Advertising you can live with.

Farming is all about being a steward of the land.

If I don’t leave the land better than I found it, pretty soon I won’t be able to grow any crops.

1. It’s BETTER FOR YOU

Conventional advertising takes away without adding back.

Ads can fail the golden rule test: even as marketers, we find them annoying, interruptive, and fatiguing.

Conventional advertising is often filled with false claims, empty promises, and disruptive tactics. Ads can create a hole in the consumer, much bigger than a product could ever fill.

Conscious marketers search for other needs beyond what a product may fill, and then offer a service that actually fills those needs.

Ads make us feel terrible about how our bodies look, but then promise a product as a solution? The emotional hole is still there long after the product is thrown away.

After I started growing better food, I found that people really loved it.

I felt like the work we were doing in the fields was helping them live a better life at home, or at least get closer to where they were trying to be.

2 . People RESPECT GOOD

Conscious marketing is why you started your business.

Conscious Marketing gives brands a new way to extend their mission outward. Most responsible companies are aligning their culture and their products to be an extension of their purpose.

Now marketing can play a role as well, building people up and giving them a great feeling at every interaction. “Sell” doesn’t have to be a four letter word.

When I got into farming, there weren’t a lot of people doing it. Now, thanks to the way the internet spreads culture, there are farmer’s markets in almost every city.

Locally farmed, healthy food is in high demand, and even “regular” grocery stores carry local food.

3 . We see it SPREAD

Some of the biggest brands are already using conscious marketing.

Conscious capitalism started in the places you might expect–Whole Foods, Trader Joes, The Container Store– but has now spread to the juggernauts of industry like Wal-Mart. Likewise, some of the biggest brands and agencies practice some form of conscious capitalism.

Pepsi and TBWA\Chiat\Day have produced some notable examples, as well as Energizer, Panera Bread, and Monsanto.

Sure, sustainable farming is more work, and doesn’t scale as easily. But it’s actually cheaper.

When you plan for your future and do what’s right for everybody, it always produces a better return.

4 . It COSTS LESS.

Conscious marketing does more with less budget.

Conventional marketing relies on borrowed interest. Marketers pay to interrupt the media that people are choosing to watch, spending seven times as much money buying media as they do generating the ad creative.

Conscious marketing creates its own medium, offering up useful content that people seek out on their own. The marketing is engaging in and of itself. There is no media budget. Typically a full conscious marketing campaign costs 40% less than a conventional campaign.

In 2010, US brands spent $131.1 billion dollars buying media. That’s more money than the GDP of the Caribbean, combined.

If a customer buys low quality food, they don’t just blame that grower.

They stop eating produce altogether.

5 .People DEMAND MORE..

Conventional marketers are running out of customers.

Conventional marketing allures people at any cost. Deceptive, unhealthy practices may earn a quick buck, but they don’t create loyal customers. In fact, they cause consumers to shut down to entire categories of products.

Consumer backlash against Netflix caused their stock to drop 40% in one day, all thanks to non-conscious market behavior.

Originally published at thinkhappymedium.com.