On May 24, 2010, CNN.com ran a story entitled “Social Media Can Help Save the Planet, says Greenpeace Boss.” There are two problems in this article. The first problem is with the accuracy of the reporting. The second problem is with how Greenpeace now looks at social media. The first problem you and I will discuss today in this post. The second problem you and I will discuss in next Tuesday’s post entitled “Greenpeace . . . Will You Use ‘Semantical Terrorism’ in Social Media?”
Regarding the first problem, the CNN article recalled the social media campaign that Greenpeace ran against Nestlé earlier this year. (For a review of this campaign, you may read my article series entitled “The Kit Kat Incident.”) The CNN article states that “Central to the Greenpeace campaign was an online video posted in March — a mock Kit Kat chocolate bar advert that shows an office worker biting into a bloody orangutan’s finger instead of a piece of chocolate.” The article then states “Less than a month after the video was first shown, Nestlé stopped all purchase of palm oil from Sinar Mas, one company Greenpeace claimed was causing deforestation in Indonesia.” The implication is that the social media campaign, extending over several weeks and led by the video, was responsible for causing Nestlé’s reaction.
That’s not exactly correct.
I studied The Kit Kat Incident in great detail and watched it as it unfolded over several weeks. The protracted campaign was not the cause of Nestlé’s acquiescence to Greenpeace’s demands. How do I know that? I know that because on the same day that the Greenpeace social media campaign began, literally within hours, Nestlé agreed to the terms set out by Greenpeace. The extensive and prolonged social media campaign was not the cause of the shift in Nestlé behavior, although Greenpeace claims it to be, and most of the mainstream media through sloppy research backs them up. In support of this point, you may read the chronology of this event, well-researched and linked to supporting documents, by going to my article entitled “The Kit Kat Incident and an Abuse of Power,” with particular attention given to the section entitled “The Acquiescent Result.”
Yet, Greenpeace appears to be congratulating themselves on a social media campaign well-run. (Actually, tactically it could have been better run and my Kit Kat article series points out some of their gaping mistakes.) But, this is not to say that such a campaign could be ineffective. Quite the contrary. And in next Tuesday’s post,”Greenpeace . . . Will You Use ‘Semantical Terrorism’ in Social Media?,” you and I will discuss how Greenpeace now appears to view this version of an online strategy.
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Continue reading Greenpeace, CNN, and Sloppy Research
In a Forbes article from a couple weeks ago, “When It Comes to Social Media, Many Marketers Jump the Gun,” Jeremiah Owyang, web-strategist extraordinaire, discussed the March-April 2010 Greenpeace assault on Nestlé, much of which was conducted within social media. I discussed this social media attack in an article series entitled “The Kit Kat Incident.”
Jeremiah, in his Forbes article, makes the point that Nestlé was unprepared for this assault. Of this there is no doubt. Much of the popular press on this event also pointed out this fault. As a suggested remedy for this unpreparedness, in his article Jeremiah outlines how marketers may prepare a social media marketing program to prepare for:
. . . opportunities to connect with customers . . .
Generally, I agree with what Jeremiah is proposing. Preparation is paramount. Proaction is preferred to reaction. And the steps that Jeremiah outlines in his article will get marketers moving toward that proaction. But, specifically and with particular regard to Jeremiah’s pairing of what I labeled “The Kit Kat Incident” together with the idea of using social media marketing, what I find unsettling is that, in his prescriptive remedy, he seems to be categorizing those involved in the assault on Nestlé along with customers. Indeed, in his article, for the first step of his plan “to help marketers prepare for social media interactions,” he says:
Have a strong understanding of your customers.
Those involved in the Kit Kat assault are not customers. They are not consumers.
They are competitors. Irregular competitors.
And they must be regarded as such.
For three weeks, I watched the Greenpeace assault conducted against Nestlé. These attackers were not there to register complaints as would customers or consumers. These people were present to attack the name of the corporation. Period. And nothing would dissuade them from that. They were “tasked” with that mission by Greenpeace. Customer/consumer “nice-talk” was not going to quell their actions. In the early days of the attack, I saw how the Nestlé corporate Facebook page administrator attempted to assuage the “crowds” attacking the Nestlé name. It was clear, from his/her writings, that that administrator regarded those in the “crowd” as customers or consumers and attempted to interact with them as such. In fact, they were not customers or consumers. What they were was a crowd with a mission. Understanding them as customers or consumers would lead to the wrong web 2.0 strategy selection, proactive or reactive. Understanding them as a crowd, a protest crowd, would lead to better strategic selections.
So, although Jeremiah proposes using social media marketing strategy, one typically directed at customers/consumers, to quell or preclude the ire of a protest crowd such as that in the Greenpeace/Nestlé incident he cites, I think he might be suggesting a “cookie cutter” approach to a situation that requires the selection of a competition strategy, not a customer strategy.
On Tuesday, April 13, 2010, the Chairman of the Board of Nestlé, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, sent an open letter to Greenpeace executives. The letter was sent in response to an April 8, 2010 Greenpeace letter to Nestlé, the subject of which was deforestation and its relationship to the supply of palm oil, a raw material used by Nestlé and other companies. The April 13 letter from Mr. Brabeck-Letmathe can be seen by clicking here. (Author’s Note: This letter exchange represents another chapter in the running battle between the two parties over the harvesting of palm oil and claims of deforestation effects. This battle recently heated up in a social media protest action which I labeled as The Kit Kat Incident.)
Summarizing, in the April 13 letter Mr. Brabeck-Letmathe states the Nestlé position concerning palm oil and acknowledges what the company has done to reduce any rainforest deforestation impact that may be related to the harvesting of that crop. Concerning a related issue, Mr. Brabeck-Letmathe also addresses the previously expressed concern of Greenpeace regarding Nestlé’s use of pulp, for paper packaging, which may be related to the deforestation process. Mr. Brabeck-Letmathe says:
. . . we are committed to finding solutions, and as first step (sic) to eliminating packaging which can be traced to paper pulp derived from rainforest destruction, we invite you and other organizations committed to ending deforestation to examine with us analyses of paper supply chains and work with us in a collective effort to eliminate packaging which uses paper made with pulp resulting from destruction of rainforests.
I don’t think Greenpeace will be interested in any invitations toward collaborative efforts.
Why do I think that?
Because Greenpeace is a “dark green” movement.
“Dark green?”
Yes. In an article titled “Shades of Green,” by Andrew Hoffman and published by the Stanford Social Innovation Review (Spring 2009) of the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Greenpeace is characterized as a “dark green” environmental NGO (ENGO). On page 42 of that article, Mr. Hoffman says:
. . . a schism is emerging between two camps of environmentalist: the dark greens and the bright greens. The dark green ENGOs – such as Greenpeace USA and (another NGO) – seek radical change to solve environmental problems, often by confronting corporations.
Possibility of collaboration? Let’s consider what Mr. Hoffman says later on in the same article, where he further classifies Greenpeace as an “Isolate” type of ENGO. Beginning on page 46 of the article, he says:
By refusing to partner with corporations, Isolates are able to maintain a sense of purity . . . although Greenpeace and (another NGO) both make it clear that they do not work with corporations, their motivations are different. Greenpeace is more oppositional, avoiding direct ties with businesses because their mission is defined more by conflict.
(Author’s Note: The parenthetical edits are mine.)
Possibility of collaboration? As the Brits would say . . . “not bloody likely.”
In achieving their agenda, Greenpeace is about conflict and confrontation, not collaboration.
Continue reading Don't Bother Inviting Greenpeace
Just when you thought it was dying down, you find that it isn’t.
Yesterday, Greenpeace continued their direct action against Nestlé over the usage of palm oil as an ingredient in Nestlé products. This Greenpeace campaign, which has been going on for years, heated up a month ago when Greenpeace initiated a social media protest against the food manufacturer. For background on this protest action, which I have labeled as The Kit Kat Incident, you may click here.
The continuation of The Kit Kat Incident hit another sour note for Nestlé yesterday at their annual shareholders meeting held in Lausanne, Switzerland. Although not widely reported, Greenpeace, in addition to the employment of common street theater tactics and building on their breach of security at, and the scaling of, the Canadian parliament building last December, managed to break through the ceiling of the building where the Nestlé annual shareholders meeting was held. Activists rappelled down through the opening, showering leaflets over the crowd and displayed a protest banner.
As I mentioned above, reports of this incident are difficult to find in the mainstream press. However, I’ve assembled this information from, although not objective, fairly reliable sources. One source is a YouTube video. Even though the video appears to be shot by a Greenpeace supporter, it does appear to be an accurate visual record of the event as I’ve summarized here and as was reported by a “green” news site, Mongabay.com. The video visually corroborates the Mongabay story.
When I learned of this event yesterday, the first thing that went through my mind was “Where was Nestlé corporate security?” The second thing that went through my mind was “Will the director of Nestlé corporate security be able to keep his or her job?” They should have seen this brewing.
Given the recent social media action against Nestlé (i.e., The Kit Kat Incident), given the aforementioned Greenpeace-engineered security breach of the Canadian parliament building, and given that Greenpeace mounted a similar action last July at Mount Rushmore, how is it that Nestlé corporate security didn’t see this one coming? Of course, there wouldn’t be much corporate security could do about the street theater demonstrations taking place at the shareholder meeting. But the scaling of the building? The penetration of the ceiling from the exterior? The activist entering the building through the ceiling and the rappelling?
It’s as plain as the nose on anyone’s face. In today’s business environment, social media protest actions need to be considered as harbingers to direct actions occurring in the non-virtual world.
Two weeks ago Greenpeace launched their “Caught Red-Handed” campaign with a report of the same name. The issuance of the report was supported by a simultaneous social media campaign against Nestlé. These events were well-documented in the blogosphere and in the mainstream media. I summarized the situation in my blog post titled “The Kit Kat Incident and an Abuse of Power,” and you may go to that article for a synopsis if you are unfamiliar with this incident.
The subject of today’s post is the report itself, “Caught Red-Handed,” or rather the research integrity thereof. If you go to the report, which you may do by clicking here, and turn to page 13 (page 8 on the PDF version) you will see Greenpeace’s “Sources of Evidence” page. Or, as it would be more commonly called, the Bibliography. On this page of listed sources, Greenpeace shows a total of 73 sources. If you read through those sources, you will find that fully 22 of those sources are from Greenpeace documents or files. This means that 30% of the total sources used in this report were internal, and not of a diversified and external nature.
When I attended graduate school, I was instructed that, in performing research, a researcher should not use their own work as references in a research paper. And if doing so was absolutely, positively necessary, then reference to that researcher’s own work should be employed very, very sparingly. The reason against a researcher not using their own research in subsequent papers is obvious. The more diversified research sourcing is, the stronger is the research argument. “In-bred” references only weaken a case.
Is 30% a “sparing” employment of internal sourcing? Does 30% internal sourcing in “Caught Red-Handed” weaken the study’s argument? I suppose that depends on your point of view. My view is that 30% internal sourcing is highly excessive, and seeing that high of a percentage in this Greenpeace report makes me call into question the integrity of their research and, consequently, the validity of the Greenpeace argument presented in “Caught Red-Handed.”
Is this a case of being “caught red-handed” in an issue of reliable and fair research?
You know my opinion; you’re certainly entitled to yours.
Here is another thought regarding The Kit Kat Incident, about which I blogged earlier today. So far in the blogosphere, or in the mainstream media, I haven’t seen this concern raised as yet.
Greenpeace’s argument over palm oil and image attack on Nestlé has been tactically oriented toward the Kit Kat bar. (Please see my previous post, “The Kit Kat Incident and an Abuse of Power,” for a synopsis of this direct action/PR event.) Nestlé produces the Kit Kat bar internationally, but Nestlé does not produce the Kit Kat bar in the United States. In America, the Kit Kat bar is produced by Hershey who, at least at the time of this writing, is not being targeted by Greenpeace.
Greenpeace has not made this distinction abundantly clear. Yes, they did note this difference on their initial call-to-action page. But their notation was extremely tiny, brief, and at the bottom of the page. And in subsequent Greenpeace Web sites posts and actions in social media, I am hard-pressed to find further references to this distinction between Nestlé and Hershey as it relates to the production of the Kit Kat bar. Clearly, this situation represents a business threat to Hershey.
So, this situation begs four questions:
Concerning Hershey, is this a responsible way to conduct an anti-corporate direct action?
In the form of lost sales, will there be “collateral damage” against Hershey, who at this point in the protest appears to be an innocent by-stander?
If there is collateral damage, will it form a basis of legal action against Greenpeace?
And if a legal basis is formed, will Hershey pursue it?
It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
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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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