Author: Drew Neisser

If you “borrow” a magazine called GOOD from an office mate and don’t return it, does that make you a BAD person? Well, that’s what I did and currently I’m feeling no remorse. It’s a beautifully crafted magazine rich with thought starters for probably fifty or so Marketing for Good columns. And I have absolutely no doubt that I’ll return it—sometime soon.

Magazines are Dead

Well maybe not dead but a lot of them are fighting for their lives as advertisers turn to the more directly measurable internet. Mass targeted magazines will undoubtedly continue to struggle unless they find a fresh voice and a clear reason for being. They would also be smart to find new metrics to prove to advertisers that they can still get their money’s worth from print books. In a word, publishers need to enhance their product, making changes that make them irresistible.

Long Live Magazines

Introducing itself in the worst magazine industry downturn in 20+ years, GOOD certainly faces an uphill climb. According to their founder, Ben Goldhirsh, “we have a way to go before we hit our target of 50,000 subscribers and $1 million raised.” (They have 12,742 subscribers and have raised almost $254,000 through the Choose GOOD campaign which is part of their reason for being.) One quick flip through GOOD and you will see lots of interesting tidbits from a look at how ten of the biggest foundations spent their money in 2005 to a tongue in cheek “guide to picking the right [gas] pump” to a feature on CouchSurfing.com to a look at Street Artists. It is way to content-rich to describe it all here. The website, GoodMagazine.com, is a nice companion but by no means a substitute for the magazine. If you visit the website, be sure to see the GOOD “Portrait” on Mark and Sara Schiller and the “original” GOOD video on their Wooster project.

Here’s how GOOD describes itself:

Welcome to GOOD, media for people who give a damn… We see a growing number of people tied together not by age, career, background, or circumstance, but by a shared interest. This revolves around a passion for potential mixed with fierce pragmatism and creative engagement. We sum all this up as the sensibility of giving a damn. But to shorten it, let’s call it GOOD. We’re here to push this movement and cover its realization.

While so much of today’s media is taking up our space, dumbing us down, and impeding our productivity, GOOD exists to add value. Through a print magazine, feature and documentary films, original multimedia content and local events, GOOD is providing a platform for the ideas, people, and businesses that are driving change in the world.

Make that 12,743 subscribers. I’m in even if I didn’t pay for the first issue I “borrowed.”

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Today is move day. After seven years in our cozy 4th floor loft, we are moving almost a city block within our beloved Chelsea Market to the 8th floor above the corner of 9th Avenue and 15th Street (we’ll have an open house soon enough). Consequently, my morning routine is all out of whack. No morning java from my favorite coffee cart guy. No 8am arrival at the office to crank out my blog post. A few extra hours at home to ponder and pet Pinky. Of course, I could have tried to replicate my morning routine–but why bother? Sometimes, change is good.

Today is change day. We are taking advantage of our move to make a number of small changes and a couple of big changes that hopefully will have a profound impact on our brand and the world we share. One of the small changes is that we’ve shortened our email addresses from @renegademarketing.com to @renegade.com thereby saving our correspondents 9 key strokes. Consider for a moment the thousands of people we interact with on an annual basis and that’s a lot of key strokes/personal energy saved. Okay, we don’t expect any thanks for this small change but you’re welcome nonetheless.

Today is change day. Our new office is completely open. In fact, only our HR chief has an office with a door. Everyone else has an Ikea desk/table clustered with two to four fellow renegades. This is a big change. We hope this openness will increase the speed of communication and enable even greater collaboration. We also hope that the combined energy of 80+ renegades visibly engaged in their craft will be palpable and inspire ever greater acts of creativity and marketing for good.Today is change day. We are taking advantage of this move to become as green a company as possible. We have drafted a green is good manifesto which will reconstituted at various critical places around the office (i.e. faucets, copiers, printers, soda machine, etc.). The basic objective of the manifesto is to publicly state our goals as a green-friendly company and inspire renegades to follow through. Simply put, our goal is to become emissions neutral, reduce our per capita consumption of energy and paper while recycling everything we can. We had to leave water off our list since we have no way of monitoring our consumption (at least at the moment).

We have formed a green team to implement the manifesto. Our green team is looking into the relative green-ness of paper versus reusable mugs, how much electricity we could save if everyone turned off their computers each night and office plants that absorb the most toxins. They have even reached out to our new neighbors to figure out how we can deal with some of the thornier recycling challenges.

It’s all very inspiring. Seems like today is as good as any to change for the good.

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I’m a big Wii fan and not just because I can occasionally beat my hard core gamer son in the boxing and tennis games. I’m a big fan because Wii changed the game–they created a system that doesn’t require pushing a zillion buttons–they made it simple and simply fun. It’s no substitute for exercise but it burns a lot more calories than its more sedentary competition. Oh, and, by the way, according a very green renegade, Wii is the most energy efficient of all the gaming systems.

One sure sign of Wii’s success is that it is creating cottage industries around it. The Wall St. Journal wrote about one of these secondary markets last Friday:

Now, another feature called the Mii, which lets users create their own game characters using a selection of facial characteristics to appear on the screen, is sparking a creative frenzy. Over the past few months, the Mii has spawned a fast-growing secondary market, with more than a dozen Web sites selling T-shirts, beer mugs and statuettes with Miis on them, or simply sharing Mii creations of celebrities, politicians and fictional figures like Darth Vader.

According to MarketingVox:

Nintendo is pushing its Mii concept forward, adding elements that will let users become immersed in interactivity – in hopes of creating a social-networking community to rival the likes of MySpace.

A feature of Nintendo’s Wii is an avatar module, known as Mii, that lets users create their own character. But TopTechNews reports that Nintendo is expanding the concept by creating a Mii channel later this year that will allow users to chat with, rate each other’s Mii and otherwise interact. Nintendo will also let users play as their Mii in some games.

Mii makes Wii more personal, more social and more fun. While Mii and Wii won’t save the world, it provides a welcome break from the chores of the day. Sometimes even Marketing for Good needs a fun break.

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One of the core components of Marketing for Good is the notion of engagement which is predicated on an a fair of exchange of value between brand and consumer. Smart experiential marketers have been delivering a fair exchange of value for years, providing the consumer some form of engaging experience in exchange for the consumer’s time, information, loyalty and/or cash. HSBC offers New Yorkers a free taxi ride in their BankCab in exchange for customer loyalty and positive word-of-mouth. This is quite a bit different than street team kid who tried to shove a donut in my mouth to “entice” me into visiting a WAMU branch (needless to say he failed miserably).

Advertisers are just beginning to wake up to the idea that their communications could be more than “here’s our message, please pay attention.” Ben Richards and Faris Yakob of Naked Communications wrote a smart piece on this trend in Monday’s Adweek. The subhead “give consumers real value, and they’ll lend your their ears” pretty much sums it up as does this paragraph:

Today, in response to an aversion to advertising, some of the world’s leading brands have begun to craft an entirely new model for communications to help them earn the right to talk to consumers. They’re doing this by making their marketing valuable, developing brand communications that deliver a genuine service value to consumers, free and with no strings attached. This is Marketing 2.0.

Their article also provides some interesting examples of advertisers who are shifting their messaging from telling about the product/service to making the product/service more useful:

Amazon chose to address this by taking its media budget and investing it in free postage and packing; Evian has invested its media budget in free “Purity Spas,” which offer hot stone massages and detox treatments; Charmin invested in free public toilets in Times Square; Europe’s biggest health and beauty retailer, Alliance Boots, reallocated much of its ad budget to simply retraining its pharmacy staff.

By looking at marketing as a service rather than a message, marketers are sure to gain competitive advantage, enhancing their product offerings and engaging their customers and prospects in fresh and meaningful ways. Expect a lot more examples of this approach very soon.

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Found a timely article in BRANDWEEK by Kenneth Hein yesterday called “Good Things Come to Brands That Give.” The article highlights some of the good will activities of companies like Coca-Cola and Starbucks both of whom are involved in addressing water purification issues:

In Kenya, Coca-Cola is helping teach children how to test drinking water for contamination. The company also is providing water-purification systems for some of the country’s most poverty-stricken areas.

In India, Starbucks is addressing sanitation-related health problems by donating $1 million to WaterAid. With World Water Day looming (March 22), Coca-Cola and Starbucks have taken the opportunity to illustrate the good they are doing for the 1.1 billion people who lack access to clean drinking water.

More importantly, the article sites a study (LOHAS) by the Natural Marketing Institute which indicates that these good deeds impact brand preference:

• Sixty percent of U.S. adults over the age of 18 said “knowing a company is mindful of its impact on the environment and society makes me more likely to buy their products and services.”
  

• Fifty-seven percent of consumers said they feel more loyal to companies that are socially responsible, and about half (52%) said they were more likely to talk to their friends and families about such mindful corporations.
  

• More than a third (38%) said they’d be willing to pay extra for products produced by socially responsible companies and 35% said they were more likely to buy stock in such corporations.

One of the issues that socially responsible companies face is the degree to which they tout their own goodness. Some companies are reluctant to make a big deal about their good will efforts preferring to let their actions speak for themselves. For example, according to the LOHAS study, 62% of those surveyed are unaware of Wal-Marts substantial green initiative. While remaining low key about good will activities is indeed a noble approach it may not be smart business. Marketing for Good is about doing good for the right reasons AND growing the business. If growing the business means telling the world about your good will activities then find the nearest mountain top and let the world know. It is okay to take credit when credit is due.

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Saturday’s New York Times had an interesting article on socially responsible investing and filled in some of the holes in my earlier posts. First, this is a growing area and about one in eleven dollars is directed toward socially responsible investments which is actually more than I would have expected:

Although socially responsible investments have grown substantially over the last 10 years, they still represent a small part of the world of investments under professional management: 9.4 percent, according to a report by the Social Investment Forum, a trade group for the industry (www.socialinvest.org).

Surprise, surprise–this is not really a new idea (very few things are):

Socially responsible investing dates back hundreds of years and has a religious cornerstone, said Steven J. Schueth, president of First Affirmative Financial Network, an investment advisory firm that focuses on such investments. Methodists, for example, did not want to invest in sin stocks, meaning companies that sold tobacco or liquor, and Quakers refused to invest in slavery or war.

One of the simplest way to categorize “good” companies is to screen out those that do “bad”:

Negative screening to eliminate companies that do or make things you do not like is one way to choose an investment. According to the Social Investment Forum’s report, “2005 Report on Socially Responsible Investing Trends in the United States,” the most common product people screen out is tobacco. More than 88 percent of the total assets in the universe of socially screened funds are in tobacco-free companies.

There are a lot of companies and funds that focus on socially responsible investing:

Among the best known are Calvert, Domini Social Investments and Pax World Funds. But if your notion of a socially responsible investment is, say, a small wind-power company or a health food start-up, you may be surprised that Amy Domini, chief executive of Domini Social Investments, also has McDonald’s on her list.

You can also put your money where your mouth is buy electing to invest in funds with particularly political bents:

The Women’s Equity Fund (www.womens-equity.com) invests in stocks that advance women in the workplace, for example. Portfolio 21 (www.portfolio21.com) and Sierra Club funds (www.sierraclubfunds.com) focus on companies they consider environmentally progressive.

The challenge is that “good will” and “good returns” aren’t always in sync:

“In the early days, people who wanted to invest in socially or environmentally responsible companies were not so concerned about performance, but wanted to see their money make a difference,” Mr. Schueth of First Affirmative Financial Network said. “Now they want to see their money do double duty. They want to make a difference, but they want to retire comfortably.”

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, such investors were attracted to portfolios that focused on high-tech and health care, which were booming. But Mr. Schueth said the industry was now “running into some headwinds,” because tobacco and oil companies and weapons manufacturers — unacceptable to most socially responsible investors — have done particularly well over the last few years.

Roy Weitz, publisher of Fund-Alarm.com, a Web site that takes a skeptical look at the mutual fund industry, said he believed that in the long run, socially responsible investments “get a less optimal return, because any time you place artificial limits on what you invest in, you’re limiting your upside.”

So, where does that leave us? Investing in companies or funds that aspire to do well by doing good may not provide the best returns. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try–it just means you may have to work a little harder to find high performing investments that match your values. Zac Bissonette, on BloggingStocks.com identifies a couple of “values-based” stocks that have done particularly well of late including Amana Mutual Funds and The Ave Maria Catholic Values Fund. Of course, he also notes that The Vice Fund, an antisocial responsibility fund has also done really well too. Hmmm–temptation abounds.