Lobbying & perception management

WinSocially Weekly

We’ve had a lot of feedback about our last newsletter, mostly on the matter of “inserting yourself into the solution” and the quote we included from Lenin.

Many of you have asked to expand on that. Over this quiet 4th of July weekend, let’s do this by focusing on one situation in particular — the oil industry and climate change.

Here is why we selected this topic:

• Climate change has never been hotter (pun intended!).

• Energy companies represent vast vested interests who are under extreme scrutiny.

Speaking at the OPEC annual meeting in Vienna, Austria, the group’s general secretary, Mohammed Barkindo, spoke out about the “growing mass mobilization of world opinion…against oil,” and a climate in which “civil society is being misled to believe oil is the cause of climate change.” A particular concern, he added, was climate change campaigners, whom he described as “perhaps the greatest threat” to the prospects of the oil industry. The children of key OPEC staff feared for their own futures as their peers took to the street to campaign “against this industry,” he said.

• These entities don’t have a reservoir of public goodwill or positive branding.

With this scenario, they have adopted two primary tactics:

• Controlling decision making via direct lobbying of politicians.

• Perception management through environmental initiatives that portray themselves as part of the climate change solution .

We will focus upon the latter.

• This press release from Shell is a classic example of this.

• Note the use of phrases such as “invest in nature”, “focus on natural ecosystems”, “reforestation” and carbon footprint reduction.

• This isn’t just good PR copy writing.

• It is part of significant branding campaigns that show these companies as active contributors in the fight against climate change.

Re-brand and Control

Like the billionaires we wrote about last week, these companies understand overall sentiments have swung against them. To exercise control over events, they need to do these two crucial things:

• Re-brand as part of the the climate change solution.

• Ensure they control climate change initiatives that affect their bottom line.

To see what they are really doing, we need to do one simple thing — follow the money.

Two months ago, Shell announced a $300m fund for “investing in natural ecosystems” over the next three years. This, it claims, will help to “support the transition towards a low-carbon future”. By paying for reforestation, it intends to offset some of the greenhouse gases produced by its oil and gas extraction.

The fund sounds big, and it is – until you compare it with Shell’s annual income of $24bn. Shell’s transition towards a low-carbon future is almost invisible in its annual report. Renewable energy doesn’t figure in its summary of financial results.

Shell’s “cash engines”, according to its annual report, are oil and gas. There is no sign that it plans to turn the engines off. Its “growth priorities” are chemical production and deep water oil extraction. It does list low-carbon energy among its “emerging opportunities” in future decades, but says it will develop them alongside fracking and liquefied fossil gas technologies. 

• Energy companies and their industry associations are running vastly different campaigns behind the scenes.

the public stances of a corporation’s leadership stand starkly at odds with the messages from industry groups funded by that same corporation.

For example, on electric vehicles, Shell’s CEO Ben Van Beurden had a very direct and simple message in July 2018. “We need battery electric vehicles,” he said. 

In May 2018, the American Petroleum Institute, the largest U.S. trade group for oil and gas, pushed the U.S. Congress to move in the opposite direction by rolling back incentives for electric vehicles.

Lessons for decision makers

• This type of duality in PR, lobbying and branding is crucial in modern communications.

• Social media, the increasing strength of third-party groups and changing norms mean that one has to play attack AND defence.

• Too often, we have encountered situations where the client’s objective is to “win” by “proving its point”.

• In an increasingly polarised world, in the era of the perpetual campaign, winning needs to be reformulated into objective-driven-campaigns.

• Some battles have to be fought not to win but to win control over events.