Arnold on ethical marketing

CHRIS ARNOLD

In the last couple of weeks both Ogilvy and RKCR/Y&R have been victim of green activists. Ogilvy because of Dove and it’s links with palm oil and RKCR/Y&R because it works for Land Rover and BAe Systems.

Just when Dove was winning hearts and minds with their campaign for real beauty, out comes an ugly skeleton from the cupboard. Dove are the biggest users of palm oil and that’s causing the Indonisian lowland forests to be laid waste.

Palm oil has been classed as a bad product by greens for a while. Used to make those cheap crisps and numerous products, it’s a surprise Unilever didn’t see this coming.

Greenpeace activists dressed up as orang-utans to protest outside their head office in London and outside O&M’s offices. It got a lot of PR, though the current joke going around is that people at Unilever thought it was a Tango promotion, while those in Cabot Square thought they were just another young creative team trying to get a job, so they hired them.

The Y&R group have a bit of a split personality. Whilst working for Land Rover, Ford and BAe Systems, they also work for Al Gore’s campaign and M&S. (We’ll ignore the Virgin trains greenwash work.) To a green activist, one doesn’t balance out the other. Thankfully these protests have been harmless.

Other agencies must be upping security, after all, most have a car, bank and airline account – all potential targets. Well, at least there’s one advantage of running an ethical marketing specialist agency, no one’s going to be breaking into my offices in fancy dress (though one of my creative’s does have a strange dress sense).

Many top brands have decided it’s smarter to work with NGOs than face them in the press. Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and many other NGO’s are all advising large corps on their CSR, but it’s a delicate relationship. From their angle it’s better to encourage big corps to change their bad ways and adopt more ethical behavour.

Many years ago my daughter and many of her teen friends were involved in an anti-Nestle campaign. When told by the headmaster they couldn’t set up a Fairtrade stall because the school had signed a deal with the company who operated the Nestle snack machines, a riot broke out. The kids glued up the machines and set up a stall anyway.

Added to this, a viral pdf titled ‘Nasties’, set in the Nestle type, did the rounds. It featured many of the now legendary anti-Nestle stories (some not very accurate I should add). But it also mentioned a number of organisations doing good work. One of them was Traidcraft, who was my client. They were cool about it. Another, a well know charity, wasn’t. I got a panic call from its chairman desperate to find the source and stop the campaign. Now this is not a charity you’d expect to be in bed with Nestle, so I was surprised. Though even more surprised by his reply. “It’s better to deal with the devil than fight him.” His words not mine.

Getting advice before you blunder into the market seems common sense these days, especially when shareholders are getting very twitchy about those companies who get too much negative press. Marketing departments are coming under increasing pressure to not damage the company reputation with short term greenwash campaigns.

In recognition of those the blunder, I am going to launch the ‘Ethical Big Foot in the Mouth Award’. The first goes to Burger King who were planning to put foie gras in its £85 burger. This was destined to attract criticism, especially as it’s been banned in a number of states in the US. They obviously aren’t learning from McDonald’s smarter approach to deflecting negative press.

So a bit of advice to all those brands out there who are planning to do some ethical washing, and don’t want to get nominated for my ‘Ethical Big Foot in the Mouth Award’ - seek a bit of advice from your CSR department or a friendly NGO (I would recommend their agency but it’s unlikely they would know). Because what is worse than finding yourself splashed all over the Guardian and ethical press is finding people dressed in animal costumers standing around your water cooler in the morning.

And finally an award for saying the wrong thing goes to Gordon Brown for his comment about the large profits the oil companies have just posted. Correct answer – “I hope they will be spending it on sustainable energy projects”. Wrong answer Mr Brown, “I hope they will be using it to get more oil out of the North Sea.”