A Greenpeace activist once famously quipped that focusing on brands “was like discovering gunpowder for environmentalists”. Campaigning NGOs have found that brands are vulnerable and sensitive to public attacks.

According to Michael E Conroy, author of ‘Branded’, the power of NGOs is increasingly defined by their ability to invent clever ways to “seriously embarrass a company, damage its brand and bring it to the table to change its practices”.

In a world that is ever-flatter, where networked NGOs use the internet and social media with devastating impact, any company with a brand to protect is potentially exposed.

Where is the next attack coming from, and who will be in the spotlight? The Brand Vulnerability Index (BVI), which we developed with SIGWatch, is designed to help companies measure their NGO risk and manage down that risk strategically.

This is all the more important as NGOs will hold brands accountable for almost everything that happens in their full value chain – and go for the largest brands, not necessarily the worst performers.

When Greenpeace launched its gruelling palm oil campaign against Nestlé’s Kit-Kat brand on 17 March this year, it did so knowing that Nestlé was far from the worst offender.

Nestlé had already undertaken to source 100% of its palm oil sustainably by 2015, was currently sourcing 18% sustainably, and hoping to lift that to 50% by the end of 2011. It has worked with other companies and key NGOs including WWF through the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) for several years.

So why would Greenpeace target Nestlé for this campaign?

To answer that question, we first need to remember that campaigning NGOs typically have three different core functions: advocacy, membership and fundraising. Greenpeace needs regular high-impact campaigns both to recruit new supporters and to boost donations – and to demonstrate its “firepower” against corporate interests.

This was one of those moments, but Greenpeace’s interest in palm oil is not opportunistic. As with most Greenpeace activity, its mission is to “bear witness” to serious long-term issues that pose threats to human health, the environment or human rights.

Deforestation, together with land use changes, is responsible for around 20 to 25 percent of annual carbon emissions. Palm oil expansion in South-East Asia for vegetable oil – as an ingredient in food and cosmetics and as a biofuel crop – is a major concern for many groups, including the UNEP, as plantations often replace rainforest (carbon sinks) and can heavily impact indigenous communities and biodiversity, particularly threatened species including orang-utans.

This is exactly why the RSPO was established in 2004 – to develop frameworks and certification procedures to promote sustainable sourcing for palm oil. WWF brought considerable expertise, having developed with industry both the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) processes – both highly successful certification programmes.

The problem is: it takes time to agree these programmes, then to work with suppliers to improve their practices, and then to evaluate and verify compliance. By mid-2009, only about 5% of global palm oil was certified sustainable. No major company can today claim 100% sustainable sourcing.

So for Greenpeace, attacking KitKat was irresistible: a global consumer brand, with a warm public image; a creative campaign based on destruction of orang-utan habitats; a link to a presently unsolved challenge (protecting rainforest); and opportunities for activists to have “fun” dressed as orang-utans invading Nestlé’s AGM, picketing Nestlé offices in Europe and Indonesia, defacing vending machines with campaign stickers, etc.

By the time that Nestlé announced on May 17 that it was joining with The Forest Trust to work with its supply chain to advance a ‘zero deforestation’ goal by 2015, Greenpeace claimed its campaign had achieved
• 1.5 million viewings on YouTube
• over 200,000 emails to Nestlé
• hundreds of phone calls
• thousands of Facebook comments

For Greenpeace, this campaign has been a moral victory even if the net effect has been to punish a company that was already determined to do the right thing – albeit that the RSPO could go further. Greenpeace has admitted that its real targets were Indonesian palm oil supplier Sinar Mars and commodity supplier Cargill – both Nestlé suppliers, but neither a consumer brand.

Where will NGOs strike next, on what issue(s), and against which brand(s)? That’s what we try to answer with the BVI. For more information, check out the BVI presentation and the media release.

Burson-Marsteller has worked for Nestle in the past in different countries. We were not involved in the response to Greenpeace’s campaign.

Unlike in the recent World Championship in ice-hockey, where the Czech "no star" team of outsiders beat after initial flops the best teams of the world including the unbeatable Russians, the fragmented Czech political team can still not decide who's playing against whom as they are getting ready for the election finals this weekend. Unlike the Czech team on the ice, Czech political subjects behave like primadonnas focused only on their own reflections in the Czech political mirror. The picture offered to the voters is blurred and twisted, evoking very little confidence.

The 2010 Czech election campaign is as turbulent as the events leading up to it. The fall of the r...  Read more
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Only 38 days to go before the FIFA World Cup 2010– are you getting excited? It is easy to get infected by the buzz of big sporting events like this – even if you are not a sports fan. And it is this energy and excitement that allows some of our biggest clients to build an emotional connection with fans and customers through sponsorship programmes.

Burson-Marsteller has been helping clients maximise their investment in sponsorship for many years. Look at our work for Visa over several Olympic Games, our work for Sony-Ericsson across tennis, music and the FIFA World Cup 2010 as well as Bacardi Limited and bid...  Read more
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Britain’s place in the European Union has been a hot political issue since the UK joined the EEC in 1973 – and even before then, as Britain pondered its post war role in Europe. Controversy about Britain's relationship with the EU reached its peak in the early-to-mid 1990s with the civil war in John Major’s ailing government caused by the Maastricht Treaty. Despite public concern about the Lisbon Treaty, Labour has successfully avoided allowing Europe to become an all consuming political issue during its 13 years in office. And despite a generally Eurosceptic publ...  Read more
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Looking back, what fantastic luxury of time and resources I had in my days as a journalist – rather more years ago than I care to remember.

Even as a cub reporter, working on a local newspaper, I remember being given more than two weeks to squirrel around, working on a single investigative piece about our local authority. And in the end, it never even made it into print – I ran into a wall of secrecy that my inexperience simply could not penetrate. But did my editor moan at me about the waste of time and money? No sirree! I was promoted with a pat on the back.

I wonder what would have happened if I had been working on that story today. With so much info...  Read more
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If, like me, you follow proposed industrial developments to see which have a smooth trip and which are abandoned due to local resistance, I guess you see three or four key success factors that are common in country after country:

1. Early engagement
2. Open consultation
3. Effective reporting
4. Local benefit

How this is framed and defined will vary, but I doubt that any major development project is approved without satisfying local authorities and regulatory bodies on 2-3 of these four core issues.

As communications professionals, where should we take a stance on this, and how can we help? The launch today by BM EMEA's « Comments on this topic (0) »

79% of global fortune 100 companies use social media
European companies love Twitter and Facebook

As a follow-up to the US Fortune 100 study released last year, Burson-Marsteller’s latest research looks into how global Fortune 100 companies are using social media. It is the 1st in a series of evidence-based studies to be released in 2010.

Let’s look at the some of the most interesting findings from a European perspective.

79% of the Global Fortune 100 are using at least 1 of the social media elements considered – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and ...  Read more
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I was planning a second colour piece but events here and abroad got in the way. Of all the issues that could foil an agreement here, maybe none is the bigger than the relationship between the rich world and the G-77 group of developing nations.

As an Australian who has now lived and worked in London for six years, it gets progressively harder to remember that my emotional and geographic backyard is the South Pacific. There you have flat island nations like Tuvalu that are already losing the battle against rising sea levels due to melting glaciers and ice sheets – from Antarctica if not from Chile and elsewhere. And it...  Read more
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  Heleana Quartey          Elizabeth Elegant

Yesterday’s BusinessWeek European Leadership Forum was the latest in a series of annual events designed to bring delegates face to face with influential business leaders a...  Read more
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Having recently attended a gathering of crisis communications professionals in London hosted by our EMEA Crisis practice and being (like most parents of young children I know) the owner of a Maclaren pushchair, I have been following the recent product recall of 1 million Maclaren pushchairs with both personal and professional interest.

The issue at stake is 12 cases of children’s fingertips that have been chopped off in the pushchair’s hinges over the past decade. Although Maclaren has announced that it is recalling the product, it isn’t ACTUALLY recalling the product – it is issuing repair kits ...  Read more
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Jonathan Dinkeldein          Heleana Quartey

Our most recent Burson Digital Breakfast, entitled “What makes for a winning e-campaign?” was part of a series of events that collectively intend to demystify digital approaches to communication. The morning session, attended by representatives from organisations such as Olswang, Omnifone, Ancestry.co.uk and Oxfam proved to be a l...  Read more
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Yesterday 60 communications executives from a diverse range of businesses and industries and leading crisis experts from across EMEA met at the second B-M Crisis Club, this year in London. My rough estimate of the experiences and insights gathered in the room adds up to over 800 years. The overall theme was managing risks in an age of uncertainty. The key note speaker was Secretary Chertoff, today Chairman & Managing Principal of the Chertoff Group, a security and risk management advisory firm, and a strategic partner company to Burson-Marsteller. He shared reflections and learnings...  Read more
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On 23rd August 2009, the ten year anniversary of a web service called Blogger passed with barely a blip; only a small handful of news reports show up at Google's news aggregating service and the world at large has paid little notice to the milestone.

In 1999, a three-person-strong company called Pyra Labs launched the Blogger service and began offering keen personal publishers the opportunity to share their thoughts with the masses. People signed up, word of mouth ensured that t...  Read more
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If you set up a business and magazine called "Good" then you'd better try very hard to ensure that what you produce comes up to scratch.

In the instance of Good Magazine, the editorial staff, designers and community do more than that; they create a publication and maintain a website which should be high on the inspiration and reference lists of media producers and designers the world over. Although the content of some sections of their website is a little thin, the overall presentation and feeling of the website is superb and the blogs are definitely worth keeping an eye on.

The style...  Read more
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Last month, a post by Jeff Jarvis caught my eye. Entitled “The King of Twitter”, the article wonders about the role played by TV channels in the creation and distribution of information, more particularly in light of Mickael Jackson’s death and the latest events in Iran.

The first above-mentioned event increased so considerably the number of exchanges on Twitter that servers were saturated (25% of the total number of “twits” on the night of M.Jackson’s death and before Twitter’s crash)...  Read more
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Anastasia Taratina      Máximo Miccinilli

EU-Russia interdependence in the energy sector is the core element to understand this complex relationship. Most of the EU member states are –and will be in the short and medium run- major buyers of energy products and Moscow perceives the European single market as essential for its exports of raw materials, notably gas and other energy-related services. Indeed, Russia is EU’s third most important trading...  Read more
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Willy Wonka was smart for going into the candy business. If he were around in the current economic climate he would be one of the few not worried about the future of his company. Why should he worry when a recent International Herald Tribune article explored the rise in candy purchases that accompanied the layoffs and foreclosures people in the United States experienced.

Now this is not to say that Belgium will be experiencing a huge rush for chocolate, Godiva chocolates are hardly what a recently unemployed person would be purchasing, but « Comments on this topic (5) »

Do symbols matter? Is the feeling of change palpable when a country has just elected a new government? I like to think so. In 1997 I spent a few weeks working on New Labour's general election campaign in the UK. The campaign was based at Millbank Tower, a stone's throw from the Palace of Westminster. Security was tight; a friendly private security guard on the door made sure that only pass-holders got in.

The day after Labour's May 1 landslide election victory, I headed back to Brussels on the Eurostar. I recognised the security guard at Waterloo Station - it was the same friendly man who'd been checking my access pass at Millbank. He also recognised me and waved me through se...  Read more
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A couple of weeks ago, PR week published an article with a ranking of the UK PR agencies with the most twitterers. The article immediately generated a storm amongst the UK PR professionals as everyone claimed to have more people twitting than the list showed. The agency that developed the listing published an explanation of the methodology they used, and PR week is set to publish an « Comments on this topic (8) »

Right now, supporters and opponents of nuclear power alike are typing their fingers to the bone. This is in response to what is being called the ‘renaissance’ of this source of power. It is already gaining in prominence throughout Europe, clearly evident when you take a glance at the growing list of those countries seeking to commission new atomic power stations and link them to their national grids. Current estimates indicate that, within the next 12 years, the world will have something in the region of 100 new reactors, of which 20 will be located in Europe. Its opponents view this renaissance as a PR gag in poor ...  Read more
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Kees Boef                       Eric Gerritsen

‘I could not be more sorry for everything that’s happened’. A fascinating picture last week: British bankers in the eye of the camera expressing regret. Images never seen before that were broadcast across the world. But share...  Read more
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Yesterday there was another article out in USA Today about the weakening job market in the United States. Seeing that graduation is just on the horizon, this makes someone in my position nervous. Both for my future job security, and because I run the risk of hearing from my mother that this wouldn’t affect me had I gone to medical school. 

With people being laid off and companies left and right implementing hiring freezes, it sparks the question of who makes up the real competition in the workforce. Upon graduation, it is assumed that you will be up against those in your...  Read more
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Tuesday morning, agenda overbooked as always: early meeting with the management team, an urgent deadline, a promising working lunch, the break for yoga class, an afternoon in-house presentation for a new product launch, the kids’ football match and a special dinner in that new bistro that everybody’s talking about.

The problem arises while crossing the street and checking the Blackberry. Squeal of car brakes, confusion, lights, sirens, ambulance and hospital. Slight concussion, two splintered ribs and a broken leg. A crisis can knock on your door too.

Luckily, the surgeons and nurses will deal with this contingency with skill and professionalism, so bon...  Read more
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A vacation in India over Christmas and New Year gave chance for reflection on what happened in late November. Much like London, New York, Madrid, Amman and Bali, life in Mumbai continues apace. In a city and a country as teeming with people, it can do nothing else.

But whilst the physical scars are quickly being repaired - indeed, lying around the pool at the Taj hotel you needed to look for signs of what happened in the few boarded up windows, faces show that the mental scars will surely remain and the impact felt for much longer. From the hotels in the city itself seeing a 35-50 per cent reduction in bookings, to our guide at a popular tourist destination whose livelihood th...  Read more
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Judging by the enthusiasm in the United States and around the world, a new era will dramatically begin today at 1800 CET when President elect Barack Obama takes the oath of office to become the 44th President of the United States.

The transition of power from one President to another is always a dramatic moment, but this one will be more dramatic than others. With an estimated two million people converging on Washington, D.C., it will be the biggest Inauguration ever.

It begs the question: why so much excitement and enthusiasm? I believe it is an unusual mixture of the promise of the man and the message on the one hand -- and the unusual times in which we live on t...  Read more
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Over the recent holidays I took time off from being a Blackberry Mom. I wish I had come up with this phrase but I came across it in the title of a recently published book – “Elsewhere, U.S.A.: How We Got from the Company Man, Family Dinners, and the Affluent Society to the Home Office, Blackberry Moms, and Economic Anxiety.”

Apparently celebrities like Katie Holmes have been called Blackberry Moms. I assume that in the way that a Soccer Mom is someone who spends a lot of time driving kids to and from socce...  Read more
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Sorry if you expected a commentary about economics and finance. I want to talk about a larger issue that’s not the fault of global markets but for which markets are a critical part of the long-term global solution: climate change.

2009 is the crunch year. A post-Kyoto framework must be determined in Copenhagen in December to shape global action beyond 2012. Here’s my take on where we stand as we head into this ‘make or break’ year.

An historical diversion

It is twenty years since, as speechwriter to the (then) Australian Liberal Party leader Andrew Peacock...  Read more
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My father, a retired baker from the west coast of Norway who is not much familiar with the world beyond the Norwegian borders, expressed a good many concerns when I announced that I was moving to Qatar last year.

Yes, Qatar is a small country, with a small population; it sits in a turbulent Middle East; it isn’t very well known in the wider world; and yes, its climate can be hot and humid; and most importantly it lacks proper skiing facilities.

However, did you know that Qatar has one of the world’s fastest growing economies, and is the wealthiest country in the world measured by GDP per capita? Qatar is also among the world’s top five countries that has the highest...  Read more
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”Political parties kill themselves, or are killed, not by the other political party but by their failure to adapt to new circumstances.” Such was the famous argument by Karl Rove, former senior advisor and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.

I was reminded of this when we were in the United States during election week, for Burson-Marsteller’s Washington Symposium.

It is always a treat to visit Washington. The town is often derided – for its ”Southern efficiency and Northern charm”, as John F. Kennedy put it – but usually more so for political points, than for the place itself, which does have a certain je-ne-...  Read more
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Barack Obama has run the first campaign of the 21st century.

In American history some presidents have understood the media of their age better than others. Franklin Delano Roosevelt had his fireside chats on the radio and connected with the American people in an unprecedented way. Kennedy was the first president to understand the power of television. During the presidential debate in 1960, he outperformed Nixon through his telegenic personality, while Nixon...  Read more
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Among the innovative new ways that businesses are communicating with their target audiences is one that would benefit from being better known and understood – the ‘citizen conference’. So what does this somewhat obscure term really mean?
To set up a citizen conference you need:

• A complex issue of general interest, such as nanotechnology, GMOs, the future of drugs, young people and alcohol, etc… 
•  A backer – a public body or private enterprise – responsible for setting up and financing the conference
• A panel of about 20 people, representative of the population segment that the backer want...  Read more
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I woke up this morning not knowing for sure whether I would be able to secure a ticket to today's big  event, Obama's acceptance speech at Invesco field, home of the Denver Broncos but today host to the Democratic Convention's final day. My friends that I am here with were equally in the dark. The event was heavily oversubscribed, with over 150,000 Americans applying for a so-called 'community credential' - in addition to all the regular convention participants.

At 11 am, Will Hummel from « Comments on this topic (0) »

Day 2 of the Democratic Convention in Denver. While party officials meet behind the scenes to continue preparations for the evening session (the national tv networks ABC, CBS and NCB only broadcast live between 7 and 9 pm, while CNN covers the entire proceedings), delegates invade Denver to attend a wide range of meetings and receptions. Every imaginable interest is represented here. My favourite today is the 'campaign against bird porn', which fights against the practice of birdwatching - for reason as yet unexplained. I can't be sure if this is serious or a joke. Elsewhere campaigners against global warming carry a huge plastic globe around to...  Read more
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I write this blog, the first of four this week from the Democratic Convention in Denver, sitting on the third floor balcony of the Pepsi Center, Denver's multi-purpose sports arena. Below me, over two thousand delegates from all over the US have filed in - delegates elected during the primaries as well as unelected 'superdelegates'. They are seated according to state, with delegates from Illinois, Barack Obama's home state, getting the best views - as is the tradition. Delegates from Delaware are also in luck: Obama's choice of Joe Biden as hi...  Read more
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August is normally a quieter time for Europe’s leaders, but not so this year. With the Olympics and Georgia on their minds, it has been a busier-than-usual month for many – not least Britain’s beleaguered prime minister, Gordon Brown, who has a further preoccupation – a challenge from one his most senior ministers.

Mr Brown’s summer started badly, following an annus horibilis for the government. Despite a promising start after taking over from Tony Blair last summ...  Read more
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"Citius, Altius, Fortius" (Faster, Higher, Stronger) has been the Olympic motto since the creation of the International Olympic Committee in 1894.

“The important thing in these Olympiads is not so much winning as taking part", said the Bishop of Pennsylvania, Ethelbert Talbot, at St. Paul’s Cathedral during the 1908 London Games and inspired Pierre de Coubertin’s creed that "the important thing in ...  Read more
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Most people acknowledge that the media scene is changing. The dynamics of newspapers, broadcasting, even editorial offices are changing. But we still have to explain how PR will change and how PR practitioners are facing this challenge on a daily basis. If I had to identify the keywords of the digital revolution, I would try to build a new paradigm based on 3 P’s: Promiscuity, Proximity and Participation.

Promiscuity means that the barriers between information producers and information consumers have crumbled – both these roles might now be played by the same person, potentially by every single one of us. In facing this challenge, companies want to be closer to con...  Read more
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There is nothing like a nine-month break from work to give you a fresh perspective on your discipline. In the world of digital media, where new hot sites and fads come and go quickly, I was afraid that I would be caught off guard when the question came up “what’s hot right now for digital?”. Yet, as I catch up with my colleagues and industry experts, the same web 2.0 suspects are rolled out as nine months ago: Facebook, Twitter, mobile communications, etc ...

What this reveals for me is that the key to digital media is not to know what the latest website is, or which social network or virtual world to enter, ...  Read more
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Bloggers and citizen journalists are challenging the traditional norms for what journalists can and can’t do.

In 1999 Jay Rosen, professor of journalism at New York University, published a provocative book called “What are journalists for?” In his book, Rosen argues that journalists should not simply report the news and move on to another story; rather, they should become “democracy’s cultivators, as well as its chroniclers”. Rosen advocated for “citizen journalism” where journalists should try ...  Read more
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Newspapers today are fighting a tough battle to stay ahead of their own readers.

In December last year, journalists from the San Francisco Chronicle set off to cover the news story of the Queen Mary 2, the world’s largest ocean liner, sailing under the Golden Gate Bridge with a margin of just 30 ft.

The problem was that, before the paper managed to publish anything, other spectators had already blogged the story and posted photos online – really good ones too.

The same goes for most major events that newspapers are covering and it illustrates how...  Read more
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LINKS

Brian Solis
The Burson-Marsteller Blog
Media Culpa
Harold Burson Blog
Digital Perspective
http://www.thedailybeast.com/
http://blogs.ec.europa.eu/wallstrom/