Businesses considering lobbying politicians may need to think again. The power of special interest groups is increasing, writes Helen Trinca.
If there is on lesson business needs to learn at the start of the 21st century, its that its no longer enough to lobby the politician and bureaucrats who set the policy agendas.
Lobbying down to the citizens – as well as up to the powerbrokers – is critical, thanks to the power of technology to mobilise opinion and challenge a company’s operations.
Companies adept at handling crises by calling up a powerful contact in government are often wrong-footed by the new activists – diffuse groups that can marshal public opinion and customer power through new communication tools like the internet.
In fact, according to two young UK consultants, Steve John and Stuart Thomson, corporations often fail to take seriously these nimble interest groups with unorthodox techniques, like “flash mobbing” (spontaneous protests organised by mobile phone) or telephone campaigns. Companies are often “caught staring like rabbits at the headlights of an oncoming campaign hurtling towards them”.
The duo work for the global law firm DLA, not as conventional lawyers but in the government relations and issues management end of the practice. Their clients are often companies struggling to handle a public relations disaster engineered by activists who don’t like the way they do business.
The fight-back, according to John and Thomson, editors of a new book, New Activism and the Corporate Response (Palgrave Macmillan), involves companies mobilising their own workers and customers for a counterattack.
“What is effective is to build coalitions so that you can build a groundswell of support. We characterise it as basically “friends and family”, Thomson says.
The “family” are the people who have a direct stake in the business – employees, pensions funds or people with a direct association, such as suppliers. “Friends” are people who know about you but may not have a day-by-day association.
Thomson says that when people join a company, the could be asked to fill out a form saying whether they were prepared to engage and “protect the reputation or protect the interests of the company”.
If its sounds like a new take on Big Brother, so be it, but Thomson and John want companies to build a database and track relationships between employees and outsiders – like local councillors or MPs or local journalists and opinion formers – who can help.
At DLA, John and Thomson are definitely working for the big end of town. The selection of writers for their book is eclectic – from corporate critic and columnist George Monbiot to Nick Nichols, a US-based PR person who advises companies to “flash your brass knuckles” and let the activists know you mean business.
While the book does offer advice to activists, it is more a wake-up call to business about how citizens are increasingly skilled at investigating and targeting corporations.
Established players like environmental group Greenpeace have become institutionalised. However, there has been a surge in more radical cells that may have limited resources but are more cohesive and clever in targeting not just the company but its customers and suppliers – even its brokers, bankers and insurers.
There is a generational shift under way as to how governments, businesses, interests groups and citizens interact.
“Whereas political parties still find it very difficult to move away from embedded decision-making processes or monthly meetings, activist groups recognise the need to be mobile, to use new technologies, to shift tactics…and to know when to keep the pressure up and when to turn it down,” the editors say.
High profile performers protest by destroying products as part of their act, Radio Boy, aka Matthew Herbert, destroys crisp packets, video tapes and Coke cans and other packaging as a way to protest against companies. Nor are the protest rallies what they once were. About 600 Nigerian mothers and grandmothers protested against Chevron Texaco by threatening to take their clothes off.
Yet it is electronic communication that is revolutionising the way small groups can magnify impact. Online campaigning, telephone campaigns and viral marketing (word of mouth) are the new tools.
“Fifty people can make a massive difference now in a way that I think 10 or 15 years ago they wouldn’t have been able to,” John says.
“That means business has to mobilise its defensive positions or however you want to describe it – a much greater number of people.”
But why so much activity?
In part its because of the prime role business now plays in our world. Corporations matter more than ever, so citizens eschew governments and go for the corporate jugular. The corporations’ desire to promote themselves and their chief executives has fed into the mix so that activists now portray companies as physical entities rather than simply legal structures.
Activists believe that the way for individuals to have an impact on important decisions is not to lobby governments – after all, governments have long ago thrown up their hands and said they can’t stand up to corporations and global forces – but to target corporations.
It means that the lobbying of politicians by companies will become far less important, the duo argue.
“Businesses should not worry so much about which board directors are meeting with which politicians. The internet and mobile phones are giving the person on the street the abilities, the access and influence of the 250 pounds an hour lobbyist.”
Instead, business needs to focus on the new world, especially the internet.
As John says: “If you look at the way junior producers or researchers in television studios or in newspapers or in politicians” offices look for information, they go to the internet first these days.
“that means if you are a decision maker and you want to find out about Company X that an activist claims is behaving badly, you would go straight to the company’s website and try to find out about it. Our one piece of advice would be to make sure that your electronic face to the world is as up to date as possible.”
Helen Trinca, Financial Review (Australia), 3 February 2004