Media Center for Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green and its Primary Author Shel Horowitz-The GREEN Guerrilla Marketer

Shel Horowitz and his eighth book Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green
were featured on this billboard in New York’s Times Square.

Media that Have Covered Shel:

Interview questions:

Interview Questions: Business Focus

Note: As an experienced interviewee, Shel is also happy to answer your own questions.

1. You describe yourself as an ethical/green marketing expert. How does ethical/green marketing differ from ordinary marketing?

3. People tend to think of ‘Green’ anything as expensive and complicated. Is that true for Green marketing?

4. How and why should businesses seek alliances with their competitors?

5. But what if my competitors don’t act that way? They’ll try to take advantage!

7. Can you give examples of well-known companies that thrive by being Green?

8. It’s easy to be Green and honest in good times. What about in a crisis or a recession?

10. How can people get your book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green?

Interview Questions: Consumer Focus

Note: As an experienced interviewee, Shel is also happy to answer your own questions.

1. What does Johnson & Johnson understand about consumer safety that Ford does not?

2. What do Toyota and Ford understand about sustainability that Chrysler does not?

3. Does Green have to cost more?

4. What’s the single most important thing consumers should focus on when choosing businesses to support?

5. How does that fit in with your Business Ethics Pledge campaign?

6. But I’m only one shopper–how can I really make a difference?

7. How do these choices affect the kinds of communities we live in?

8. What advice can you give the business owners in our audience?

9. What else have you written?

10. How can people get your book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green?

Full Q&A (with answers to the above questions)

1. You describe yourself as an ethical/green marketing expert. How does ethical/green marketing differ from ordinary marketing?

You come at marketing from an attitude of service, of helping others. And of course you DON’T cheat or mislead or overhype or (fill in your own pet peeve).

2. Your eighth book is “Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green,” with a co-author who’s done more than 60 books. You have a foreword by Stephen M.R. Covey and more than 50 endorsements. What’s guerrilla marketing, and what’s Green guerrilla marketing?

Guerrilla marketing is a term coined by my co-author, Jay Conrad Levinson, back in 1984, when he published the first Guerrilla Marketing book. It’s the idea that you can be nimble and quick, just like a military guerrilla–sometimes that means you’re in and out quickly before your big, slow, lumbering competition has a chance to react.

Green guerrilla marketing sharpens the focus to look at the impact of a business on our environment, to shape that impact so it’s positive, and to tell your Green story so effectively that the world begins to seek you out.

Incidentally, when you think this way, all sorts of “impossible” things become possible–and wonderful. As an example, I not only agented this book myself to a major NYC-area publisher, I brought in Jay and his famous brand, I brought in Stephen M.R. Covey for the foreword, and even wrote my own back cover (something most authors never get to do when working with a major publisher).

3. People tend to think of ‘Green’ anything as expensive and complicated. Is that true for Green marketing?

While it sometimes happens that way, it certainly doesn’t have to be! In fact, the Green ways are often cheaper and simpler–on both the marketing and operations sides. It’s a wonderful situation because if you understand this, doing the right thing becomes a no-brainer.

In the book, I highlight the remarkable work of Amory Lovins, who shows over and over again how the same amount of money and energy and time can be used to achieve, say, a 60 or 80 percent energy saving as a 10 percent reduction. So why not do the big, bold move and channel that expenditure toward the much more dramatic savings, by thinking holistically. For instance, he was hired to lower the energy cost of an industrial facility. He yanked out the narrow, twisting pipes and replaced them with wide, straight ones. The reduced friction led to an astounding 92 percent reduction in energy consumption (and thus, carbon footprint was reduced as well). Lovins’ think tank, Rocky Mountain Institute, was recently hired to do a “deep energy retrofit” on the Empire State Building of all things, and I’m sure that will not only pay for itself in dramatic savings but become a model for how to Green an old and very inefficient building that happens to be a national icon.

In my own, much smaller, business, I needed a new printer and I got one that prints on both sides of the page. My paper consumption went down 40 percent, and since I pay $45 or $50 for a case of recycled copy paper, that printer paid for itself out of paper savings in well under a year.

4. How and why should businesses seek alliances with their competitors?

To create partnerships where both of you come out ahead of where you’d be without each other–just as IBM and Apple teamed with Motorola to create the PowerPC chip in the 1990s, and FedEx’s partnership with the USPS allows the Postal Service to do Express Mail. Co-operative marketing allows everyone to reach a wider audience–there’s a great example on page 67, where 11 local florists banded together to do a killer display ad none of them could have done on their own.

For the launch of Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green, I estimate that I reached at least five million people (based on exact-match Google searches for the title that brought back over a million hits)–but my own lists only total 10,000. Partnerships made all the difference. Those same partnerships also allowed me to include over $2600 in extra bonuses for anyone who registers their purchase of the book; the partners benefit with zero-cost marketing, and I reach more people with a more attractive offer. Everybody wins.

5. But what if my competitors don’t act that way? They’ll try to take advantage!

It’s simple: don’t partner with jerks! If someone doesn’t have a win-win attitude, partner with someone else instead. Let the cutthroats cut their own throats by not participating.

6. One of your boldest arguments is that companies shouldn’t worry about market share because ‘market share doesn’t matter’. How can you say this? Why shouldn’t businesses be focused on becoming major players in their market?

For a service business, market share is completely irrelevant. If I were to handle even 0.0001 percent of the market for marketing consulting and book shepherding (my two primary categories), I’d never get any sleep, would have no free time, and would have to be managing a large staff. And because I have some very headstrong and unique ideas about the marketing process, I’d have a very difficult time finding people I could trust to do the work the way I’d want it done. While the situation is a bit different for a product business (revolving around issues like economies of scale), again, the key question is not what is my share of the market, but do I have enough sales to create a profitable business?

Interestingly, when companies worry less about market share and more about how to make the maximum positive impact on the world, market share tends to increase.

7. Can you give examples of well-known companies that thrive by being Green?

Socially conscious upstarts like Ben & Jerry’s and The Body Shop became so important in their categories, I believe, precisely because of their social and environmental commitment. Marcal, makers of toilet paper and similar products, went recycled in 1950 but didn’t tell anyone. When the company started really focusing its packaging on telling the Green story, it became the category leader.

8. It’s easy to be Green and honest in good times. What about in a crisis or a recession?

Look for ways to be Green that cost little or nothing to implement, and make sure you share your Green commitment appropriately. Being Green and basing your business in strong ethics will actually give you a strong marketing advantage in tough ties: your customers will be more loyal, a bit less price-sensitive, perhaps, and much more willing to evangelize on your behalf.

9. Let’s say I am a small businessperson who wants to try something Green in my marketing efforts, but I don’t where to begin. Where should I start and how can I get my customers to notice and to care?

Start with the “low-hanging fruit”–the stuff that’s easy and cheap and has a quick payback. Buy your printing from companies using FSC-certified paper, waterless printing, and vegetable ink. Switch from disposable foam cups to reusable ceramic mugs in the break room. Replace bottled water with filtered tap. Buy a two-sided printer and learn to use that setting. Seek out local sources manufactured with Green methods. Use Internet marketing instead of printed materials, when feasible. Etcetera, etcetera. Going Green is a process; there’s always more to do, but start by taking easy steps. On the marketing side–start mentioning all your Green initiatives. Have a web page about your commitment to sustainability. Put it in your brochures and press releases, your product packaging, etc. Mention it in your sales calls.

10. How can people get your book, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green?

It’s available from all the major online stores, and any bookstore can order it if you give them the ISBN: 978-0-470-40951-0. Use the full title: “Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green”–there are more than 60 Guerilla Marketing books that cover other aspects of business and have nothing to do with what we’ve been talking about. Of course, you can also order directly from me at http://guerrillamarketinggoesgreen.com or 413-586-2388 (8 a.m. to 10 p.m. US Eastern) and request an autographed copy. Wherever you buy it, register your purchase at http://guerrillamarketinggoesgreen.com/bonuses to get those $2600 worth of extra goodies we talked about earlier.

Bio:

About Shel Horowitz: ethical/Green marketing expert, book shepherd, writer, international speaker, consultant, community organizer, frugalist

Beginning with a one-toddler action against smokers at his parents’ party at about age three, Shel Horowitz has been involved in environmental and social change movements his whole life. In 1972, at age 15, he was involved in a community group that opposed a nuclear power plant proposed for two miles north of New York City (a proposal that the utility company quickly withdrew). A veteran of the 1977 Seabrook occupation, his first book, written when he was only 22, was about why nuclear power makes no sense. Shel is also the author of the e-book, Painless Green: 111 Tips to Help the Environment, Lower Your Carbon Footprint, Cut Your Budget, and Improve Your Quality of Life-With No Negative Impact on Your Lifestyle. He is directly responsible for the first nonsmokers’ rights regulations in Northampton, Massachusetts, and for the defeat of a large and inappropriate mountaintop development in his current home town of Hadley, Mass. His Down to Business webzine was one of the first business publications to have a regular section on sustainability.

On the marketing side, Shel was still a teenager when he started doing publicity and marketing for grass-roots community organizations with zero promotional budget. There wasn’t even money available for stamps, so he used to hand-deliver press releases on a three-speed bicycle, Trained as a journalist, he first became aware of the power of the news media when a local paper refused to print meeting notices he wrote for a controversial group—but gave extensive news coverage to its refusal. Now, for over twenty years, he’s helped businesses, nonprofits, and community groups get their message out to the public with little or no expenditure.

After finishing Antioch College at age 19, Shel had to come to terms with his own work history: career paths not only in writing and marketing/PR, but also in radio, teaching, arts, food service, office systems, community organizing, and environmental issues. Putting together his own first résumés led to a new career direction: résumé writing and career services. Shel quickly realized he had the ability to discover a job candidate’s best strengths and present them so those are highlighted while weaknesses are downplayed. In short, he turned résumé writing into a marketing function.

A native of New York City, he returned there to work at two literary agencies as a manuscript reader, and then worked for a year and a half as a VISTA Volunteer community organizer with the Gray Panthers. Pursuing poetry on the side, he became very active in the New York open poetry scene, and met Dina Friedman at an open reading in Greenwich Village.

The two left New York in 1980, spending a year in Philadelphia before settling in Western Massachusetts in 1981—and founding Accurate Writing & More with an initial marketing cost of $12 and a total start-up under $200 (most of it for a 13-year-old IBM Selectric typewriter). They married two years later. Daughter Alana was born in 1987—the same year Dina joined the business—and son Rafael followed in 1992.

Drawing on the marketing he’d practiced in and after college, Shel began marketing his own business locally, and grew it to the largest of its kind in a three-county service area. In 1985, he published the first of six books on low-cost, high-impact marketing. Gradually, he expanded his practice to marketing for other businesses and nonprofits. He began using e-mail as a marketing tool in 1994, set up his first website in 1996, and quickly developed a reputation internationally as a skilled copywriter and marketing strategist who knows how to stretch a marketing dollar. His client list now includes accounts in Europe, Asia, and all across the U.S.; his books have sold to dozens of countries, and have been republished in South Korea, India, Mexico, Italy, and Turkey.

And as an environmental and social justice activist since 1972, he has used these skills pro bono for a number of environmental and social change organizations—especially a group he founded called Save the Mountain, which mobilized thousands of people (in a rural county) and rapidly beat back an “unstoppable” poorly-planned development on a mountain abutting a state park; this was a campaign that combined everything Shel knew about marketing and community organizing, and drew on the skills of many others that he recruited into the organization. Following the success of this campaign, Shel looked at a bigger canvas, and founded the Business Ethics Pledge to make future Enron and Madoff scandals unthinkable. So far, he has signers in more than 30 countries.

Shel now offers not only copywriting and strategic marketing planning based in Green principles, but also helps unpublished writers become published authors. Five of his eight books have won awards and/or been republished in other countries, including his most recent, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green: Winning Strategies to Improve Your Profits and Your Planet (John Wiley & Sons, 2010, co-authored with Mr. Guerrilla Marketing himself, Jay Conrad Levinson).

This new book states that honesty, integrity, and a commitment to environmental sustainability are important—but market share is often the wrong metric entirely…that long-term relationships are better than a one-time sale…and that competitors can be among your best allies.

The book provides dozens of examples of companies large and small that have succeeded by putting people first: familiar names like Johnson & Johnson, IBM, Southwest Airlines as well as numerous entrepreneurs who are successful in their own niches, even if not widely known.

Shel is a popular speaker and media interviewee (including multiple appearances in the New York Times, Inc, Christian Science Monitor, Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur, and many others) who loves to get the word out about this important new paradigm. A few among many venues where Shel has spoken:

Forum Davos, Davos, Switzerland (February 2010)
American Society of Journalists and Authors (April 2010)
Book Expo America (multiple appearances)
Noteworthy USA National Convention Keynote
Public Relations Society of America International Conference
Infinity Publishing Author Conference Keynote
Publishers Marketing Association University (multiple appearances)
Ragan Strategic Media Conference
Regional writing and publishing associations in the Bay Area, Saint Louis, New York, and elsewhere (three with several repeat appearances)
University of Massachusetts Family Business Center (multiple appearances)
Business for Social Responsibility
Colleges and universities including Smith College, University of Vermont, Mount Holyoke College, others