap, however, is closing, thanks to the emergence of new mobile and point-of-purchase information technology that makes it easier to access the accumulating ecological and social data and ratings of individual products.
The hope and the promise Goleman sees for these new forms of IT is “radical transparency.”
Ecological transparency becomes radical when its analysis encompasses the entire life cycle of a product and the full range of its consequences at every stage, and presents that information to a buyer in ways that demand little effort…Radical transparency means tracking every substantial impact of an item from manufacturing to disposal—not just its carbon footprint and other environmental costs but its biological risks, as well as its consequences for those who labored to make it—and summarizing those impacts for shoppers as they are deciding what to purchase.
Goleman credits the company GoodGuide for its pioneering efforts to equip the shopping public with “comprehensive and rigorous information at the point of purchase.” GoodGuide’s technology platform is still in beta form, but it shows potential for dramatically tilting the information playing field in the direction of the consumer. According to Goleman:
GoodGuide surfaces a product’s backstory. It can calculate the specific environmental impacts during manufacture, transport, use, and disposal. It can perform this calculation down to a single chemical among a batch of ingredients. On a macro level, it can rate how well a given company stacks up against others in its field on environmental, health, or social performance, as well as determine which brand or company has been getting better over time. GoodGuide can evaluate a company’s policies, its disclosure of key information on products, and ultimately a company’s impacts on consumers, workers, communities, and the environment.
And now GoodGuide offers a free iPhone app that provides mobile access to data on more than 70,000 products, according to its website. Goleman says GoodGuide has harnessed decades of industrial ecology research to provide precise metrics of various processes and products. Perhaps most significantly from a marketing standpoint, “GoodGuide cuts through greenwashing to the underlying facts,” Goleman says.
Although GoodGuide remains at beta stage, Goleman says the tool is nonetheless “a concrete example of how radical transparency might work” in the aisles of shoppers’ favorite stores. It may be a Microsoft or a Google that ultimately provides the transparency system that is most widely accepted. In any case, Goleman sounds confident it won’t be long before consumers have fast, convenient access to information that helps them align their purchases with their values at the place and time they’re ready to buy. I share his confidence.
For marketers, the takeaway is this: Your customers will eventually have all the credible facts they need to decide whether your company or product satisfies their health and sustainability values and how you compare to your competitors. At that point, you’ll have little choice but to ensure the stories you tell about your company and products square with the facts your customers will have at their fingertips. Do you know your products’ “environmental impacts during manufacture, transport, use, and disposal” down to a single chemical used in its ingredients? And how about the labor and trade conditions up and down your supply chain? It’s only a matter of time before not knowing or not caring to know that information will come back to bite the offending company either in lost sales or in damaged image.
The “radical transparency” Goleman describes won’t appear overnight and it may never be fully realized in the market nor embraced by the consumer, but the information trends are clearly working in favor of the customer, whether a business or an individual. One of the trend drivers is demographics. In an interview last month with public television’s Bill Moyers, Goleman said he believes the younger generations have the greatest motivation to preserve the world and their ever-expanding use of social media will accelerate the sharing of consumer knowledge. This, he says, will create a shift “that will make it not only feasible for companies, but actually essential for companies to do the right thing.”
Smart marketers will get ahead of the trend and make radical transparency their competitive advantage.
Update: As I was about to publish this post I came across Joel Makower’s review on June 17 of Goleman’s book. He isn’t nearly as optimistic as Goleman about the transformative potential of radical transparency, for either consumers or producers. “I can’t argue with the premise, but my 20 years of watching the green marketplace leaves me, well, unsold,” Makower writes. Goleman responds to Makower here. He says, “I don’t believe the last 20 years offer apt data points for projecting the next 20. It’s the future I’m talking about, not the past.” I’d suggest you read the book and decide for yourself.
Update: Daniel Goleman references my post in a piece he wrote for Harvard Business here.
Tags: Bill Moyers, Daniel Goleman, Ecological Intelligence, GoodGuide, radical transparency
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The endless lengths marketers go to get us to buy
Recession be damned. If there’s a way to get people to part with their money, by God, marketers are going to discover and use it. Today’s example? Neuromarketing.
Apparently there’s no recession in Martin Lindstrom’s business, Buyology, Inc. His firm takes its name from his book “Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy.” Consumer products companies are flying him around the world to learn what he knows about what Marketing News calls “the last frontier of marketing research: the consumer’s subconscious mind.”
Lindstrom’s book, published in 2008, sets him up nicely as an expert on neuromarketing, which he says “is to use the latest brain science to understand the consumer’s behavior.” Or as his book title says, “Why We Buy.” (I confess I haven’t read it.)
Nobel Peace Prize winner and neuroscientist Eric Kandel has said the ultimate remaining challenge of the biological sciences is to “understand the biological basis of consciousness and the mental processes by which we perceive, act, learn, and remember.” In the last five years or so, this pursuit has spawned neuromarketing.
Just as marketers teamed with psychologists after World War II to create the field of consumer psychology, the largest brands are now looking to harness the methods and technology of neuroscience to study our brain responses to marketing stimuli. Neuromarketing is just the latest chapter in a long history of marketers learning to produce better and better-targeted marketing messages that will lead us to buy.
What struck me most about Lindstrom’s interview in the latest issue of Marketing News (no article link available yet) is this comment:
“My intention was to write a book so, hopefully, the whole world could engage in a debate and say: ‘Are we going too far? And if we’re going too far, should we have regulations around this?’ Now, here’s the bad news on this one. The ethical debate has not appeared so far.”
Lindstrom is right. There’s been no debate. But he’s not going to be the one to spark it, given he claims to work with 17 of the world’s largest brands, 12 of which are using neuromarketing. His vested interest is in seeing this new field flourish, not in drawing attention to its questionable reason for existence.
I would love to see a thorough debate of neuromarketing. Just as I’d welcome a public debate on the ethics of word of mouth marketing. But my concern is less with neuromarketing itself than with what it says about the marketing industry: Will there ever be an end to the lengths marketers will go to get us to buy? After neuromarketing, what’s next? Cloning loyal consumers of our brand? If you want some answers read journalist Lucas Conley’s superb book, “Obsessive Branding Disorder.” Or if you’re intrigued by neuromarketing, read the blog.
If humans hope to have a sustainable future, they must consume less. A lot less. A recession is one way to put a stop to buying. A better way is for the choice to be voluntary. What the world really needs is to understand how to trigger or train the subconscious mind to reject the marketing stimuli that entice us to buy more crap we don’t need and can’t afford.
Here’s a book waiting to be written: “DoNotBuyology: Truth and Lies about Why We Shouldn’t Buy.” If you write it, I’ll buy it. No MRI required.
Tags: brand, Branding, buyology, marketer, marketing research, neuromarketing, OBD
Posted in Books, Business & Economics, Communications, Consumerism, Marketing, Sustainability | Comments Off on The endless lengths marketers go to get us to buy
No recession in obsessive branding
Journalist Lucas Conley wrote his book, “OBD: Obsessive Branding Disorder,” just before 2008’s financial and economic meltdowns. You would expect branding excess in an economic bubble. But what about in a near depression? If anything, Conley told me in an email exchange last month, the condition he calls OBD is likely to get worse.
“As for OBD in the current economy, I can condense my general observations down to a couple points: consumers are buying less and thinking more. The result of both is that brands are trying harder (either via marketing, discounts, redesigned packaging, etc.) to capture our attention, often driving greater desperation and obsessive branding. Why? When consumers buy less (cutting back on staples and skipping status buys) it means brands have to fight even more for a smaller piece of the pie. When consumers think more (Do I really need this salon shampoo? Isn’t the generic ibuprofen more or less the same as the pricier brand?), they tend to dispel brand myths and discover deals. And any time consumers do more thinking, brands have to fight harder to shortcut their logic with emotional appeals (faster and deeper than logic) or overwhelm them with more marketing, new packaging, etc.”
If Conley proves to be right, and I think he will, the extreme efforts of brands to occupy every nook and cranny of our lives will grow even more frantic and insidious in this rotten economy. And we’re not only talking about consumer products companies. Product and service companies of all stripes are running scared. They could resort to most anything to get customer attention.
Not that any of us would be so guilty, right? Conley says the marketers he interviewed for his book agreed obsessive branding was a widespread problem–it just didn’t apply to them. In other words, they know OBD when they see it; they just don’t see it in themselves.
How about those of us trying to operate our businesses and live our lives more sustainably? Are we better equipped to draw the line when it comes to marketing approaches that offer only the illusion of something innovative, better, unique? Or that deceive customers into believing we offer something they truly need, not just desire?
In this economy, devoted “greenies” in business are not exempt from diminishing prospects. Companies that in good times preach transparency and authenticity in their business practices may be challenged to maintain that commitment as sales rapidly disappear. Numerous incidences of greenwashing in recent years indicate even so-called advocates for sustainability are not above sleight-of-hand branding tactics.
Obsessive branding, Conley argues, distracts companies from what they ought to be doing–innovating. “Real change results from innovation that advances knowledge and improves quality of lives,” he writes. “Branding offers the satisfaction of a sense of change without the hard work.”
There are no shortcuts in the honest pursuit of sustainability. But businesses trying to be more sustainable will also become more innovative. And that will be their ultimate competitive edge.
Want to stand out in this dismal marketplace? Stick to the principles of sustainability. Lead with innovation. And when it comes to your brand, seek the middle ground between neglect and obsession.
P.S. A special note of thanks to McClenahan Bruer Communications, my previous agency, for hosting and introducing me to Lucas Conley last fall.
Tags: brands, consumer products, greenwashing, inovation, Lucas Conley, marketers, OBD, Obsessive Branding Disorder, Sustainability
Posted in Books, Business & Economics, Communications, Consumerism, Marketing, Sustainability | 3 Comments »
Rethinking sustainability in a world of ‘murketing’
Several months have passed since Rob Walker’s book, “Buying In,” hit bookstores. Having now read it, I suggest you get your hands on a copy. I recommend it specifically to marketers or anyone else trying to make sense of where marketing is headed and what the consumption behaviors of today’s Americans are telling us.
If you’re looking for wisdom on sustainability, this book may do more to discourage than enlighten. But I believe Walker has given us plenty to ponder when it comes to sustainability, even though it’s not a central topic in his book.
Walker, author of the “Consumed” column in the New York Times Magazine, attempts to decode what he calls “the secret dialogue between what we buy and who we are.” The publisher accurately describes the book as “Part marketing primer, part work of cultural anthropology.” Walker makes a convincing argument, backed by strong reporting and research, that Americans—far from being immune to marketing, as most of us think of ourselves—are in fact “embracing brands more than ever before.” And marketing, while certainly not alone in explaining our enthrall with brands, is doing more than ever to encourage it. Walker writes:
The modern relationship between consumer and consumed—what I’m calling murketing—is defined not by rejection (of commercial persuasion) at all, but rather by frank complicity.
Walker’s term “murketing” blends murky and marketing to describe the blurring of lines between branding channels and everyday life. Marketers, usually referred to by Walker as “commercial persuaders,” are using increasingly sophisticated and unconventional tactics to brand products and companies. Indeed, there seems to be no limits anymore to where and how we might be delivered a commercial message, as Walker illustrates in his explanation of the word of mouth tactics used by new breed marketing agencies such as BzzAgent.
But Walker doesn’t paint a picture of Americans as innocent victims of shameless commercial persuaders. On the contrary, he uncovers numerous examples to show we are often the ones providing a brand with meaning, sometimes far different from the one intended by its owner. And once we endow a brand with meaning that works for us, we become its biggest champions. Walker’s stories of how a factory worker boot made by Timberland became part of the “global hip-hop uniform” is just one of many great examples.
Today’s youth, the most commercially exposed generation ever, may be more aware than any other group when they’re being pitched. But Walker says they are also “most amenable to using brand to fashion meaning for themselves, to announce who they are and what they stand for.” Brands are just a form of useful raw material for expressing identity and creativity. Perhaps because of the ubiquity and familiarity of our commercial culture, Americans return to it over and over to resolve what Walker calls “the fundamental tension of modern life”—how to reconcile our desire to feel like individuals while also feeling part of something bigger than ourselves.
If youth are indeed “a proxy for the future,” Walker’s findings don’t offer much hope that we’ll see a mass movement toward a less materialistic society anytime soon. He describes a cloudy, cluttered marketplace that “makes it dizzingly difficult to walk your talk” when it comes to simplifying life or buying with environmental and ethical considerations always in mind. And perhaps more significantly, commercial objects are what so many Americans use to project the meaning of our lives, according to Walker. “Meaning and value are things we give to symbols, not things we get from them,” Walker writes.
From a sustainability standpoint, what does it mean that material, branded objects are becoming more, not less, important in the collective lives of Americans? I think it asks for a fundamental change in strategy in how we confront consumerism. Attempts to educate everyone to consume less or differently have had marginal success. And that’s unlikely to change if, as Walker argues, Americans use the commercial marketplace to set ourselves apart from the crowd and to participate in something bigger. We must recognize how difficult it will be in the near-term to supplant this central role of commercial goods in our lives, especially when marketers are hell-bent on keeping consumption our top priority.
So if demand for material goods is unlikely to slacken, maybe we need to make the goods themselves our primary focus. If producers make and sell only sustainable products, customers won’t have to think twice about how a product is made. Sustainability will be embedded. That places the onus on manufacturers and those who market their products to take responsibility for the environmental and social impact of what they sell.
I don’t want to let individuals off the hook for what and how much we consume. But pleas to consume less will keep falling on deaf ears as long as the things we buy are how we tell ourselves we matter. Maybe the key to sustainability is how we confront meaning, not consumption.
Tags: brand, Buying In, Consumed, consumption, murketing, New York Times Magazine, Rob Walker, Sustainability, tension of modern life
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The ‘ism’ that rules America
Got a book you must read if, like me, you’re wondering how it is consumption came to rule our lives. Check out “An All-Consuming Century: Why Commercialism Won in Modern America,” by Gary Cross, a history professor at Penn State. It isn’t exactly hot off the presses, having been published in 2000. But it’s no less relevant now, as the urgency to build a more sustainable economy grows each day.
As a long-time marketer (previously in high tech), I’m well aware that marketing, advertising, public relations and the like are big reasons why, in Cross’ words, “Consumerism was the ‘ism’ that won” in the 20th Century. But, as Cross shows, it was hardly just the power of advertising that explains why this ism prevailed.
“Consumerism,” he writes, “succeeded where other ideologies failed because it concretely expressed the cardinal political ideals of the century — liberty and democracy — and with relatively little self-destructive behavior or personal humiliation.”
Cross considers consumerism one of the “meaning systems for human life.” Among his keen observations is that 20th Century critics of mass consumption on the Left and the Right failed equally to create credible alternatives. Those on the Left who advocated simple living and downscaling “all too readily ignored the deep psychological and cultural meanings of goods.” Their counterparts on the Right, meanwhile, decried the threat to “family values” by an overly permissive consumer culture. And yet they also stood with conservative politicians (most importantly Reagan) who worshipped the free market and tore down “the walls that held back the market from seeping into every corner of the American psyche and society.”
Unlike many writers of history who would let the facts speak for themselves, Cross couldn’t resist closing with a chapter on the need to confront the social costs of unleashed consumption. He calls on the Left and Right to find common ground. “A society that reduces everything to a market inevitably divides those who can buy from those who cannot, undermining any sense of collective responsibility and with it, democracy.”
Consumerism has provided meaning for Americans unlike any other alternative system. Cross isn’t optimistic we can replace it anytime soon. Americans, he said, perfected 20th Century consumerism. Now we have to figure out ways to control it.
Tags: An All-Consuming Century, Gary Cross, history of consumerism, Marketing, meaning system, sustainable economy
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Another one bites the dust
My favorite music store is closing, yet another mom-and-pop to shutter or shrink in the face of a drastically altered retail marketplace. Music Millennium is closing its shop in Northwest Portland after 30 years, leaving only its flagship location on the east side to continue operating. Its owner says the Northwest store has lost a bunch of money in the last three year, including $93,000 since last August.
Everyone knows music stores have been extremely hard hit by online competition such as Amazon and the easily consumed digital songs available at iTunes and elsewhere (yes, I am among those who have purchased music online). Music Millennium also happened to be located on one of Portland’s most popular shopping lanes, Northwest 23rd Avenue (or trendy-third, as the locals say), where rents keep escalating. The owner said he wasn’t able to negotiate a lease deal with his landlord that would make it possible for the store to stay open.
But there’s more going on than commercial victimization due to disruptive technology or ruthless landlords. As a representative of a Northwest Portland business association told the Oregonian: “There is an important substory here, that is with regards to the demise, the loss of independent local merchants. Not only in Portland but all around the country.”
In the interest of full disclosure, I am on the board of Sustainable Business Network of Portland. SBNP is a non-profit working to build vibrant neighborhoods and communities by promoting the health and success of independent, locally owned businesses. I could go on and on here about what it means to communities when their local merchants go out of business. Instead, I urge you to head to your locally owned neighborhood bookstore to pick up a copy of “The Big Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America’s Independent Businesses.” As the liner notes say, “Stacy Mitchell illustrates how mega-retailers are fueling many of our most pressing problems, from the shrinking middle class to rising pollution and diminished civic engagement—and she shows how a growing number of communities and independent businesses are fighting back.”
I know my eyes were opened wide after reading Mitchell’s account. The Oregonian report gets to the heart of the matter in a quote from a long-time Music Millennium customer: “You hate to lose somebody like Music Millennium because it’s got so much character. You don’t find that anymore.”