Hatred: it keeps you warm at night and doesn't hurt your campaign results either
Good Homer never stood a chance ....
I asked a question tonight to the speakers at Social Media Club Auckland: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/Social-Media-Club-Auckland/191910454034?ref=ts Is hatred a more powerful motivator than good for cause-related marketers? What got me thinking about this was the speaker from Oxfam and his relatively poor SM results (700 friends, 25 wall posts or somesuch for one campaign) compared to the guy from Greenpeace and his 300,000 emails to the head of Nestle about its use of palm oil in Kit Kats. (I didn’t get to read the emails but I’m guessing not many of them were asking how his family was.) Now I know this isn’t comparing apples with apples (or indeed, given the theme of the night, Fairtrade Bananas), but it did make me wonder. Everyone knows what Greenpeace is against: global warming, whaling, palm oil... Despite tonight’s speaker saying they were also about positive alternatives, it’s hard to know what those alternatives are. What do they want Japanese people to eat instead of whale?
What kind of oil should we put into our KitKats or murtabaks?
What kind of electricity generation should we choose instead of nuclear? Sponsoring a child doesn’t seem to generate quite as much excitement as slaughtering a CEO. Focussing hatred rather than showcasing positive alternatives seems to have been a very successful tactic for Greenpeace. A few of us got to talking about this afterwards. Why doesn’t Greenpeace point some more of its energy towards positive messages? Now that KitKat is palm oil free, for example, how about a Greenpeace-approved sticker? (Not just a rhetorical question hopefully ... If anyone from Greenpeace has a point of view on this I’d love to hear it.) Could Greenpeace approve or endorse an electricity generator? Or a fishing company? The Greenpeace website does give some space to a “Good Wood Guide,” which is handy, but that seems to be as far as the positivity goes. The fish section makes it very clear that Greenpeace is not in the business of telling us what fish is good, only what is bad. Would it kill them to give at least one species the Greenpeace equivalent of the Heart Foundation tick? A guy can only eat so much palm-oil-free tofu! Don’t get me wrong; this isn’t a Greenpeace bash. I’m genuinely curious about what seems to be a very powerful motive in cause-related social media (or charity marketing in general) and Greenpeace happened to be the charity that got me thinking about it. I’m sure I could make the same observations about Sea Shepherd or any number of animal or environmentally-based charities. I heard someone make a similar observation the other day at a seminar I was at. An advertising guy called Craig Davis (quite possibly my cousin but who knows) was talking about a social brand rating site of his called Brandkarma: http://www.brandkarma.com/ Brandkarma asks members to rate brands on a love to hate scale. Someone in the room pointed out that there’s enough hate in the world without opening the door to even more – even if it is directed towards something so abstract as a brand. He had a point (and Craig seemed to take it.) There’s enough hate in the world. Is channeling hatred the wrong thing for a charity to do? You could argue that the ends justify the means. And if my job depended on media attention and donation dollars I imagine I’d choose evil Homer every time too.
I asked a question tonight to the speakers at Social Media Club Auckland: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/Social-Media-Club-Auckland/191910454034?ref=ts Is hatred a more powerful motivator than good for cause-related marketers? What got me thinking about this was the speaker from Oxfam and his relatively poor SM results (700 friends, 25 wall posts or somesuch for one campaign) compared to the guy from Greenpeace and his 300,000 emails to the head of Nestle about its use of palm oil in Kit Kats. (I didn’t get to read the emails but I’m guessing not many of them were asking how his family was.) Now I know this isn’t comparing apples with apples (or indeed, given the theme of the night, Fairtrade Bananas), but it did make me wonder. Everyone knows what Greenpeace is against: global warming, whaling, palm oil... Despite tonight’s speaker saying they were also about positive alternatives, it’s hard to know what those alternatives are. What do they want Japanese people to eat instead of whale?
What kind of oil should we put into our KitKats or murtabaks?
What kind of electricity generation should we choose instead of nuclear? Sponsoring a child doesn’t seem to generate quite as much excitement as slaughtering a CEO. Focussing hatred rather than showcasing positive alternatives seems to have been a very successful tactic for Greenpeace. A few of us got to talking about this afterwards. Why doesn’t Greenpeace point some more of its energy towards positive messages? Now that KitKat is palm oil free, for example, how about a Greenpeace-approved sticker? (Not just a rhetorical question hopefully ... If anyone from Greenpeace has a point of view on this I’d love to hear it.) Could Greenpeace approve or endorse an electricity generator? Or a fishing company? The Greenpeace website does give some space to a “Good Wood Guide,” which is handy, but that seems to be as far as the positivity goes. The fish section makes it very clear that Greenpeace is not in the business of telling us what fish is good, only what is bad. Would it kill them to give at least one species the Greenpeace equivalent of the Heart Foundation tick? A guy can only eat so much palm-oil-free tofu! Don’t get me wrong; this isn’t a Greenpeace bash. I’m genuinely curious about what seems to be a very powerful motive in cause-related social media (or charity marketing in general) and Greenpeace happened to be the charity that got me thinking about it. I’m sure I could make the same observations about Sea Shepherd or any number of animal or environmentally-based charities. I heard someone make a similar observation the other day at a seminar I was at. An advertising guy called Craig Davis (quite possibly my cousin but who knows) was talking about a social brand rating site of his called Brandkarma: http://www.brandkarma.com/ Brandkarma asks members to rate brands on a love to hate scale. Someone in the room pointed out that there’s enough hate in the world without opening the door to even more – even if it is directed towards something so abstract as a brand. He had a point (and Craig seemed to take it.) There’s enough hate in the world. Is channeling hatred the wrong thing for a charity to do? You could argue that the ends justify the means. And if my job depended on media attention and donation dollars I imagine I’d choose evil Homer every time too.
