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For Gap Adventures, Sustainability Is The Source of Profit

How did a travel company grow its revenue by 42 percent during the recent economic stall? It attracted more customers (around $150 million worth) because it aligned its business model with sustainability. “Sustainability is at the forefront of our business model because of customer demand,” says Gap Adventures CEO, Bruce Poon Tip. A demand that Bruce […]

Are Sustainable Businesses Roadblocks To Change?

Slovenian philosopher and theorist Slavoj Žižek swings a sledge hammer at the knees of ‘cultural capitalism’ in this 10-minute video. And I admit, my knees buckled for some moments as I listened to his critique of Starbucks for its fair trade coffee, of philanthropist George Soros and of ‘charity businesses’ like TOMS Shoes. Žižek argues that […]

Find Your Super-consumers and Build For Them

We’re in an era of the super-consumer. Consumers are attuned to the companies and supply chains behind the items they buy. While today’s consumers stil boycott, they buycott more. I love Amazon but spend my dollars with Better World Books when I have the option. I’m not boycotting Amazon, I’m buycotting Better World Books. As […]

Radical Pricing Scheme Earns $ for Companies & Nonprofits

Letting people pay what they want, with the promise that 50% will go to charity, produces a higher profit than selling the product at a fixed, market price. It also earns more money for the nonprofit Leif Nelson, an associate professor of marketing at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, ran an experiment […]

Good-Business Topics I Care About

Here are some of the areas that compel me (in some cases because my understanding is terribly weak–I’m talking to you, Measurement) that I will focus on this year: Measurement Impact (the object of measurement) is the reason I write this blog. Although I grasp the framework of measurement and evaluation, I want to better understand […]

To Tap Cause Marketing’s Huge Potential, Do Less Of It

This piece was originally written for and published on Reach Students. If 94% of Millennials condone cause marketing why do only 53% report buying a product that benefits a cause in the past year?  The first finding is compelling, the second certainly is not, particularly given that in many stores you’d have to struggle not to buy […]

Want To Open a Nonprofit Store? 10 Guidelines You–and Nordstrom’s–Should Follow

Scandal in-the-making, customer-pleaser, tax write-off, nonprofit cash cow or game-changer?  Which hyphenated phrase will best describe Nordstrom’s new concept store, which will donate all net profits to charity? I was interviewed recently by American Public Media’s Marketplace on the Nordstrom concept store, set to open in Soho next fall, and on the growing appeal of […]

Retail Philanthropy Is In High Demand: 4 Steps To Doing It Right

Neither nationwide purse-tightening nor cries of Slactivism! Greenwashing! and Fad! have shaken cause marketing. Eighty-three percent of consumers “want more of the products, services and retailers they use to benefit causes,” according to Cone Inc.’s 2010 Cause Evaluation Study. But how do you do cause-related marketing (or cause branding) right? Pick a cause you care about. […]

What Does the Empathy Differentiator Mean For Social Business?

How does a physician with sufficient medical knowledge and analytic ability distinguish himself? He measures high on the empathy scale.  Once a physician gets past a certain threshold of analytic ability, he’s proven himself to be an okay doctor on the functional front, so the point of differentiation becomes his empathic abilities. When the Jefferson […]

Will B Corp’s New Campaign Be The Death Knell For Cause-Washing?

Rather than doing the industry in, cause-washing might just save corporate sustainability. Although consumer trust is worse than we thought, the anecdote has the potential to alter the way companies do business and consumers shop. Less than one percent of people (surveyed recently by BBMG in partnership with B Lab) trust company advertisements or statements […]