Early next year an academic article, which I co-authored along with three professors from the University of Southampton (UK), will publish in Voluntas, the International Journal of Voluntary and Non-Profit Organizations. The subject of the article is about how companies can more effectively deal with irregular competition. I’ll post more about the article as the publication date nears, but for today the topic I’d like to address is the power of irregular competition.
I opened this post by mentioning the academic article because during the publication submission process for the article, one of the three reviewers commented that the civil society organizations to which we referred in the article weren’t really competitors to business. (The other two reviewers, by the way, thought the idea of “irregular competition” as applied to NGOs and activists who engage companies was an intriguing concept.) If you are a regular reader of this blog, you’ll understand that NGOs and activist organizations which vie with companies for what those companies stand are indeed competitors. Per the definition of irregular competition that appears on Telofski.com, these organizations primarily:
attempt to influence, or even control, what a company or brand image means, by employing the notoriety of a company’s reputation to achieve publicity and legitimacy for the agenda that the irregular competitor pursues.
In other words, these organizations “compete” for the “meaning” of the company targeted. And they usually do so via disparagement.
A competition it is indeed. If it wasn’t then why would some of the companies currently targeted by major irregular competitors be spending significant funds on television image advertising?
Take for instance Exxon Mobil, which has been targeted by Greenpeace, Rainforest Action Network, and others over the controversial oil sands project in Canada. This project is slated to send its oil via pipeline through the United States. Exxon recently released the video shown below and has been running it heavily in many television markets across the United States.
Or another example of a company targeted by various activist groups would be Asia Pulp & Paper. This Indonesian business has been at the center of the palm oil controversy driven by, again, Greenpeace, Rainforest Action Network, and others. AP&P commercials (one of which is shown below) have been running on various American television networks.
So, if the organizations in opposition to the oil sands project, those competing for the meaning of the project and for the meaning of Exxon’s involvement in it, or the organizations in opposition to palm oil harvesting, those competing for the meaning of AP&P’s image, were not a significant competitive force against Exxon and AP&P, then why would Exxon and AP&P bother spending considerable sums on advertising their own point of view?
Competitors? Yes, Mr. Reviewer. Yes, indeed.
One of Greenpeace’s latest protests has taken the form of occupying a Chevron oil exploration ship. And they have announced that this protest-occupation may last up to a month.
Per an idea introduced by Ezra Levant in his Toronto Sun article, “Greenpeace Not Slick,” it’s curious how Greenpeace never mounts any oil protests in Iran or Saudi Arabia, or acts against oil vessels flagged to those countries. As in Mr. Levant’s article, the answer would seem obvious.
Greenpeace prefers to chose “safer” targets.
Can you imagine Greenpeace activists announcing that they intend to occupy an Iranian or Saudi oil rig for a month?
So much for the “warrior” image they flaunt.
In recent post on this site, “Is Friends of the Earth Being Played?,” I raised the question whether or not Friends of the Earth (FOE) was being used by the European government to help place a de facto trade ban on Indonesian palm oil, a product that competes with European vegetable oil.
A similar thought was raised in a recent article by writer Ezra Levant concerning his new book “Ethical Oil.” In the Toronto Sun opinion piece titled “Greenpeace Not Slick,” Mr. Levant raises the idea that Saudi Arabian oil interests are aided by Greenpeace’s protests against the extraction of oil from the Canadian oil sands, with all the geo-political negatives that such an arrangement implies.
Being that Greenpeace receives a majority of its funding from individuals, tracing the exact source of their financial flow would be difficult. With such a funding scenario it’s interesting to wonder if any of their financing comes from individuals supported by Saudi oil interests, especially since Greenpeace never seems to protest Saudi oil interests directly.
This is mere speculation. But it’s a curious question in the continuing debate over the underlying motivations of various NGOs.
There was an interesting post over at Spiked-Online.com recently. Titled “Oh god, not another Greenpeace guilt-trip” by Rob Lyon, the article reviews a Greenpeace video featuring a “hooded young ghoul” who tells the world:
. . . by the time I grow up there won’t be any fish left in the sea. Rainforests and clean air will be a thing of the past. The polar ice caps will be gone . . .
And, per Mr. Lyon, the ghoulish youth does so in a particularly annoying and self-righteous manner because, as Mr. Lyon mentions: “In fact, the teenage eco-terror can expect – if current trends continue – to live in a much richer world, with lots of new technology to help deal with any problems from changing climatic conditions. He’s more likely to get fat than suffer famine, while being a grumpy member of the wealthiest, most comfortable generation in human history.”
The Lyon article was a particularly interesting alternative view of Greenpeace. A look at it would certainly interest Greenpeace critics and supporters alike.
In last Thursday’s post, entitled “Greenpeace, CNN, and Sloppy Research,” I referenced a May 24, 2010 CNN.com article “Social Media Can Help Save the Planet, Says Greenpeace Boss” and said that there were two problems in that CNN article. The first problem, sloppy research, you and I discussed last Thursday. Today, you and I will discuss the second problem, that of “semantical terrorism.”
The term “semantical terrorism” occurred to me while participating as a panelist at a recent symposium held at Bernard Baruch College in NYC. While participating on the panel “More than Friending: Social Media and Communication in Business and Education,” I was describing to the audience what I do. One of the other panelists, Alan Levine, Vice President, NMC Community and CTO, The New Media Consortium, looked at me and said something like “Oh, so you’re a counter-terrorist.” I paused for a moment, then agreed adding a modifying statement that “semantical counter-terrorist” would probably be more applicable. So, I will credit Alan with the inspiration for the term that we will discuss today.
In my work, I analyze advocacy groups (NGOs, activists, etc.) who perform anti-corporate actions. My primary area of analysis is on their actions in both online and offline media. That analysis is focused on how these irregular competitors “mangle the meaning” and “diddle the definition” of the corporate images owned by the companies they target. In fact, I have written a book on this subject, this “battle for meaning.” (For further details, please see Insidious Competition – The Battle for Meaning and the Corporate Image which is scheduled to publish very soon.) And it’s in this battle for meaning that “semantical terrorism” is performed by irregular competitors, who threaten damage, either overtly or tacitly, to the images of corporations who don’t go along with the NGO or activist agenda.
A battle in semantical terrorism it truly is and in the CNN article referenced above, I will point out how Greenpeace has showed their intention to use this tactic to meet their future objectives.
In the second to last paragraph of that article, Greenpeace’s executive director, Kumi Naidoo, says that although Greenpeace has a dialogue going on with a number of companies “if talk does not deliver the results, we have to create the possibility for millions of people who care about the environment to send a clear message.” He doesn’t directly state that the option is semantical terrorism, but I believe his implication is clear; that if negotiations don’t bring Greenpeace its desired results, then they will entreat millions of people to essentially “trash” the image of the targeted company. Greenpeace supporters have a reputation for exaggeration. And based on what I’ve seen Greenpeace supporters do previously in social media, based on how I’ve seen those supporters go off the central issue of the campaign, I can say that I expect many of those “clear messages” would not be based in fact, but rather in innuendo and
Continue reading Greenpeace . . . Will You Use "Semantical Terrorism" in Social Media?
A few weeks ago, I was a panelist at the 10th Annual Symposium on Communication, The Future of Communication, held at Bernard Baruch College, City University of New York, in the Big Apple. The panel’s topic, “More than Friending: Social Media and Communication in Business and Education,” provided for a lively discussion about social media and its impact on business and education and how the two institutions overlap and complement each other.
In one section of the discussion, one of the panelists brought up the topic of crowd sourcing and alluded to its reliability in determining “truth.” And to recall a line from that American “classic” film about the absurdities of modern business, Office Space, I said to him that “I was going to have to sort of go ahead and kind of disagree with him there,” or words to that effect. (To make for an interesting and entertaining discussion, all the panelists had agreed ahead of time to be somewhat “feisty” in the panel discussion. Although, now that I think about it, this lead-in was a lot more silly than feisty. Well, perhaps at least it was entertaining.)
To make my point that crowd sourcing was not as reliable as many propose that it is, I drew upon an example from the offline world. I said to test the validity of the crowd sourcing theory, one could simply ask liberals how valid crowd sourcing was during the elections that gave the United States the presidency of George W. Bush or, conversely, one could ask conservatives how valid crowd sourcing was in the most recent presidential election that has given us Barack Obama. The other panelist countered with the theory that in the “long-run” crowd sourcing was a more accurate representation of “truth” than crowd sourcing in the “short-run.” Until now, I hadn’t remembered this quote by John Maynard Keynes, the early 20th century British economist, “In the long-run, we’re all dead.” Had I recalled this quote during the panel discussion, it might have been even more “feisty,” or entertaining, for the audience.
The Keynes quote points out that, yes, perhaps everything “evens” out fairly in the long-run, but the long-run may be too long. Specific to our panel discussion about truth in social media, if in the long-run the truth will out, crowd sourcing may be a valid approach to arriving at the “truth.” But, what’s the long-run? Is social media old enough to even have a “long-run?” We may need to wait too long for the truth to win within Web 2.0. By that time, we’d all be dead, and the truth wouldn’t matter.
An idea to keep in mind for the next time we’re perusing the world of Web 2.0.
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About  Here at " Richard Telofski on The War on Capitalism," I discuss and analyze the individuals and groups conducting campaigns against capitalism. In the articles on this site, I provide analysis on lesser known facts about this movement. More . . .
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