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COUNTER-STRATEGIES

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This part of the introduction includes a short outline of the themes to be discussed at the forum. Being used are examples
from the work of the panellists meaning cases they have been working on and some other related texts (references in-
cluded below). Added are four further texts illuminating the main themes from different points of view.

“The greatest threat to the corporate world's reputation comes from the Internet, the pressure groups newest weapon. Their
agile use of global tools such as the Internet reduces the advantage that corporate budgets once provided.” Quoted is a
PR-manager who is trying to teach multinationals how to deal with modern day pressure groups, creatively using the power
of the media sound bite.

The loss of control over a situation as result of the activities from particular pressure groups has become the nightmare
scenario for the modern multinational enterprise. Some of them learn fast, from their enemies - that is, from us. PR-com-
panies are hired to change the worst scenario into a business opportunity.

What are the modern-times strategies of present day companies?

Three main strategies can be distinguished as follows:

1. Openness and co-optation

2. Monitoring and intelligence

3. Aggressive PR, using legal threats, front groups and greenwash tactics

WHAT THREAT DO THESE STRATEGIES POSE?

1. OPENNESS AND CO-OPTATION

One of the tenets of the new Shell strategy based on openness and honesty is their Internet site http://www.shell.com,
launched early 1996, renewed late 1998). Dialogue is the core concept, and sensitive issues are not side-stepped. The
Shell Internet site receives over 1,100 emails a month and a full-time staff member answers all these mails personally
within forty-eight hours. There are links to the sites of Shell's competitors and detractors, and also to progressive social
organisations (nothing there more radical than Friends of the Earth or Greenpeace, but this aside). At the site's discussion
forums arranged by subject everybody is allowed to voice their opinion on Shell's practices. The question is of course
whether this form of openness really yields results. The forums are not intended for people to question Shell; the email fa-
cility provides for that and is used quite intensively. The questions being asked and the answer being given, remain be-
tween only Shell and the emailers. All in all, one might conclude that this amounts to a fake openness, for show purposes
only. After all, in public the public arena, true discussions are being eschewed. Shell denies that the forums are merely
window-dressing, functioning mainly as barometer for what certain people think.

To co-opt the environmental debate is just one side of the coin, to demonise and marginalise the environmental movement
is the other. One PR guru has outlined a three step divide and conquer strategy on how corporations can defeat public in-
terest activists who apparently fall into four distinct categories: “radicals”, “opportunists", “idealists” and “realists”. The
goal is to isolate the radicals, “cultivate” the idealists and “educate” them into becoming realists, then co-opt the realists
into agreeing with industry’. The bottom line, says another PR-specialist, is that if you dialogue with people, then you win
Hf you meet a group that will not compromise then you have a problem. One recent classic example of this is the Uwa from