Category Archives: Green Marketing

Green marketing (not greenWASHing!)

Describe Your Unique Role in Collaborative Efforts

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fabric threads[Dalya’s Note: This is an excerpt from my award-winning book, Writing to Make a Difference: 25 Powerful Techniques to Boost Your Community Impact.]

You may recall my post about the value of collaboration. Today I want to talk about the importance of carving out a unique niche for your organization in those collaborative efforts.

Your work to advance your organization’s unique brand involves illustrating how you contribute essential threads to your community’s interwoven fabric. You serve as a crucial resource and contributor to social and/or environmental responsibility.

Collaboration combines your organization’s power with that of other organizations that share your values, in a strategic effort to benefit a larger number of people than you could alone.

Ask yourself: How does your work fit into the larger picture of your community’s well-being?

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Now Available: New Independent Publishing Resources for Changemakers

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ebookLooking for a new way to attract and engage prospective donors, clients, or customers? Today’s audiences often bypass traditional fundraising or advertising. Instead, they want relevant and useful content that they can act on right away. Are you offering them that?

A book or e-book (maybe even a “free-mium”) is a great way to share your experience and insights, bring more visibility to your cause or organization, and establish yourself as a passionate and credible “author”-ity in your field.

Vital components of your overall marketing strategy, books and e-books can be recycled across many communication and fundraising channels (online and offline). You’ll make a winning impression when you can say: “We wrote the book on that topic!”

With e-books and books so easy to create these days, what’s holding you back? And how can you make them work for your organization?

My website now houses lots of great new resources for current and emerging self-publishers—especially leaders of social sector organizations:

Conference call: Independent Publishing for the Changemaker: Advice on how to use this ultimate marketing technique: what’s involved and how to get started (handout plus recording)

Webinar slides:

  • Publishing Your Ebook for Greater Business Impact
  • Thinking About Hiring an Independent Editor? Start Here!

Detailed handouts:

  • The right team for the indie publishing process
  • Where to find an independent editor: professional associations
  • Websites of interest to the indie writer/publisher

Download your copies HERE.

Maximize Your Organization’s Collaborations and Reap the Benefits

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partnership[Dalya’s Note: This is an excerpt from my award-winning book, Writing to Make a Difference: 25 Powerful Techniques to Boost Your Community Impact.]

Given the astronomical proliferation of values-driven organizations in the last few decades, many of our readers are wondering: “How come you all don’t just combine forces?”

Good question.

No one—investors, customers, clients, etc.—likes to see duplication of effort among barely distinguishable parties. It certainly makes marketing and branding a tougher job as well!

But we are so passionate and concerned about our own sub-issues, services, and products that we can neglect the potential allies out there. In fact, instead of finding ways to cooperate, we often adopt a competitive attitude.

Please don’t get me wrong. I am the first to agree that healthy competition keeps organizations on their toes. What I bemoan is the frequent tendency to allow narrow organizational interests (such as maintaining the status quo or protecting fragile egos) to take precedence over larger community interests. Continue reading →

Conscious Capitalism in the SF Bay Area: what is it and where is it going?

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conscious capitalism logoI recently sat down for a conversation with Margaret Ryan and Anna McGrath, co-directors of the Bay Area Conscious Capitalism chapter, a new part of the global movement of businesses with a triple bottom line: people, planet, and profits.

Margaret and Anna outlined some of the fundamentals of the international conscious capitalism movement and highlighted their plans to further the work via the Bay Area chapter. You can listen to the full 30-minute interview HERE.

For starters, Anna and Margaret offered clear and compelling explanations of how conscious capitalism focuses on running a business that embodies a deep commitment to the purpose of positively and holistically impacting all of the people (stakeholders) involved in the work, as well as the planet itself. These ideas of a “purpose-driven organization” expressed through “stakeholder integration” comprise the first two tenets of the movement. The other two are:

 1)  “Conscious leadership” that is authentic and collaborative on a daily basis in recognition that every employee is leading his or her role

and

2)      “Conscious culture and management” with decision-making by everyone in the organization’s structure and operating systems, in a way that moves beyond the outdated centralized systems of the industrial age

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Green Marketing Without Greenwashing: AdAge Report Aims To Demystify FTC Green Guides (Part 2)

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greenwashing-protest[Dalya’s Note: This guest post by Christopher Zara, writer at International Business Times, was originally published on September 16, 2013 on International Business Times. Today we pick up where Christopher left off in Part 1.]

The Federal Trade Commission published its first-ever “Green Guides” in 1992, an effort to provide a set of best practices that can help marketers avoid making deceptive green claims. Last year, the FTC guides were updated for the first time since 1998. Ottman said green marketing has seen a lot of changes in those 14 years, including the introduction of phrases such as “sustainable” and “renewable,” which can serve as helpful descriptions when used accurately but can just as easily descend into empty jargon.

In an effort to codify the recent changes to the FTC guides, Ottman coauthored a new report, “How to Make Credible Green Marketing Claims,” which was released Monday by Advertising Age. In it, Ottman and her coauthor, David Mallen — deputy director for legal affairs at the National Advertising Division (NAD) — present a detailed discussion of what’s new to the FTC guides. The 48-page report also includes information on why it’s important for marketers to make credible green claims, and how companies risk damaging their reputations when they don’t. The goal, Ottman said, is to help demystify the legalese-heavy green guides for marketing professionals who are tasked with conveying a product’s environmental benefits to the general public.

“Until now, nobody’s tried to translate all of this for your day-to-day marketing people,” she said. “The lawyers can read it but the marketing people can’t.”

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