Good Is the New Cool Guide to Meaningful Marketing E-Book

Afdhel Aziz

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 336

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

How brands can evolve to win with conscious consumers

The Good Is the New Cool Guide to Meaningful Marketing is your guide to future-proof your brand with purpose-driven strategies and activations that meet the demands of the new world of conscious capitalism. This book takes readers behind the scenes at some of the world's most famous brands—from purpose-driven pioneers like TOMS, the Honest Company, and Chobani, to household names like Oreo, Call of Duty, and Brand Jordan—to show you how a new wave of marketers are collaborating with values-driven creators of cool like Pharrell, Lady Gaga, and Justin Bieber.

In this book, readers will learn about:

• How brands can authentically discover and deploy their social purpose in ways that drive brand love and financial growth
• The Seven Steps of Meaningful Marketing, including “Think Citizens Not Consumers,” “Solve Problems from the Everyday to the Epic,” and “People are the New Media”
• How brands can collaborate with nonprofits to make money and do good at the same time, using examples from Product(RED), Rivet, and Choose Love

The Good Is the New Cool Guide to Meaningful Marketing earns a well-deserved spot on the bookshelves of all forward-thinking leaders in business, from startups to Fortune 500 companies, seeking to ride the winds of change and market in a better, more meaningful way.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Introduction

Why We Wrote Good Is the New Cool

Bobby's Story

Afdhel's Story

Part I: Good Is the New Cool

Chapter 1: How Good Became the New Cool

A Day in the Life of Conscious Consumers

Millennials and Gen Z Have New Expectations of Brands

2024 Millennial and Gen Z—Purpose and Consumption Statistics

The Disruptive Impact of Technology on Advertising

The Crisis of Meaningfulness in Marketing

Chapter 2: The New Model of Marketing

The Time Is Now

How to Harness the Power of Cool

The Architects of Cool Are on Your Side

The New Nonprofits

Part II: The Seven Principles of How to Market Like You Give a Damn

Chapter 3: Know Your Purpose

Scooter Braun,

Founder, SB Projects

Peter McGuinness,

President, Chobani

Amy Smith,

Chief Brand Officer, TOMS

Chapter 4: Find Your Allies

Jenifer Willig,

Founder, (PRODUCT)

RED

Greg Propper,

Cofounder, Propper Daley

Dan Goldenberg,

Call of Duty Endowment, Activision Blizzard

Chapter 5: Think Citizens, Not Consumers

Fernanda Romano,

Dulux

Eric Dawson,

CEO and Christina Rose, CMO, Rivet

Justin Parnell,

SVP Marketing and Insights, Oreo

Chapter 6: Lead with the Cool, But Bake in the Good

Jason Mayden,

Chief Design Officer, Jordan Brand, Nike

Mimi Valdés,

Chief Creative Officer, i am OTHER

Jocelyn Cooper,

Cofounder, Afropunk

Chapter 7: Don't Advertise, Solve Problems

Elyssa Gray,

Head of Creative and Media, Citibank

Peter Koechley,

Cofounder, Upworthy

Marco Vega,

Cofounder, We Believers

Chapter 8: People Are the New Media

Kfir Gavrieli,

Cofounder, Tieks

Jaha Johnson,

Manager, Common and Usher

Josie Naughton,

Cofounder, Choose Love

Chapter 9: Back Up the Promise with the Proof

Laura Probst,

Head of Social Goodness, the Honest Company

Bobby Campbell,

Manager, Lady Gaga

Andy Fyfe,

Community Development, B Lab

Part III: How to Get Started Today

Chapter 10: Dream It, Do It, Share It!

Our Final Thought: Think Transformational, Not Transactional

Resources and Other Links

References

About the Authors

Acknowledgments

Index

End User License Agreement

Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Introduction

Why We Wrote Good Is the New Cool

Bobby's Story

Afdhel's Story

Begin Reading

Resources and Other Links

References

About the Authors

Acknowledgments

Index

End User License Agreement

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IN PRAISE OF GOOD IS THE NEW COOL GUIDE TO MEANINGFUL MARKETING

“Afdhel, Bobby, and Conspiracy of Love are key partners on this journey to bring our purpose to life.”

—Vicky L. Free, former CMO, Global Brand Marketing adidas

“Afdhel, Bobby, and the team at Conspiracy of Love are the real deal. Smart, empathetic, strategic and seasoned; they really know how to guide an organization to imagine and realize their essential Purpose.”

—Tom Herbst, former CMO, The North Face

“Conspiracy of Love are wise and trusted partners helping us to authentically navigate the space of purpose with our brands to drive business growth.”

—Ciara Dilley, Senior Vice President, PepsiCo

“Every business, brand, and individual involved in the business of brands should sit up and take note.”

—Paul Woolmington, CEO, Canvas Worldwide

“As we begin to enter the golden age in which brands unlock the tremendous potential of technology to do good, VC's and founders alike should treat this book as their indispensable guide to creating disruptive businesses with integrity and soul.”

—David Jones, Founder and CEO, The Brandtech World

“As the world rightly moves to stakeholder capitalism, how companies lead, market, and transform their culture will require a reexamining of purpose. Good is The New Cool should be their handbook.”

—Eve Rodsky, Author FairPlay

GOOD IS THE NEW COOL GUIDE TO MEANINGFUL MARKETING

HOW BRANDS CAN WIN WITH CONSCIOUS CONSUMERS

AFDHEL AZIZ & BOBBY JONES

Copyright © 2025 by Good is the New Cool Inc. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.Published simultaneously in Canada.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, [phone], fax [phone], or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, [phone], fax [phone], or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permission.

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Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Further, readers should be aware that websites listed in this work may have changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it is read. Neither the publisher nor authors shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is Available:

ISBN 9781394281756 (Cloth)ISBN 9781394281763 (ePub)ISBN 9781394281770 (ePDF)

Cover Design: Wiley

FOR OUR RESPECTIVE SONS, MILES & NURI

Introduction

As we look back at this book from the vantage point of 2025, two things become clear:

We could not have predicted the speed and scale with which Brand Purpose (the catch-all term for “marketing with meaning”) would become the norm for most major brands.

How the principles we espoused in the book (“Think Citizens, Not Consumers,” “Solve Problems from the Everyday to the Epic”) would continue to be timeless in their application, and still relevant to today.

A brief timeline: We started writing this book in 2011, which came out in October 2016. Shortly thereafter, Donald Trump was elected president, and in many ways, his rise to power was the catalyst for brands to take a stand—some with better success than others.

We've seen the good, the bad, and the ugly since then.

We saw Nike celebrate the 20th anniversary of their iconic Just Do It by highlighting athlete and activist Colin Kaepernick with the electrifying tagline “Believe in Yourself. Even if it means sacrificing everything.”

We saw Pepsi incur the wrath and ridicule of the Internet with their ill-advised Kendall Jenner campaign, which took the charged imagery of civic protest and rendered it a backdrop for a feel-good soda moment.

And yes, we've seen the fallout from the Bud Light campaign when a well-organized right-wing boycott against the brand for simply partnering with a transgender activist resulted in a massive loss of sales for the brand.

We've come full circle: from brand Purpose being practiced by a handful of brands to becoming a mainstream idea with thousands of brands going on their Purpose journey—to suffering the backlash against it.

All in the space of under seven years.

There are now a myriad of awards dedicated to brand Purpose, from the Cannes Glass Lions to the D&D Impact Awards to the Fast Company Brands That Matter Awards.

This book is also responsible for our evolution into leaders in that space. Speaking about the book put us inside some of the world's biggest companies—Coca-Cola, Pepsi Co, Mondelez, Adidas—who then asked us for help navigating this new world we had foreseen.

It led to us setting up Conspiracy of Love, our Purpose consultancy, and working with over 50 brands and companies. Here's a partial list of who we worked with:

Adidas, Akamai, Alicorp, American Family Insurance, Athleta, Banana Republic, Bare, belVita, Benevity, Bimbo Bakeries USA,

Bolivar, BUILD, Chips Ahoy!, Cotton On Foundation, Crate and Barrel, Crate and Barrel, Crown Royal, Diageo, GAP, GSK,

Haleon, Halls, Hewlett Packard, Hotaling & Co, LG, Molson Coors, Mucinex, Natean, Nespresso, Negrita, Nexium, Nike, Off The Eaten Path, Old Navy, Oreo, PepsiCo, Project Management Institute, Ritz, Robitussin, Sara Lee, Sephora, Skittles, Sour Patch Kids, Stacy's, Starry, Sun Life, Swedish Fish, The A2 Milk Company, The Coca-Cola Company, The Laundress, Inc., Trident, and Unilever Australia.

We're proud to have helped brands such as Ritz, Sara Lee, Sour Patch Kids, Triscuit, and many others invest millions of dollars in causes such as childhood hunger, educational scholarships, and arts and culture programs, partnering them with distinguished nonprofits such as the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, Feeding America, US Hunger, and the Boys and Girls Clubs.

Purpose has also moved beyond North America—we've worked on everything from A2 Milk in Australia to Inca Kola in Peru. It's now a global movement, with brands contacting us daily to explore how to help them grow with impact.

Along the way, we became a B Corp ourselves and were proud to be recognized with a Best for the World award. We're so proud of the Conspiracy of Love team, who continue to pioneer the path forward for our clients.

Good Is the New Cool has gone from this book to become a global movement: We created the GoodCon “Festivals of Good” experiences and brought together communities of leaders from brands, nonprofits, and culture creators in Los Angeles, Sydney, Melbourne, London, and New York (in association with the United Nations).

We're developing TV shows with incredible partners such as Time Studios to help showcase “Solutionaries”—entrepreneurs tackling some of the biggest problems on the planet, from food to transport to fashion, with new companies using cutting-edge science.

We're also about to launch Good Is the New Cool as a media platform, inspiring people to live climate-positive and ethical lives. Watch this space!

In some ways, the backlash against brand Purpose (whether from advertising traditionalists or from the “anti-woke” brigade) confirms how powerful it became—and how misunderstood it was.

Brand purpose was always about walking the walk, not just talking the talk (as our principle “Back Up the Promise with the Proof” suggested). It wasn't about emotionally manipulative advertising that tugged at the heartstrings—it was about helping brands find their deep areas of impact that were in line with what their customers wanted.

What's even more fulfilling is how brand Purpose has spread beyond marketing. Companies realized that communications were just the tip of the iceberg and that they had to go on a journey to evaluate every aspect of their model, from ensuring that their sourcing and supply chains were sustainable and ethical to ensuring that the diversity within their companies and teams reflected their communities.

Today, a consumer can find information on a brand or company with a few keystrokes, instantly evaluating its bona fides. We live in an age of radical transparency, with brands unable to hide anymore.

Even more validation comes in the form of the thousands of new “purpose disruptor” brands that have emerged to disrupt multiple categories with sustainability and inclusivity at their core. From Who Gives A Crap in toilet paper to Pangaia in fashion, customers now have an incredible breadth of choices when it comes to living a conscious lifestyle.

Today, it is possible for someone to go from the moment they wake up to the moment they sleep and only use products and services that are both “Good and Cool.” Read “A Day in the Life of a Conscious Consumer” in the next chapter to get an idea of what we're talking about.

If you think millennials and Gen Z are passionate about supporting brands that positively impact the world, Gen Alpha (the demographic born from 2010 onward) feels the same way. According to data from GWI, 66% of them want to buy from companies with a purpose. As the most diverse generation in history, representation matters—and as the generation that will bear the brunt of climate change, they want to see swift and massive action from the companies they support.

We hope you enjoy this “remix” of our original book. We've tried to remain true to the timeless ideas we championed while updating our data, some case studies, and references to reflect the reality we live in today.

We'll leave you with one final thought: we believe meaningful marketing is more urgently needed than ever.

For instance, the rise of artificial intelligence has thrown up new ethical dilemmas that brands must navigate. Without a strong brand purpose at their core, with clear values and ideas on how to positively impact the world, it would be all too easy for brands to give in to the worst ideas with enormously damaging consequences.

If the world is to find a way to eliminate capitalism's worst excesses and evolve into a decarbonized, regenerative, inclusive model that balances the needs of people, planet, and profit, then we need marketers to lead the way.

We need marketers to “make markets” by developing innovative new products and services that help people live sustainable and ethical lives—and we need them to use the incredible power of storytelling and experiences to inspire them to go on a journey to make changes in their lives.

If we do so, we believe that we can create a world where people's consumption choices can not only help us stave off the worst effects of climate change but also raise the standard of living of billions of people around the world.

Far from brand purpose being over, we are just getting started.

So stand your ground. Don't be distracted by the rhetoric.

Your values drive your value, both as an individual and as a brand.

We can't wait to see what you do next!

Afdhel and Bobby

PS: And we'd love to hear about your work and how this book has inspired you. Please email as at [email protected].

Why We Wrote Good Is the New Cool

It's a Saturday afternoon in Soho, New York. The streets are packed with shoppers and tourists, all busy exploring the luxury designer stores that are clustered in the area: Paul Smith, Prada, Balenciaga. Yet outside one store is a scene that looks more like a nightclub than a retail outlet, with a velvet rope and security guards. People are lined up outside, patiently waiting their turn, until the crush inside the store reduces enough to let them in. This isn't some high-end luxury boutique; this is a store that sells $95 eyeglasses and for every pair bought, distributes a pair to someone in need. This is Warby Parker.

Inside the store, the lucky ones who have gotten in are eagerly trying on pairs of retro-themed eyewear with names drawn from literature (Beckett, Huxley, Chandler) and Americana (Roosevelt, Marshall, Langston). The look of the store is inspired by the New York Public Library—all rolling ladders and floor-to-ceiling shelves with beautifully presented merchandise and vintage books, all of which helps to convey the inclusive yet aspirational allure of the brand.

Supercool design has been a huge factor in the success of the brand. After all, people want to look good first; regardless of any social good intent, the products themselves have to be appealing. The frames instantly give wearers the kind of bookish, hipster image one sees in the pages of GQ and Vogue (both of which have covered the brand with the kind of breathless fandom that used to be reserved for Gucci and Tom Ford).

But an equally crucial part of what drives the success of Warby Parker is that for every pair of eyeglasses bought, the equivalent cost is donated to VisionSpring, a nonprofit whose goal is to provide eye care to those in need, both by training people in developing countries to give basic eye exams and by selling affordable glasses. Instead of a straight donation model, this creates a more sustainable approach, helping build the long-term infrastructure for eye care. To date, more than 15 million pairs of glasses have been distributed across the world. This aspect of Warby Parker is a large part of why wearing the glasses makes devotees of the brand feel so good, and it makes them want to tell others to purchase the brand. In doing so, Warby Parker has managed to create the Holy Grail for brands: a word-of-mouth magnet. A full 50% of customers coming to the website do so on the recommendation of a friend.

Warby Parker has managed to come up with something remarkable: a brand that disrupts the status quo economically (selling designer frames for $95), logistically (selling them online), stylistically (taking retro cool to the world), and socially (their impact in the developing world). In doing so, they have also created a business that in 2024 is now valued at a staggering $1.65 billion. How did they do that?

Warby Parker is the perfect example of a brand that has figured out the model for success we unveil in this book: how to “Make Money and Do Good by Harnessing the Power of Cool.” They understand that today's customers want it all, and they have created a purpose-driven business all of us can learn from.

But they are far from alone in today's world. Brands such as TOMS, Tesla, Etsy, Kickstarter, Patagonia, Ben & Jerry's, and many others are also figuring out how to use this combination of “commerce, culture, and conscience” (as we call it) to create brands with passionately loyal followings. Not to mention the thousands of B Corps (or benefit corporations) out there that have embarked on a mission to upgrade business to go beyond the tired, short-term thinking of only driving shareholder value to the much more profound approach of also driving societal value.

We believe we are witnessing a seismic shift in popular culture—one where doing good has become its own form of cool, creating a unique opportunity for brands, nonprofits, and artists to learn from each other and work together. We believe this is being driven by three key factors: the new expectations of millennials and Generation Z, the crisis of meaningfulness in marketing and advertising, and the disruptive opportunities afforded by technology. In the upcoming chapters, we're going to dive deeper into all of these factors and unearth what they mean for us.

Our mission in this book is to track this profound change in the zeitgeist, and also to show you how marketing has a crucial role to play in this brave new world. Marketing is consistently ranked as one of the least valuable professions in society, but we believe this new approach could both elevate it and show how marketing can help save the world. We propose something radical: replacing the broken 20th-century approach to marketing that is fixated on advertising with an altogether new one, where “great marketing optimizes life.”

Seeing this shift in business and culture, we were inspired to learn more about the pioneers that are leading this new movement, and we're going to share our journey with you. We're going to meet men and women from all backgrounds, at all stages of their careers—from the managers of some of the biggest music superstars in the world to the inspiring marketers leading brands from Oreo, Chobani, and TOMS to Citibank, Zappos, and the Honest Company, and some of the hardworking young hustlers and entrepreneurs who are just starting to make a dent in the worlds of business and nonprofits.

We're going to share what we've learned from their journeys in seven principles that can be used by anyone in any organization anywhere. There are lessons on how to “find your purpose” and “find your allies”; how to incorporate principles such as “treat people as citizens, not consumers” and “don't advertise, solve problems” as you design and plan; and how to execute ideas of impact by using insights such as “lead with the cool,” “people are the new media,” and “back up the promise with the proof.” All which add up to our central idea: “great marketing optimizes life.”

And then, finally, we're going to give you a checklist of how you can take these things you will have learned and apply them to your day-to-day work in a way that will help you personally find more meaning in what you do, and help your organization future-proof itself for the next 100 years.

While writing this book we had an epiphany: we realized that as marketers, we no longer have to choose between quitting our day job to join a nonprofit (more meaningful but perhaps where we would have to start from the beginning again) or staying where we are, doing the same work (respected, well paid, but unfulfilled).

We hope this book shows you that there is a third option: we can do an amazing amount of good from right where we are today, in ways that grow our brands and our businesses, while also contributing to society—a much bigger win-win-win for all.

Because this book is all about people and their purposes, it may help you to know a little bit about us, the authors, and our own purposes. We couldn't have come from two more different backgrounds, but there was something we had in common that drew us to this bigger idea.

Bobby's Story

It was another late night at the office—the time of evening when most parents are tucking their kids into bed, friends are having a round of drinks, or others are maybe just sitting on their couch watching the latest addictive hit show. However, on this evening, like many others before, I was in front of a computer screen staring at a PowerPoint slide and trying to find the perfect image to add to a presentation for a morning meeting. It was December, and my mind was wandering, reflecting on the year that was quickly coming to an end.

We had had a great year—the best year ever—winning big marketing-agency-of-record accounts, helping to transform the way global clients understood youth culture, and becoming award-winning industry leaders in the process.

But as I sat in that office, I was miserable. There were perks to the job, and I worked with great people, but my life was becoming consumed by the stress of the work—seven-day workweeks, constant client demands, internal company revenue pressures, and never-ending fire drills. More and more, I found myself asking questions: What is all this for? Does this work even matter? Where is the joy in this? And I wasn't alone. Oftentimes, my clients were just as unhappy and stressed, dealing with all the pressures of selling more things that people were caring less about. I knew there had to be a better way; I just didn't know what it was.

In my heart, I believed I had a bigger purpose than the work I was doing, but I needed help to figure out what it was. After months of procrastination, I finally reached out to the only person I knew who could relate to the position I was in—Tru Pettigrew, my former boss, mentor, and friend. I had witnessed him go through this same stress. I called him one day and simply said I needed help. I was at my wits' end and knew he would understand. What I did not know at the time was that he had recently started his own practice to help others discover their passion and purpose, and he was testing a new model for his work. It was perfect timing! We agreed to start the process the following week, and I began it with a simple prayer: “God, please give me clarity of my purpose and the courage necessary to fulfill it.” And with that, we started on a journey of discovery together.

We went through months of exploration to better understand by gifts, passions, and purpose. I wrote out my vision for my life, listed the things I valued most, and we talked weekly about my progress and what I was learning from the process; and the final exercise was to put on paper a statement of purpose detailing how I exist to serve. It was a hard exercise, a lot tougher than I would have expected. I struggled for weeks to articulate it and get it right; nothing was more important than gaining the clarity I had previously prayed for. One day in December—a year after that late night in the office—I was traveling to Washington, DC, struggling to write my statement of purpose, and I remembered a story by my friend Eric Dawson. Eric was founder of Peace First, a nonprofit organization I had always admired and for which I had served as a marketing adviser for years. The first time I met Eric, he told me a story that had inspired his work:

One evening, an elderly Cherokee brave told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said, “My son, the battle is between two ‘wolves’ inside us all. One is evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other is good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf wins?”

The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one that you feed.”

And it hit me. That is what I've always been trying to do in my work in youth marketing: feed the good wolf. It became crystal clear at that instant that my purpose was to use my gifts and talents to feed the good in young people around the world. That moment of clarity was so powerful it literally gave me chills. Everything that had happened up to that point made so much more sense—it had all happened for a reason.

Unexpectedly, a few weeks later Eric called to catch up. He asked how I was doing, and I told him about my journey and the impact of the story he had shared with me. He could sense the excitement in my voice and the new conflict I was facing of how to fulfill this purpose as a marketer.

He told me he was at a crossroads with Peace First and wanted a partner to help take the work of his small organization and connect it with millions of young people looking to change the world for the better, as peacemakers. He wanted me to be that partner. Some months later I became the chief marketing and communications officer at Peace First, where I am now working to feed the good in millions of young people around the world.

I am sharing my story as a testimony that once you truly seek to influence a greater good, opportunities reveal themselves to do so. My opportunity and journey may be very different from yours, but I wrote this book with Afdhel because I know many of you are working in offices and coffee shops, looking for ways to do more meaningful work, but you just need to know how; and the good news is you don't have to leave your day jobs. My intent is to help fellow marketers use more of their talents and resources to influence a greater good, right where they are.

I hope this book will make a positive impact in the lives of marketers, customers, and our communities while, in the process, helping give me more courage, confidence, and credibility to serve others on a greater scale.

Afdhel's Story

There's a great quote from Mark Twain: “The two most important days of your life are the day you were born, and the day you find out why.”

The day I found out why was the day after Christmas in 2004, when the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami struck the shores of Sri Lanka, my country of birth and where I grew up. I was there for my brother's wedding, but the occasion for joy was overshadowed by one of the biggest natural disasters the country had ever seen. By some miracle, when the wave hit, I was safe in Colombo, the capital city, out of harm's way. More than 30,000 people died on one day, a catastrophe of epic proportions. Like the rest of my friends and family, I got involved in the emergency operations to help the survivors. I can't remember much of the next few weeks; it was a blur of loading up food and medicine trucks, visiting refugee camps, and trying to cope with the sheer immensity of the horror that had struck my beautiful island home.

After the tsunami, I went back to London, where I lived at the time. I would be walking down the street and suddenly burst into tears for no apparent reason. It was only later that I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and had to seek counseling. I was diagnosed with survivor guilt: Why had I survived when so many others hadn't? I quit my job and went traveling around the world for six months. I thought a lot about what I wanted to do with my life. I was bone-tired after working around the clock, and I had been chain-smoking two packs a day. And beneath that physical and mental exhaustion, there was something missing: there was no sense of achievement, no sense of joy at what I was doing for a living. I just felt . . . empty. It made me completely reassess what was really meaningful in life and my role in the world.

Up to that point, I had been happy in my chosen career of marketing. But after seeing the death and devastation that had hit the country of my birth, and how little I could do to help it, I started to wonder, did what I do for a living matter in the grand scheme of things? I began to feel that somehow there was something else I could do with my time and energy, something that had a deeper meaning than helping create clever marketing campaigns. I didn't want my legacy on this planet to be that I just helped persuade people to buy more stuff. I wanted to do something more meaningful with the opportunities I had been given in life.

I began to think about ways for marketing to really be innovative. Instead of trying to come up with an even glossier print ad or a more seductive TV spot, what if you could find ways to optimize customers' lives? I wondered whether this could be accomplished by creating services, products, and experiences that filled an unmet need in their lives so that instead of trying to find ways to block marketers out, they would not only appreciate the marketing but also go on to become those marketers' biggest advocates? Was there a way to drive the business and the brand in a way that was also positive for the consumer and society? That was the beginning of the journey that led to collaborating with my friend and coauthor, Bobby.

As authors, our purpose is to inspire others to join in this movement to be better marketers and citizens. In fact, we'd state our goal as simply: “To inspire 100 percent of people reading this book to do 100 percent more good in the world.”

And we believe that there is a brand-new model for marketing that allows brands to “make money and do good by harnessing the power of cool,” which we want to explore and unpack in this book.

So let's start by taking a look at the three biggest drivers of this shift in culture that we've observed—generational, technological, and spiritual.

Part IGood Is the New Cool

Chapter 1How Good Became the New Cool

A Day in the Life of Conscious Consumers

In 2016, when we cowrote this first book, the number of brands that were both good and cool were just a handful.

But today, it is possible to live in a world where everything you buy and consume is not only sustainable and socially conscious—but also cool and aspirational. Here's a snapshot of a day in the life of a fictional conscious consumer couple—Aaron and Keisha—to bring this to life.

***

Aaron wakes up at 6 a.m., snug in his Four Leaves bed linen. The alarm chimes softly on his (PRODUCT)RED iPhone. He quickly turns it off before it wakes up his partner, and walks into his kitchen where the coffee machine is brewing a fresh pot of Grounds and Hounds, his favorite blend, which also supports pet adoptions. He pours himself a cup and looks at his phone. On the Tesla app, the Powerwall battery shows a full charge from the solar array on his roof, keeping his family safe from the possibility of power outages, increasingly common in Southern California.

He scrolls through Instagram while he drinks his coffee, checking out the Good Is the New Cool site for inspiration, noting a supercool Lomi home composting device that has gotten great reviews. He's been looking for a way to utilize their organic food scraps for their garden, alongside their LettuceGrow hydroponic system. He also checks out a story on greywater systems, and how they can help utilize the hundreds of gallons a day used by households to irrigate their fruits and vegetables, as well as a story on urban beehives.

He decides to do their weekly grocery shopping and logs on to his laptop. They are out of Blueland water-free laundry tablets, so he adds them to the cart, as well as Mood Tea (which raises money for mental health), his favorite Ben & Jerry's flavor (a collaboration with Chance the Rapper that supports his Socialworks nonprofit), and Moonshot crackers, a pioneering regenerative agriculture brand.

Into his cart goes Chobani's Hero Batch yogurt (supporting veterans), Hellmann's Mayonnaise (fighting food waste) Stacy's Pita Chips (supporting women-owned businesses), Boxed Water, and Triscuit (investing in solving food deserts).

He also buys a bottle of Air Co vodka (made from CO2) as well as a bottle of La Caudrilla wine (with profits going to the farmworkers who made it) as a housewarming present for their friends. For their own house, he chooses from the One Hope Wine club with money going to their favorite breast cancer charity. And finally, he sees a notification for their Loop delivery of household goods in zero-waste packaging, arriving later today.

He gets ready to go for a run, lacing up his Adidas Parley for the Ocean sneakers made of ocean plastic, over his Bombas socks. As he runs around the neighborhood, he sees the plethora of electric cars in his neighborhood—everything from high-end Mercedes and BMWs, to more modest Volvos and Toyotas. He sees his neighbor has bought a brand new Ford F-150 Lightning electric pick-up truck and makes a mental note to ask him about the experience. He's heard it can even power a home in the case of an outage.

He gets back home and dumps his running clothes in the washing machine, using Dropp's plastic-free laundry tablets. In the shower, he uses his favorite Right to Shower gel (which supports mobile shower units for the homeless), followed by Lush shampoo bars.

He takes a look at his wardrobe, deciding what to wear today. Should it be the vintage Kenzo sweatshirt he bought on Depop? The One Golden Thread regenerative t-shirt, his Unless Collective work shirt, or the limited edition King Owusu sweatshirt from GalerieNumber8, which specializes in up-and-coming African designers? He decides on the Naadam sustainable Mongolian cashmere sweatpants, a sweatshirt from Madhappy, a social enterprise which supports mental health, layered over a Patagonia t-shirt.