The ways to transition from slacktivism to digital activism have been debated in the social web for a while now. Recently, there was another entry in the on-going debate.
In an Ad Age Digital article, “How to Get the Social-Media Generation Behind Your Cause,” Ann Marie Kerwin writes about a TBWA Chiat Day study, “Social Activism 2.0,” that recommends various ways marketers can get young adults to break the divide between slacktivism (e.g., merely hitting a “like” button on a Facebook “Cause” page) and activism (e.g., first-person involvement in corporate cause-marketing efforts via donations of money or volunteered time). To attempt to bridge this gap, summarizing, the article says the study recommends:
Make the cause “fun” for young participants.
Make participating in the cause “social.”
Make prospective participants believe that they will “make a difference” by participating.
Make it “easy” to participate.
These are certainly good words of advice for getting anyone to do anything that you want them to do, and as such really aren’t much of a revelation. Yet, if corporations take the advice to heart, they may indeed succeed in helping young adults break that barrier between slacktivism and activism. But, I don’t want to let this idea go stale. In that article there is some other information that is a bit more enlightening, and can provide a different insight.
Per the study, 75% of young adults (ages 20-29) think that corporations have the resources to assist social causes, while 60% believe that corporations have the knowledge to support such efforts. Hmmm. This sounds like a market segment that can be primed and ignited for activism, especially digital activism, involving corporations. For sure, those corporations would want that behavior directed at cause-marketing programs of their own selection and creation. But once you light the fire of activism, controlling it can be difficult. The United States discovered how this “wildfire” phenomenon can turn around after it supported the Afghani Mujahideen in their 1980s battle against the Soviet Union. The Mujahideen later turned around to fight against the nation who helped make that victory against the Reds possible.
The phrase “be careful what you wish for” comes to mind. Corporations should understand that, if they help break that slacktivism/activism wall in support of cause-marketing, the energy penetrating that wall can be easily converted into anti-corporate activism, (i.e., irregular competition) especially given that 75% of the demographic segment targeted believes that corporations have the resources to assist in social causes.
Perhaps a “burnt butt” is better saved by not lighting the fire?
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.
In Argentina, Danone countered online slurs against their brand, Actimel (which is known as DanActive in the United States), in an interesting way. Instead of simply and only refuting those slurs, which they did, in addition Danone decided to demonstrate how elusive truth can be in the virtual environment, showing that what you read online isn’t always true.
A recent Ad Age article, titled “Danone Fights Damaging Viral Slurs in Argentina,” detailed various email rumors which denigrated the Actimel brand. According to the article, the company responded with some of the traditional tactics such as responding to each slur found on various Web sites. The company even went a step further by making a TV commercial which addressed the online attack. But the company went very much further when it decided to demonstrate how everything online shouldn’t be believed. To do so, it set up a site called Creador de Rumores (Creator of Rumors). (The site, assembled by digital shop Sinus, appears to be no longer active. Venturing to the site redirects one to the site of the digital shop.)
Per the Ad Age article, visitors to the site could create and start rumors about themselves. Visitors chose from a pre-selected list of rumors such as winning the lottery or going on tour with a British rock band. The Ad Age article doesn’t provide any information on how well Danone made its point about the ease of virtual rumor mongering and if that point was absorbed by the general public, but the article did report that in the first month of the campaign (which per the article I believe was February 2010) over 40,000 people visited the site and initiated about 100,000 rumors.
Certainly this is a novel way to tackle the problem of online activism based in falsehood and it’s a tactic that can be added to the irregular competition playbook. But like any tactic, it’s one that should not be applied in isolation.
In the recent Greenpeace direct action against Nestlé, which I have labeled as The Kit Kat Incident, early in the fray the NGO accused Nestlé, the target of the Greenpeace social media campaign, of censorship when Nestlé asked YouTube to delete a Greenpeace culture jamming protest video from the YouTube site. If you are unfamiliar with The Kit Kat Incident, you may catch up on the details by going to this Wall Street Journal article.
Accusations of censorship can cut both ways.
At about the time that The Kit Kat Incident was simmering down, according to British newspaper, The Guardian, Greenpeace India’s communications director, Gene Hashmi, posted this entry on the Greenpeace blog:
If you’re one of those who have spent their lives undermining progressive climate legislation, bankrolling junk science, fuelling spurious debates around false solutions and cattle-prodding democratically-elected governments into submission, then hear this: We know who you are. We know where you live. We know where you work. And we be many, but you be few.
Now, per the Guardian story, this entry was posted on Thursday, April 1, 2010. Was it an “April Fool?” No article that I have read about this somewhat, at least, threatening post has indicated that it was an April Fool. The Guardian reports that hours after this Greenpeace blog post, the blogosphere was alight with conversation regarding these Greenpeace words “as nothing less than an incitement to intimidation.”
The Guardian’s story further reports that over the days that followed, Greenpeace Web staff tried their best at damage control, posting explanations as to the “real” nature of the post (i.e., in PR parlance, this is called “walking it back”), but then finally elected to remove the questionable post on Tuesday, April 6, 2010.
Censorship? Yes.
Hypocritical? Especially when compared to their own censorship accusation against Nestlé about two weeks previous? Definitely.
This example of Greenpeace not being able to “bear the heat of the kitchen” points out another weakness in Greenpeace’s media strategy, particularly as it concerns the social web. And it also goes toward demonstrating the attitude of Greenpeace toward the ideas of “openness” and “transparency” upon which the social web is presumed to be built.
What was it that George Orwell said in Animal Farm? About “all pigs being equal?”
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.
My fourth and latest book, Insidious Competition – The Battle for Meaning and the Corporate Image, is scheduled to be published in June 2010. For more information about my new book, please click here to go to the book’s Web site.
In the book, I discuss nine different types of insidious competitors present in social media. One of those types of competitors is NGOs and Activists, the “irregular” competitors that are the basis of our discussions here at Telofski.com. In fact, it was from the research on Insidious Competition that the concept of irregular competition evolved.
Well, putting aside irregular competition for a moment, I’d just like to mention that one of the insidious competitor types I discuss in my book is Activist Stockholders, cousins of the irregular competitors NGOs and Activists. In reviewing my news feeds recently I discovered the article “Divided SEC Proposes Investor Access Plan” which talks about how Activist Stockholders may be gaining more strength in their struggles against corporate management.
This article is quite interesting and updates an issue which I have been following for a while. The issue pertains directly to the discussion of Activist Stockholders as it appears in the book. Summarizing, the article discusses relaxation of U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regulations for shareholder balloting in annual public corporation elections. You know. The annual “proxy fight.” The proposed rule changes would make it simpler for various stockholder groups to gain access to the corporate board and thereby control certain corporate decisions.
In my new book’s discussion of this type of insidious competitor, I mentioned that there is a pending rule change. I also mentioned that that change may take place as soon as early 2010. From what this article says, it looks like I was right. When this regulation change is combined with the force and power of social media, as I pointed out in the book, the influence of the Activist Stockholder will increase tremendously. And because of this potential shift in power, it should be incumbent on all C-suite executives and corporate communications personnel to learn how to deal with this impending threat to corporate operations.
Insidious Competition – The Battle for Meaning and the Corporate Image discusses these “how-to’s” in detail.
I’ll keep you updated on the publication of the book.
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