PART I: THE WAY OF THE GOLDEN RULE Chapter 1: Because People Matter Chapter 2: Basic Concepts Chapter 3: Advantages of Doing the Right Thing PART II: THE NEW GREEN, SOCIALLY CONSCIOUS MARKETING MINDSET Chapter 4: The New Marketing Matrix Chapter 5: Abundance versus Scarcity Chapter 6: Build Powerful Alliances With Competitors, Too Chapter 7: Why the Abundance Paradigm Eliminates the Need to Worry about Market Share Chapter 8: Exceptions: Are There Zero-Sum, Win-Lose Situations? PART III: GREEN BUSINESS, GREEN MARKETING Chapter 9: Becoming a Green Company Chapter 10: Marketing Green Chapter 11: Making Green Sexy Across All Demographics and Industries Chapter 12: Language, Greenwashing, and Truth Chapter 13: Three Kinds Of Customers: Are You Reaching Them All? PART IV: GETTING NOTICED IN THE NOISE AND CLUTTER: HANDS-ON WITH COOPERATIVE, PEOPLE-CENTERED MARKETING Chapter 14: Advanced Copywriting Chapter 15: Give the People What They Want Chapter 16: Running a Global Company PART V: USING YOUR BUSINESS TO CREATE A BETTER WORLD Chapter 17: Marketing As Social Change, and Social Change As Marketing Chapter 18: Community-Focused and Charity/Social Change Marketing Chapter 19: Taking the Concept Beyond Marketing: Abundance and Sustainability in Businesses and in Society Chapter 20: Exponential Thinking from Three Practical Visionaries Chapter 21: Profit by Helping the World Chapter 22: Impossible is a Dare: Business For a Better World

They love your niche. They read all the trade magazines, follow the websites, attend the conferences. . .They can cite comparative statistics on product performance, name the key people in your industry, and go head-to-head about which configuration is better, and why. Get them on your side, and they’ll be not just fans but champions, ambassadors, even evangelists for you. But anger or even disappoint them, and they’ll quickly become your sworn enemies. They may or may not know your company, but they certainly know your top competitors. Shel deliberately targeted this group when he wrote an article called “Cognoscenti vs. Hoi Polloi”: Yeah, the big words in the headline are on purpose. . .and very relevant. Cognoscenti are those in the know, the experts, connoisseurs (same route word, I believe---but French origin, rather than Italian). The secret society, if you will. Hoi polloi are the rest of us, the masses. What Edward Bulwer-Lytton called “the great unwashed.” Sometimes you want to market to one, sometimes the other. There’s actually a lot to be said for marketing to an in-group, especially if you don’t have to pay to reach those not in your target audience. When you make your prospects feel special, they’re more likely not only to do business with you, but to maintain an ongoing business relationship. You make them feel appreciated, you talk to them on their own level. Just as with my headline, I’m identifying you, my reader, as someone sophisticated enough to be curious about the headline and to read the article. After all, I could have said “snobs vs. the masses” or “the elite vs. the common people.” But those are so. . . ordinary! You get no satisfaction from conquering those molehills. When you write for the masses, make your language as accessible as possible. But when you’re seeking a much more select audience, jargon and “secrets” have their place, if not done to excess. Not only does your audience feel like you’re talking directly to them, they feel like you’re one of them. I was inspired to write this after reading copywriter Ivan Levison’s critique of an ad with the headline, "Can a grid leave a mark but not a footprint?" Levison wrote, “It seems to me that this is less a headline than a secret message that needs decoding, and make no mistake. Writing an ambiguous headline like this can destroy readership of an ad, email, Web page, brochure, you name it.” Now, I’ve been involved at least a bit with energy and environmental issues all the way back to the 1970s, and to me, this headline made perfect sense. The grid is the infrastructure that transmits the nation’s electricity. The footprint, of course, is a carbon footprint: the impact on our environment, and specifically on climate change. Levison is right that the headline needs decoding---but he’s wrong in seeing it as ineffective. Those who grapple daily with issues of climate change and CO2 in electricity transmission will be immediately clued in that this ad is for them. The Interested: They like the idea of what you do, but they’re fuzzy on the details. They have no strong commitment, but if you can show that you’re the best alternative, they’ll come on over to your side. The Indifferent Or Hostile: They either don’t care about you, your product, or your company, or even your niche---or worse, they actively oppose your agenda. They do care about releasing a pain point or achieving a goal. Even if they hate you at the beginning, you can win them over, slowly, if you solve their problems and ease their way. In the green world, let’s call these types of buyers: Obsessed: Committed Deep Greens (focused on improving the planet) Interested: Lazy, or Light Greens (will do the right thing if it’s not too much trouble) Indifferent or Hostile: Non-Greens/Anti-Greens (this includes everything from people who’ve never paid attention to the environment on up to full-blown climate-change deniers) How Do You Market To Each?