The public or sections of it are
most usually the targets of the PR industry, consumers of information
campaigns. With campaigns against corporations on the rise however activist
groups and NGOs are now often seen as the enemy in crisis or reputation
management campaigns. Starting in the 1990s the PR industry began to
realise the power of grassroots organisation ranged against their clients
and sought to fashion their own "astroturf" citizens campaigns.
6.1 Astroturf
campaigns
Astroturf campaigns are those which aim to create the
impression of grassroots support for or opposition to a given project.
Sometimes PR companies can successfully organise discontented workers
or sections of the public to vent their frustrations on environmentalists
or particular legislation that the client wants derailed. Sometimes
they simply create faked public concern. John Stauber of PR Watch
describes astroturf thus: "the appearance of democracy bought
and paid for with millions of dollars from wealthy special interests
National Grassroot & Communications is a US company
with offices in Washington D.C., Seattle, and California specialising
in 'astroturf' campaigns. NGRC uses astroturf methods topass and defeat
legislation at state and federal levels and proudly boasts that it
"has changed government policies on gasoline additives for ARCO
Chemical Company… protected generic pharmaceutical sales for
Barr Laboratories… increased community support for Wal-Mart Stores…
and developed national and state legislative coalitions for the generic
pharmaceutical industry."[91] One time CEO, Pamela Whitney said,
"We take on the NIMBYs and environmentalists… [and assist]
companies who want to do a better job of communicating to their employees
because they want to remain union-free."[92]
NGRC sets up its campaigns by identifying and hiring
local community leaders and then supports them in setting up campaign
groups. They have found retired women with community experience to
be the very best campaign leaders.
In Germany a group called the Federal Organisation for
Landscape Protection, abbreviated to BLS in German, seems to have
been orchestrarting astroturf opposition to wind farms. BLS representatives
tour the country giving talks and spreading propaganda against wind
energy. Where wind farms are proposed BLS helps to start up local
community campaigns against them. Their propaganda usually alleges
that wind turbines will destroy the landscape, bring down property
prices, kill brids by the hundred and raise energy prices.
BLS has tried to maintain that it was a wholly independent
environmental group. However after finding that BLS' lawyer was using
a fax machine owned by a subsidiary of, VIAG, a nuclear and conventional
energy generating company, journalist Michael Franken discovered further
links between BLS and the electricity industry.[93]
6.2 Countering activists and NGOs
Since the sixties, big business has increasingly been
targeted by citizens campaigns over consumer and workers' rights and
environmental issues. Monitoring and countering these threats has
become a standard service often known as 'environmental PR'.
Andy Rowell, author of 'Green Backlash' describes the
typical PR offensive against environmental campaigns as about trying
to create the following impressions:
Whilst industry groups will tend to give themselves
green-sounding names and try to argue that they are the true environmentalists,
the PR offensive will try to brand activists as terrorists, religious
fanatics, nazis, communists or crazed and probably violent extremists
of some sort. Alternatively it may portray environmentalists as stick-in-the
mud preservationists or middle class elitists opposed to working class
needs[94].
Despite the best efforts of some, the environmental
movement has shown no sign of disappearing, so new strategies are
always being developed for dealing with it.
Mongoven, Biscoe & Duchin, a PR firm known for its
monitoring and infiltration of activist groups, claim to use a classic
divide and rule strategy when working against grassroots campaigns.
MB&D characterise activists as belonging to one of four categories:
'radicals', 'opportunists', 'idealists' and 'realists'. Their three
step strategy is to isolate the radicals, 'cultivate' the idealists
and educate them into becoming realists and then to 'educate' the
realists so that they agree with industry.[95]
The big new corporate PR strategy is to create dialogue
with NGOs. Dialogue provides ample opportunity to divide NGOs and
grassroots campaigns and enables corporations to define the terms
of a debate, often subtly shifting discussion away from questioning
whether a given project should go ahead to how it can happen, all
the while giving the impression of openness and transparency.
When Monsanto's 1998 'Food, Health, Hope' advertising
campaign collapsed seeming only to have fueled the British public's
cynicism about and opposition to GM crops, Monsanto's next move was
to try to initiate a "National Stakeholder Dialogue on GMOs".[96]
In 1998, Rio Tinto, formerly RTZ, held two for a in
the UK to discuss its operating principles and procedures with NGOs.
Rio Tinto which has been the subject of sustained criticism for abysmal
human rights and environmental standards was ostensibly looking for
feedback from the NGO community on what standards it should aim for.
Rio Tinto's foremost critic PARTiZANs was not invited to the fora
and neither were any of the (mostly third world) communities on the
receiving end of Rio Tinto's operations. Some of the NGOs, such as
World Development Movement and Friends of the Earth declined the inivtation,
while other more moderate organisations such as Oxfam and Amnesty
International attended.[97]
The new PR buzzword for dealing with the crisis of trust
in corporations is Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), and its
most obvious activity seems to be yet more dialogue and consultation
between business and "stakeholders". "business driven
membership network" CSR Europe, for instance, whose "mission
is to help companies achieve profitability sustainable growth and
human progress by placing corporate social responsibility in the mainstream
of business practice", goes about doing this primarily by aiming
to encourage "dialogue between stakeholders and to promote others
to initiate dialogue. All our work links to this aim"[98]
Aside from dialogue CSR's other main goal seems to be
the formulation of voluntary codes of conduct. Journalist and author,
George Monbiot comments, "By hiring green specialists to advise
them on better management practices, they [corporations] hope to persuade
governments and the public that there is no need for compulsory measures.
The great thing about voluntary restraint is that you can opt into
or out of it as you please… As soon as it becomes burdensome,
the commitment can be dropped."[99] Meanwhile business continues
as usual.
