Apple’s 2021 Environmental Progress Report takes on a huge communications challenge
Apple released its 2021 Environmental Progress Report, and it’s a whopper: the PDF version is 105 pages.
From a comms perspective, here are three things we can learn:
Graphics distill key highlights
Most people won’t deep-dive into a 105-page environmental report. But Apple uses graphics and tight copy on its website to highlight key goals and achievements—and to explain the “why” behind certain decisions, such as removing chargers from iPhone boxes.
The highlights are easy to browse, click, and consume to understand the core ideas and actions behind Apple’s environmental policy.
There’s a ton of information, but it’s well-organized
The full 105-page report is is neatly divided into the three key areas of Apple’s strategy: climate change, resources, and smarter chemistry. The core sections are sandwiched between an intro section and an appendix.
The flow is clear and logical. And a simple navigational header on the top of each page of the report reminds the reader where she is, and what sections lie ahead.
Clear and measurable goals with timelines
Apple isn’t just virtue-signaling. The company has clear and ambitious goals with timelines:
We’ve set a goal to become carbon neutral across our entire footprint by 2030.
We will get there by reducing our emissions by 75 percent compared to 2015, and then investing in carbon removal solutions for the remaining emissions.
Communicating everything Apple measures, plans, and executes across retail operations, corporate operations, products, suppliers, and manufacturers seems almost as challenging as Apple’s environmental goals themselves.
But Apple uses good structure, clear writing, and graphical highlights to paint the picture of company leading and making progress on reducing its impact on the planet. Apple’s report is great example of how to package and communicate extremely complex and dense information.
How Apple Event invites walk a communications tightrope
The communication floats down from the digital mountaintop in the land of Cupertino, typically two or three times per year. The masses, eagerly awaiting the message, try to glean meaning from its sparse words and graphical flourishes. High priests offer interpretation, attempting to decipher what is being foretold.
Stone tablets? No. Apple Event invites, of course. Sometimes, they include just a dash of wink-wink insight as to what might be revealed when the lights go on in Steve Jobs Theater. (Or, in the COVID-19 era, when the video file streams.)
The creation process for these invites must be a huge challenge. You must be clever. You must be efficient. You want to tie the headline and graphics into the coming product reveals in a simple way without sharing too much information. And you never want to create false expectations—especially for Wall Street.
This week Apple issued its invite for its “Spring Loaded” event, where it’s widely speculated the company will introduce updated iPad Pros and other products at 10 AM Pacifc time on April 20.
Does the invite tell us anything beyond the theme and time?
Stern is right. It’s fun to speculate, but let’s keep a firm grasp on reality.
One of products speculated to be announced is a new iMac, in a series of spring colors:
The iMac colors—a guess in the graphic above—aren’t a perfect match to the colors in the Apple logo in the invite, but they’re in the ballpark.
Combine that with the observation about the swirls that make up the Apple logo:
Hmm.
If the speculation turns out to be correct, then Apple did an excellent job of dropping a subtle hint inside the “springtime” take on its logo.
In the end, Apple Event invites deliver extra value beyond their basic task, which is to tell us when the show starts. The invites fuel online conversation using simple and subtle hints to stoke speculation and curiosity. But it’s a delicate walk: the invites don’t intentionally mislead, use empty hype, or employ tech buzzwords.
We can all learn from Apple’s clean and clever invite strategy. And then we can enjoy the show—and see if we guessed correctly.
Siri leaked the Apple “Spring Loaded” event … but was it an accident?
The professional Apple leaker class—those who stake their reputation on guessing Apple event dates and product details before they are officially announced—may have just been replaced by technology.
A springtime Apple event, to showcase new iPads and possibly other products, has been the subject of rampant speculation. Apple leakers found themselves stymied as expected dates sailed by in March and early April.
One prominent leaker, Jon Prosser, even shaved his eyebrows after guaranteeing Apple would hold a spring event on March 23.
Jon keeps his promises.
Some assumed no event was coming—a repeat of what occurred in spring of 2020, when a press release announced updated iPads.
But on Tuesday morning, tweets began flying about Siri’s response to the question, “When is the next Apple event?”
At first glance, it seems Siri couldn’t keep a secret. It’s hard for a $2.3 trillion dollar company to keep everything quiet.
But did Apple really make a technical error with Siri? Or was it simply a savvy comms move?
Siri’s reveal blazed across Twitter and Apple news blogs. People felt like they’d scooped Apple, a Twitter army of byte-chasing Bob Woodwards. And no news travels faster than news not intended to travel at all.
Apple’s official announcement for a “Spring Loaded” themed-event came at 12 noon eastern, driving another news cycle. Apple got a two-for-one deal on its event announcement at a time when it’s trying to shift focus away from Epic Games, Inc.’s claims of antitrust activity in advance of its May court showdown with Apple.
We’ll never know if Siri slipped up, or if Apple let Siri trump the leakers. But Siri’s reveal gave Apple an additional booster shot of positive online chatter. Whether a happy accident or smart communications tactic, Siri's side-hustle as an “Apple leaker” was a big win for the company.
Apple’s App Store messaging tries to put developers first
Apple’s most pressing messaging challenges have little to do with driving product sales. iPhones, iPads, Macs, accessories, and services revenues are all thriving. Apple faces a more complex communications landscape as it navigates societal and governmental challenges. Such are the side effects of growth and prosperity.
Apple is gearing up for a May court battle with Epic Games, Inc., the maker of the hit game Fortnight.
Apple removed Fortnite from the App Store after Epic tried to use its own in-app payment system to sidestep Apple’s 30% revenue cut. Epic’s position is that Apple’s policy of only allowing apps onto iPhones via the App Store is anti-competitive and drives up consumer costs.
In advance of the court case, Apple is placing its development partners at the forefront of its messaging to highlight the economic opportunities created by the App Store.
Apple’s core message strategy was evident in a recent virtual roundtable meeting with four Canadian developers, as reported in the Toronto Star:
[CEO Tim] Cook calls the company’s app ecosystem an “economic miracle,” saying that in 2020, “economic activity from the App Store around the world” totalled $500 billion (U.S.).
Cook positioned Apple as fighting for share in a highly competitive market:
There’s fierce competition everywhere,” Cook told the Star. He said there is a “street fight” for market share in the smartphone world, adding “Worldwide, our (market) share is in the teens. Hardly what anybody would say is dominant.”
Those are compelling numbers. But Apple’s messaging wobbles on the issue of allowing companies to use their own payment systems, and allowing customers to install apps via competitive app stores—sometimes referred to as “side loading:”
“At the heart of the Epic complaint is they’d like developers to each put in their own payment information. But that would make the App Store a flea market and you know the confidence level you have at the flea market,” Cook said.
Cook emphasizes user safety here, and he does have a point. But using analogies in comm strategies can be dicey. Sometimes less-than-perfect examples create logic leaks. And the drippings can fuel doubt in the reader.
The flea market analogy doesn’t quite land. People visiting a flea market understand they will need to barter, and that the merchandise can be suspect. Most people choose not to shop at flea markets for those reasons. They go to Target or Walmart instead. But flea markets aren’t banned. And Apple is saying it won’t allow customers a similar choice on the iPhone, for the user’s own good. That’s a problem for a global behemoth trying to keep developers and customers at the center of it story as it positions itself as having less market power than some believe.
Bonus observation: The Star’s story didn’t use a single quote from any developer at the roundtable, which I can assume Apple was hoping for. That’s the struggle of using a celebrity CEO in these situations; you’re more likely to get press, but the voices you most want heard can be drowned out by the star power of the CEO.
Growth spaces, not safe spaces
This week I led my first writing group session for Write of Passage cohort six.
We talked about mindset. I want to help these students set up a creative process that will serve them for decades.
To do that, students must get comfortable with discomfort. Good writing is often emotionally uncomfortable. Receiving feedback can be uncomfortable. Pressing publish is definitely uncomfortable.
So, I told my group that my sessions were not a safe space.
Growth never feels safe
Every time in my life I have chosen safety—personally, professionally, and in my writing—I get a lesser outcome than I could have if I chose discomfort.
Same thing is true in fitness. Improvement only comes with discomfort.
So what I want is a “Growth Space,” where people will push themselves.
Just like growing a plant, you need the right environment for people to grow. So my writing group has four rules:
1. 100% respect for each other. Our backgrounds, our perspectives, our effort, and our goals. Non-negotiable.
2. Give balanced writing feedback. Emphasize the positive and the areas for improvement using the CRIBS framework:
Confusing
Repetitive
Insightful
Boring
Surprising
3. You are a thought leader. Everyone will learn more, connect with each other more deeply, and grow faster if you share your: Ideas Fears Analysis Setbacks Questions Everyone has value to share. Everyone is a thought leader.
4. Focus on process over outcomes. We are here to build a writing process, a habit, that will serve us for decades. Not to compare our writing, or the outcomes of any particular piece of writing, to anyone else. We are all on our own path, together.
Like so many things in society, we say things we know aren’t true because they feel good. “Safe spaces” are another product of this. We all deserve respect and an environment to facilitate growth. We all need to understand that growth only comes by pushing through our own discomfort.
Growth spaces, not safe spaces.
The verdict is in: jogging is out
Thirty years in, I’m out. No more jogging.
I began running to get in shape to sit on the bench during high school football games.
And I never really stopped. I’ve run 4-6 miles, at an 8:00-9:30 minute-per-mile pace, 3-6 times per week, forever.
I’ve been fortunate to stay injury-free, despite running the vast majority of those miles on concrete. But I see friends and fellow runners in my age range with increasing injuries and chronic issues that just don’t go away.
As I age (I’m 47), maintaining long-term mobility becomes a greater concern. I need my knees, hips, and leg muscles and tendons functional. And I think that means no more jogging, so there’s far less impact on my joints.
So I’ve run (pun intended) a one-month experiment with no jogging.
The jogging replacement program
I launched a spirit-interval training (SIT) program on a stationary bike:
30 second all-out effort at higher resistance
90 second recovery at low resistance
Repeat six times
I also walk 2-3 miles, 5 or 6 days a week.
That’s it.
The results
Here are before-and-after photos, taken one month apart:
So I lost 4.5 pounds, by doing less. Cool.
Less carbs, less sugar, more time
I am re-learning what it means to be hungry. As a runner and frequent eater, my body ran on sugar energy. I could crush half a box of sugared cereal without blinking. I was hungry every few hours, and experienced headaches, weakness, concentration issues, and other problems when I didn’t quickly prop up my blood glucose with more carbs and sugar.
I’m transitioning my body to run on my own fat stores. This means:
Eating more protein (one gram per pound of bodyweight)
Eating fats from whole foods
Eating less often through intermittent fasting (two meals per day)
Craving and eating far less carbs, particularly carbs from processed food
Not running also puts more time in my day. My SIT workouts take 12 minutes or less. My walks take 30-40 minutes.
Avoiding scope creep
Our cardiovascular system adopts rapidly, and the SIT workouts are getting (somewhat) easier.
My tendency is always to “do more.” This could mean doing more sprints, or longer sprints.
I am fighting this. I don’t want longer workouts. I just left 50-minute runs behind. And the research shows that neither more sprints or longer sprints are beneficial.
Feeling better with higher energy
Looking back, I can see symptoms of hypoglycemia—low blood-sugar—as far back as first grade. When my body runs on my fat stores, hunger is different. My senses and concentration are heightened, not fogged over. And when I do eat, it’s heavily protein based so I stay off the blood glucose roller coaster.
Hypoglycemia can be a pre-cursor to Type 2 diabetes. Not good.
Also, my hips feel better. We often hear about knee issues with runners, but for me it was tight hips. They often cramped and always felt like they needed a few squirts of WD-40. Eliminating running-related stress has greatly improved how my hips feel and move.
Less is more
This experiment exists because of one line I heard Alex Feinberg say:
“Runners need to be disciplined to not run.”
That single sentence changed thirty years of fitness activity for me. (Thanks Alex!)
Jogging kept me lean for decades. But as we age, long-term mobility becomes a more important goal. Aging doesn’t mean we give up on exercise, but our needs evolve and the way we create the positive stress—eustress—that forces our bodies to adapt and improve—needs to evolve as well.
We live in a consumption-driven society, and always think the answer is add more. Sometimes we need to do less.
Removing jogging from my fitness routine is one of the best, most impactful health decisions I have ever made.
Intuitive eating: an introduction
Dieting is big business. Americans will spend $2.6 billion on dieting programs in 2021.
And yet the industry is mostly a failure. UCLA researchers found up to two-thirds of dieters end up heavier than they started within five years, and the real number may be much higher.
Intuitive eating offers another path.
Created in 1995 by two dietitians, Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch, intuitive eating teaches us to:
Pay attention to hunger cues
Explore physical and emotional states after we eat
Eat without distraction
Look closer at the emotions and external pressures that drive eating behaviors
Let’s look at some of the key principles.
Nothing is forbidden
Intuitive eating allows to eat anything you want. Seriously.
That doesn’t mean consequences go out the window, and you should fling yourself headlong into Willy Wonka’s chocolate river on a whim. Says Tribole:
“You stop and ask yourself, ‘Do I really want this now?’ Not just, ‘Will I enjoy it in the moment,’ but also ‘Will I feel good when I’m finished?’
Intuitive eating isn’t about YOLO. It’s about balancing what we think we want with the outcomes our choices create.
Eat with intention and attention
When you eat, focus on a single aspect of your food: like the smell or the texture. This teaches us to eat mindfully, which will lead us to better understanding our body’s eating instincts.
Tribole even suggests starting out in intuitive eating by eating one meal a day, so you are deeply focused on what you’re doing.
Distraction leads to overeating, and eating too often.
Explore what’s behind cravings
Learn the difference between hunger, emotional cues, and external cues
In intuitive eating, we eat when we are hungry. However, other forces—internal and external—work against us to make us think we are hungry when we really aren’t.
Intuitive eating encourages you to look for deeper meaning beyond cravings:
“For example, you get an overwhelming craving for chocolate. Since eating chocolate can produce positive effects on your mood, this craving may be your body’s way of telling you it needs a quick mood boost. You may need a different mood-booster — like a brisk walk.”
Hunger vs. emotion
Negative emotions can trick us into thinking we’re hungry. Food offers an escape from feelings like anxiety and loneliness. And Tribole says to pay attention to small emotional triggers, too:
“It’s not always big, extreme emotions that are causing overeating, either. Sometimes it’s as mundane as being bored because you’re eating while distracted.”
My learnings with intuitive eating
As I explore intuitive eating, I’ve learned some principles that help me:
Understand diminishing returns
Eating something “bad” is a lot like drinking alcohol: The good feelings coming from the first drink or first bite have strong diminishing returns—and even flip negative quickly.
We chase the feeling of satisfaction from that first bite of cake or first drink, and end up feeling much worse for it.
It’s ok to take one bite of something bad, pause for awhile, and see if that’s enough. It usually is.
Hunger vs. culture
You are under constant mental, social, and emotional assault, thanks to marketing and culture, to eat unhealthy foods and drinks high-calorie beverages, particularly alcohol.
Develop an awareness of the messages and societal pressures being inflicted on you. These blunt-force instruments almost never have your best interests in mind.
Money drives the marketing pressure. In social situations, it’s guilt: a person or group tries to alleviate their own remorse by coercing you to imbibe as well.
Live with a little hunger
If you want to be lean, you’ll be a little hungry sometimes. This is not a catastrophe. It’s fine to go to bed less than fully satiated. The hunger monster doesn’t always have to be placated. Being lean requires discipline, discernment, and some sacrifice. It’s worth it.
Intuitive eating is a harmony between emotion, nutrition, awareness, and logic
Intuitive eating requires us to look deeper at what we are feeling and what we do as a consequence of our feelings. With better mindfulness around food, we can balance physical cues with emotion, logic, external awareness, and consequence to eat better, feel better, and be leaner.
Intuitive eating isn’t a destination. It’s an evolving process. Let yourself explore, learn, and improve over time.
Lessons in indirect social proof from a classic fitness ad
A 1963 direct response ad for the health supplement “Wate-On” masterfully turns a routine C-list endorsement into layers of social proof in subtle ways.
Social proof is a critical part of the health & fitness marketing message stack. Prospects want proof your solution works and is safe to try.
Direct social proof comes through customer testimonials, the personal credentials of the product creator, a transformational story about the product creator, celebrity or authoritative endorsements, and scientific studies.
But social proof can also be indirect. And it’s nearly as powerful as it’s direct sibling.
Let’s look at a classic ad for a weight-gain supplement called “Wate-On” which masterfully creates indirect social proof.
At first glance, the “Wate-On” ad seems like a run-of-the-mill C-list celebrity endorsement, featuring Holllywood actress Eva Six. Six appeared in three movies in 1963, including “Operation Bikini,” with Frankie Avalon “Beach Party,” She soon left acting and returned to her native Budapest.
The ad features two photos of Six showing off the body and glamour the target audience is looking for. Quotes from Six convey how Wate-On helped Six achieve her ideal body even while working long days and nights on the set.
But beyond the surface is where this ad shines, creating layers of additional endorsements and social credibility almost out of thin air.
The second layer
Six wasn’t the biggest name in Hollywood, but in the film “4 for Texas,” she appears with superstars including Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin.
The ad lists her co-stars in the subheadline, and the world-famous studio they worked for: Warner Bros. Listing the stars and studio creates an indirect connection in the reader’s mind between the superstars and the Wate-On product. The ad borrows the clout of the studio and the A-list celebrities to elevate the product’s position in the reader’s mind.
And I’m sure neither Ol’ Blue Eyes nor Warner Bros. received a dime.
The third layer
The middle-third of the ad features a drawing of a scientist holding a beaker. The drawing does a lot of heavy lifting, implanting an idea in the reader’s mind that Wate-On was developed and tested by trusted scientists.
No scientist or scientific organization is named. But the authoritative endorsement of the science community--social proof--is still created.
The fourth layer
Beneath the drawing of the scientist is a sub-headline reading, “HOSPITAL TESTED Easy Gains of Pounds, Inches Reported”
The copy doesn’t reference any specific hospital nor the specifics of any published study. Yet by sharing the “reports” of successful weight gain in some kind of hospital test, the ad creates indirect social proof of endorsement and safety by the medical community.
The fifth layer
The ad tells the reader that Wate-On is “offered by druggists.” No specific endorsement by any druggist is given. But druggists were professionals trusted to select and allocate medication safely and appropriately.
By positioning the product as offered by druggists (and not some rando supplement company), the ad creates an endorsement--social proof--from authoritative professionals who measure and distribute medication.
Turning a C-list endorsement into an A
On the surface, this ad leverages a celebrity endorsement from a lesser known star. Yet without spending an additional dime for explicit support, the copy and illustrations in this ad create indirect social proof from:
Frank Sinatra
Dean Martin
Anita Ekberg
Ursula Andress
Warner Bros. studios
Scientists
The medical community
Druggists
That’s some extremely hard working copy.
The discipline to not run
I began moderate distance running in high school, to build the cardiovascular endurance I needed to sit on the bench during football games.
That was 30 years ago. I never really stopped.
My running baseline has been mostly this:
4-6 miles
8-9 minutes per mile pace
3-5 times per week
But now, I’m changing it up.
Fitness should be efficient. The less time we can spend doing it while maximizing results, the better.
So when I heard Alex Feinberg say “Have the discipline to not run” in this discussion, it wounded me.
Was there something more efficient I could do? With, possibly, less joint stress?
A study in Run Repeat says yes.
For reference:
SIT: Sprint-interval training (short burst of all-out effort followed by rest)
HIIT: High-intensity interval training (varying intervals of effort, like Crossfit)
MICT: Moderate-intensity continuous training (jogging, steady biking)
Now look at these two graphs.
In this study, SIT workouts delivered far better results in far less time.
So for the first time in 30 years, I’m dumping the distance running.
I’m going to try SIT exclusively for a month and see what happens.
I’m trying this with running sprints and on a stationary bike. I hope the bike is effective, as it’s far better on my 47-year-old joints.
This is the pattern:
30 second all-out sprint (run or biking)
90 second slow walking (or pedaling) recovery
Repeat six times.
That’s it.
We’ll see what happens. When the month is up, I’ll share my starting and ending weights, and, if I’m feeling bold, before-and-after pics.
Don’t be afraid to experiment with your fitness routines. Just take precautions--warm up--and don’t overdo it.
You might find a better way forward, even after thirty years.
A full deck
In a year where everything has gone digital, traditional sports cards are surging
We aren’t meeting in person.
We aren’t going to games in person. (Not many of us, anyway.)
Much of day-to-day life has been uploaded—or off-loaded—to the internet. And yet amidst all this digitalization cardboard has taken on a powerful role in the sports world.
Yes, good old cardboard.
In stadiums, cardboard avatars sit in the seats where we once cheered and chugged beers.
And cardboard sports cards are in a renaissance. Huge money is pouring into sports cards and memorabilia, and the market is back in a big way:
The rise of eBay, Amazon and newer marketplaces like StockX gave birth to huge secondary markets and fierce global competition for sports' most coveted stars, which in turn sent prices skyrocketing.
We’ve been here before. In the 1980s and early 90s, baseball card values exploded. That market was driven by local card shops and weekend conventions. Now, hobbyists and big-time investors have taken their money online:
In 2019, eBay reported more than $600 million in card sales, which have risen 40% overall since 2016. Executives from Upper Deck, Panini America, Topps and Leaf all say the past three to five years have been the industry's best ever.
eBay understands this, and put together this video designed to punch former collectors like me right between the eyes with a right-hook of nostalgia:
The market moves on current events, just like the stock market. This spring’s Michael Jordan documentary, “The Last Dance,” created a frenzy around Jordan memorabilia:
Why sports cards?
Are we instantly nostalgic for the time we could actually go to games? Maybe, but the market expansion is at least four years in the making. There’s more to it than coronavirus. John List, expert collector and econ professor at the University of Chicago, sums it up:
"The sports card market [does] well because it's part nostalgic, part art and part investment potential. That combination is what's magical."
Two economies
Today’s sports memorabilia market is a microcosm of the American economy. At the top, enormous sums of money fuel a vibrant marketplace and drive prices ever higher for the most elite items. Gary Vaynerchuk, internet entrepreneur and proponent of card collecting, believes institutional investors—hedge funds—are about to enter the market and make enormous investments. Like any market, sports cards will fluctuate. But the space may be gaining permanent acceptance as a viable component of a well-rounded investment strategy. But underneath this explosion of cash, others play a different game—just like our current economy. Shut out of high-end items, more frugal collectors watch videos of people who pool money together and buy the expensive boxes. These packages can contain the rare edition, big money cards:
The sports memorabilia market is thriving, but not all collectors are playing the same game.
And yet, that doesn’t necessarily matter. Even if I could make big-money investments in cards right now, none would hold the personal value of the book of baseball cards I’ve managed to hold onto since the 1980s, or the signed Kirk Gibson helmet on my shelf.
Unlike the stock market, sports memorabilia has personal meaning. And that means it can be a fun and useful hobby for any sports fan.