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Principled Profit

Written by: Andy Marken

Article Overview: Book Review -- Marketing That Puts People First – Shel Horowitz; Accurate Writing & More, PO Box 1164, Northampton MA 01061, http://www.frugalfun.com/secureorder.html, June 2003, 160 pages, $17.50

Principled Profit

News Flash – Watching companies like MCI, Adelphi, Enron, Anderson and others spiral from “greatness” to something less than despicable and knowing some PR people creatively shaped these messages is depressing. Reading about PR people cooking up deals to pay journalists to hawk desired messages is depressing. Reading Shel’s book gave us renewed faith that there is hope for free enterprise! If enough public relations professionals read – and put the concepts to work – we might, just might raise the image of our profession.


Read Shel’s book and put his recommendations to work and you will have a definite feeling that you are making a contribution to your company and your community (local and global). This is a book not just for your personal reading but for your boss and his/her boss. Principled Profit isn’t a public relations tactical book, it is a strategic book that gives you real business stories that illustrate doing good for competitors, employees, partners and customers can pay dividends.

Whether you like to admit it or not, public relations people are in the people business. We interpret our people (management) to other people (customers) and we interpret other people (customers) to our people (management). Along the way we deal with a world of other people. Shel shows how businesses of all types – public and private – can be run ethically and ultimately profitably. But we’d mislead you if you finished this review and thought it was another roadmap to making a buck. This is a book about how you can get up in the morning, look at the mirror and like what you see in the mirror. It’s about helping you understand how you can work through the day, come home in the evening and still like the person staring back at you in the mirror. It’s about doing your job, doing it well, doing it successfully and end up with everyone winning.

Don’t get us wrong, this isn’t one of those business ethics books that preach at you. Shel’s book is one that works with you and guides you through practical, real-life examples. The author also recognizes that there is the dark side of the coin but that win-win marketing and communications can produce solid results for your organization. At the same time he recognizes that it is a lot easier (and more expeditious) to tear down the competition, short-change your partners and in general take-the-money and run. But without preaching at you he shows that doing the right thing not only feels good…it works.

While corporate scandals and trials may make the front page of the paper and top the 9 p.m. news, Principled Profit gives you a practical how-to guide in your personal and professional interrelations even when you know the person on the other side of the table doesn’t have your best interests high on his/her priority list. But by taking the principled high ground it is possible to turn even adversarial situations into win-win situations.

You’ll probably be a skeptic when you first open the book but it won’t take you long before you know that Horowitz really believes – and makes you believe – that people really do matter.

Sure this is a marketing book but isn’t that what public relations is all about? It’s about marketing the most important product you know – yourself! If you can’t do that to deliver a win-win situation you certainly aren’t going to do it for your organization. Being ethical and following the principles you know are right can be the best thing you do for your most important business – you!

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