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.