364 : Discussing Climate Change and The Business World Today - with Bruce McMeekin

Social Capital

Meet Bruce

Bruce is the CEO and founder of BKM Marketing a Boston-based integrated marketing agency focused on helping clients grow their businesses. BKM marketing creates about 100 campaigns a year for clients, typically producing millions of direct mail pieces, online display ads, emails, social, social media posts, and more. But he's not here to talk about that today. Two years ago, Bruce became interested in understanding how his firm contributed to global warming. So he engaged a class of MBA students to measure his firm's carbon footprint and examine the marketing industry's carbon impact as a whole.

What prompted you to spend so much of your time and energy on climate change?

Well, you know, it's really interesting. First and foremost, I live in the Washington area, and we have an ocean nearby. And everyone's concerned about how you know how high those oceans going to get. And, you know, when you start looking inwardly, it's, why is there so much concern about climate change right now, and it's because of human activity. So I own a small business, and we do a lot of stuff that might be part of the problem. So I wanted to take a good close look at what it is my company does, how what kind of impact that has, and also the industry. And it was enlightening to see how much damage we are doing as and not just our industry, lots of industries are like this. And so we wanted to measure it and see what we could do to offset what we're doing and reduce what we're doing. And believe it or not, that helps me make sleep a little bit better at night. And we were very lucky to find out that we can offset not only our impact but all the client work that we do. And so far, it's been very well received. And one of the things that we get asked some follow-up to is that all the time is okay, do business customers care about whether or not the companies that are doing business with actually really care if the company cares about the environment? And the answer is overwhelming. Lots of different studies on this. Probably the most interesting fact is that 92% of customers are more likely to trust a company that supports any kind of social or environmental issue. That's nine out of 10. When you look at millennials 68% of millennials buy a product with a social environmental benefit. More often than not, they seek it out It's whole, it's really good business, in addition to good for the environment.

So how can our listeners go about making their businesses net zero now?

Well, there are several ways to go about it, the first thing you have to do is learn what is your carbon footprint, and it varies from business to business, of course, and industry to industry. So one of the things we ended up learning is how little knowledge there is about US-based businesses, and what the impact they make on the environment is to do a whole lot of research. And most of that research will point you to a bunch of resources coming out of Europe, Europe is certainly I don't know how many years but a half a decade, decade ahead of the United States in terms of really trying to combat sources of global warming. So I can, you know, walk you through an example of what we ended up doing, or how we went about it. Yeah. And, but I do want to make sure that this isn't about, you know, us looking great. Doing, this is something that we think every business can do. So we didn't know the first thing about it two years ago. And so we found an MBA class at Suffolk University in Boston, that was looking for a partner to become the topic for the course. And so we had about 29 Students take a look at, our business and our industry. And we asked them to figure out how can we actually calculate the carbon impact our business has on the environment, and not just us. But certainly, you know, all the work we do for the clients. And with Greek, we do a lot of direct mail work, as you mentioned in my bio, outside looking in, boy, that means you're cutting down trees. And that is true. And you know, after the tree is cut down, the tree has to find its way to a paper mill, that's got to burn off a lot burn a whole bunch of carbon. From there, the paper mill has to process it into something that actually can be printed on, and then, it has to go someplace where it actually can get printed. So there's, we made a whole bunch of assumptions based on the best knowledge that we had.

Can you share your most successful or favorite networking experience that you’ve had?

There's an organization called Agency Management Institute, it's a community of like-minded people trying to tackle like-minded. similar challenges. Even though it's a group of folks that are competing, sometimes quite, quite aggressively with each other. It's a community. And, you know, if you're just talking about, you know, how hard it is to find great people to join your agency right now, that's hard, and being able to network with folks that have that type of, of issue, and they want to help they, you know, maybe they have someone on their team that's not you know, being as productive or not a great fit, but they can find out that it's a great fit for someone else. Who has that, you know, a similar need for that type of person? That's what, you know, building communities is all about, you know, one of our target audiences here for what we're doing, which is, you know, pro bono on steroids is we're trying to get other marketing companies to think more about how they're contributing to global warming. And you know, the AMI network is perfect for that. And, you know, we're still just getting going in our movement here at zero marketing. Excuse me, net zero now, dot marketing. But, no, we aren't getting, you know, some interest. And we're happy to share this because it's good for everybody. It's good for our business.

How do you stay in front of and nurture those relationships in that network in that community that you create?

Well, social media is certainly important. I find in my circle, LinkedIn is super powerful. So let's, you know, coming out of a pandemic, it's interesting to start mingling with real humans and, you know, being able to shake hands give hugs and things like that. It's all, you know, making sure we are, it places where, you know, our community is, is very important. But I think a lot of us were getting used to hiding behind, if you can call this hiding, hiding behind the zoom camera. And, you know, some folks have been, you know, reticent to get get back out there, or when they're out there, you almost forget how to be Truly Social. So I encourage anyone to listen right now. That's, that's a comfort zone that I don't think we all want it to be in the beginning, just myself, personally. Sure, getting out and talking to people and you know, beginning to have group meetings and getting together with clients face to face again, it's just been fantastic. And but it has taken. It's moving into a new comfort zone again.

If you could go back to your 20-year-old self, Bruce, what would you tell yourself to do more or less of or differently concerning your professional career?

Listen to my gut more than other influencers I have in my life. So I for one started my career at I was always known as a marketing guy, and spent my early 20s at Procter and Gamble, helping them sell lard in the form of Duncan Hines products, Pringles potato chips, and Crisco oils. And, you know, as a marketing guy, but that wasn't going to be for me, because everything was convincing folks to spend $1.49 on lard. So what did I do, I went back to business school, then I became a banker, which is not anything I wanted to be, but somehow there was an expectation, I think that that was a good prudent move. And that expectation came from my parents and their friends and things like that. And but all along there, my gut was saying, you know, I really shouldn't be doing something different than being you know, a guy that was you know, being a product manager for products that didn't matter as much to me as you know, the fun of creating, creating needs and communications and things like that. So it probably took me a while. 20 years to break out of that. But my gut all along was saying, you know, this isn't the right career for you. So I guess that would be the advice there. We all have a gut. We have intuition. And we have, you know, messaging, it's in our head that conflicts with the environment we're in often. I think, you know, over time, I've gotten better at that. But if I did that in my 20s, I can't imagine what my life would be like now.

Any final words or advice you'd like to offer our listeners about growing and supporting your network?

I think if you there's always any situation has a right answer. And any wrong answer. Sometimes you might need to think through the gray area a little bit. But most of us, I think know what the right thing to do is in this situation. That would be the advice to do the right thing.

Connect with Bruce

linkedin.com/in/brucemcmeekin

bankmergermarketing.com

bkmmarketing.com

Email: [e-mail]