There is a healthy level of distrust between organisations that conduct campaigns based on ethical principles and organisations that conduct campaigns for fee-paying clients
It comes as no surprise to learn that non-governmental organisations typically distrust public relations companies, often regarding them as an operational arm of corporations or governments engaged in bad behaviour.
Andy Rowell of campaign group Spinwatch says “most PR agencies are client-led” and when those clients are engaged in unethical practices, the PR brief is invariably to “gloss over, tone down and greenwash some of our more controversial industries”.
Alex Wilks, campaign director for community campaign website Avaaz.org, says: “Sometimes PR companies try to defend the indefensible, and often they are unable to hold up the opinion that their clients want.”
Avaaz works by creating a critical mass on an issue by bringing together concerned individuals through its website. Wilks cites its recent campaign against Formula 1 racing in Bahrain. Avaaz put pressure on the Formula 1 teams, saying that the 2011 Bahrain Grand Prix should be scrapped after government suppression of pro-democracy protests. The teams subsequently put pressure on race organisers, and the event was duly cancelled.
Avaaz “managed to expose the lie”, Wilks says. “Our members sent messages to Red Bull, Mercedes, Ferrari and others, saying that they should make sure their teams stay out of Bahrain.”
In its ultimately fruitless efforts to resist the Avaaz pressure, the Bahrain government was assisted by its PR agency, Bell Pottinger. Its brief was to “try to show that all was well there, which was palpably not the case”, Wilks says, adding that one part of the PR effort, a tour to Bahrain for racing officials, would have been “laughable if it hadn’t been so serious”.
Avaaz does not use outside PR help. “We want to stand on our two feet. Most NGOs want to be independent in their actions and true to their founding ethic and purpose,” Wilks says. This extends to the communications and PR functions.
Uneasy partners
Greenpeace International takes a similar view. Spokesman Mike Townsley says: “Some PR companies on the one hand work for an environmental organisation and on the other hand are getting paid by some agent of the military-industrial complex.” This would be uncomfortable for Greenpeace.
“We have a credo of independence, which means that we neither solicit nor accept monies or support from commercial enterprises and companies. That allows us to maintain the integrity of our agenda.”
However, Townsley adds: “That’s not to say that we have never worked with a PR agency, or that we don’t employ ad agencies or do pro bono work with them. For a certain campaign, we might employ a PR company to help us with a press conference or a media event.”
Greenpeace in most cases does not need the assistance of a PR company. “We’ve been in existence for 40 years and have built up quite significant relationships with media partners,” Townsley says. “I’m more likely to come across a PR company representing an industry and trying to counter a [Greenpeace] campaign.”
PR companies are also unlikely to earn from NGOs the fees that they can command from corporate clients. If Greenpeace does work with a PR agency, “we usually try to get a relationship in which we can pay them as little as we can get away with – hopefully nothing”, Townsley says.
Common platforms
Campaign groups can, however, be targets for PR agencies looking to broker reputation-boosting partnerships for their clients, though such partnerships are not necessarily just about polishing corporate profiles. Alliances can be mutually beneficial, says Martin Porter, managing director of Brussels lobbying and PR firm Edelman The Centre.
Partnerships can arise because companies want to make progress on a specific issue, and this coincides with the interests of an NGO. In some cases, the NGO can benefit because lawmakers might be more likely to put their weight behind an issue if it has corporate backing, which can equate to a demonstration of the economic benefit, Porter says.
However, “NGOs want to make sure they are not being taken for a ride”. Trust and personal relationships between the participants are key, Porter says.
He gives the example of the Coalition for Energy Savings. This is a multi-member platform pushing for the European Union to adopt binding energy efficiency targets, similar to targets it already has for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and for ramping up renewable energy. Edelman The Centre provides a secretariat for the coalition.
Its members include industry associations, such as the European Committee of Domestic Equipment Manufacturers and the European Insulation Manufacturers Association, alongside NGOs and foundations including the Climate Action Network Europe, Friends of the Earth Europe and WWF.
Catherine Pearce of the European Environmental Bureau, another of the NGO members, says such coalitions are a reflection of a move beyond a “traditional black and white view of NGOs and businesses”. There are now “different shades of green across various stakeholders”, she says.
The Coalition for Energy Savings “evolved out of a need” on which all the participants broadly agreed, and does not represent a compromise for the NGOs involved, she adds.
The main aim is to get things done. “As with every coalition, the members are not going to agree on everything. There have been discussions where there is not a clear common line on something.” However, the participants have a common willingness to see where there is agreement and where progress can be made, Pearce says.
Front groups
Other initiatives that superficially look similar to the Coalition for Energy Savings can be little more than front groups set up by PR agencies, however. The Bromine Science and Environmental Forum (BSEF) sounds like it could be a partnership between NGOs and academics, but it is in fact a group of four companies brought together by PR firm Burson-Marsteller.
BSEF’s main aim is to prevent the regulation of brominated flame retardants, which are used to stop sofas and beds catching fire. Scientific evidence, published for example by the United States National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, has shown that the substances can accumulate in people and animals, and can be passed, for example through breast feeding, to infants. But according to the BSEF, concerns about brominated flame retardants have been “overblown for political reasons”.
In Europe, three of the four companies BSEF represents – Albemarle, Chemtura and ICL Industrial Products – are also members of the European Flame Retardants Association, a more clearly labelled lobby group working on exactly the same issue. This raises the question of why the BSEF is needed in the first place.
Sabine Wimpissinger, a consultant to BSEF with Burson-Marsteller says the forum is “the bromine industry’s global organisation,” and it “ensures global coordination of the industry’s scientific and regulatory programmes”. BSEF commissions research from independent scientists and sets out to “inform decision-makers and other stakeholders about the results of this science, and to represent the bromine industry on issues of environment and human health,” she adds.
BSEF is an example of what the campaign group Spinwatch calls the “third party technique”. This is the separation of an organisation behind a message – for example, an oil company – from the message it wants to put across – for example that climate change is not a problem.
Another strategy, according to Spinwatch, is the “3D” campaign: denying a problem, delaying action, then dominating the response in the media or by politicians. This can be done by “promoting scientific uncertainty to create an impression that the jury is still out over a particular issue”.
Spinwatch accuses oil giant Shell of indulging in such practices over many years to protect its activities in the Niger delta, where problems arose in the early 1990s over pollution and the treatment of indigenous peoples. Since then, Shell has “spent millions on its PR activities”, says Spinwatch’s Andy Rowell.
The money was dedicated to changing the company’s image, rather than the company itself, Rowell says. Shell Nigeria deals extensively with pollution issues on its website, where it emphasises that there is a lack of security in the Niger delta and “militant groups... cause massive pollution ... by damaging wellheads and other facilities”. Shell says that 70% of spills are “the result of sabotage, oil theft and illegal refining by criminal gangs”.
But this emphasis might have been a distraction from dealing with the environmental integrity of Shell’s own operations. In early August 2011, Shell admitted liability in a legal case about major oil spills in the Niger delta in 2008 and 2009, while, separately, a United Nations Environment Programme report found that in the Ogoniland region, Shell had not properly maintained or decommissioned oilfield infrastructure, and that most polluted sites that Shell said it had remediated “still have pollution exceeding [Shell] (and government) remediation closure values”.
Shell Nigeria managing director Mutiu Sunmonu says the company will do “everything in our control to reduce operational spills,” but that “until effective action is taken to curb all illegal activities, there is little that can be done to bring an end to the problem of spills”.