Live Issue... NGOs offer a lesson in the art of subversive marketing

Early last year, a small group of Greenpeace activists stole on to the London trading floor of a large mineral company and released 50 Helium balloons fitted with rape alarms into the room.

Besides a lot of noise and some rough treatment from security, the stunt didn’t gain much for Greenpeace. But others, like the recent pastiche of Dove’s ‘Campaign for real beauty’, offer marketers a lesson in how to get heard using clever subversion tactics.

Greenpeace used Dove’s widely lauded ‘onslaught’ commercial, in which the dangers of the beauty industry are exposed to a young girl, as a weapon against the brand by creating a version of its own, called “onslaught(er)”. The ad, now circulating on YouTube, features a young Indonesian girl (a Caucasian girl is used in the Dove ad) whose rainforest surroundings are transformed by the invasion of palm oil plantations.

The Greenpeace film uses the same sound track (but with different lyrics - “there they go” rather than “here it comes”, referring to the plight of Indonesia’s orang-utans) and the same fast-cut editing techniques as the Dove film.

The on-screen copy reads: “98 per cent of Indonesia’s lowland forest will be gone by the time Azizan is 25. Most is destroyed to make palm oil, which is used in Dove products.” Then, turning Dove’s endline (‘Talk to your daughter before the beauty industry does’) on its head, the film finishes with: “Talk to Dove before it’s too late.”

Together with protests staged outside Unilever offices across Europe, where activists dressed as apes, the campaign has worked. Just a few weeks ago, Unilever vowed to start buying palm oil from sustainable sources.

“Dove took the moral high ground with ‘Real beauty’, but Greenpeace trumped it,” observes Andy Wilson, chairman of BBDO’s regional planning council. “It takes a bold brand to adopt a morally-based positioning. It leaves itself open to criticism.”

NGOs such as Greenpeace have a moral legitimacy which allows them to be rebellious and anarchic, adds Wilson. Usually only smaller brands, a West coast skater label for instance, have this sort of freedom.
But this isn’t to say brands shouldn’t try to position themselves around issues, if they are relevant.
 

Fonterra does so with its bone health product Anlene by bringing attention to the widespread problem of osteoporosis among Asian women.

Brands have much to learn from NGOs in how they engage with consumers on a human level - and on a smaller budget - says Ian Rumsey, the EVP of Weber Shandwick Asia-Pacific. When exposing, say, a health scare, NGOs tend to target the individual rather than the masses, which is more effective at appealing to people emotionally.
 

Using emotion to elicit a response is one thing. It helps that negative emotions (like shock or guilt) are usually felt more strongly than positive emotions, says Wilson. Plus NGOs have the advantage of being perceived as more honest, whereas consumer brands too often paint a romanticised portrait of themselves, he says.

This sense of honesty will only last if an NGO’s claims are grounded by sound research, says Kevin May, the manager of Greenpeace China’s toxic unit. Which is why it is especially dangerous for brands to make claims to be green when, in fact, they are not.

Olympic sponsors are bracing themselves for whatever NGOs have in store for them in September.
 

Samsung, reveals May, will be targeted along with others deemed guilty of using toxic substances in their products. “We have plans in place to target the big sponsors,” he warns. An opportunity, perhaps for sponsors to watch and learn.