Greenwashing

It is proved that customers prefer services and products of socially responsible companies. An image of sustainable and eco-friendly brand gives a number of benefits to the company, for example: better and stronger relationships with stakeholders, avoidance of the severity of potential crisis, improvement of bottom line, boost in sales, etc. Therefore many companies try to implement CSR programmes only for the sake of having more ‘green’ image, not backing it up with the real action. Such activities called as ‘greenwashing’ have, however, an opposite effect on customers, who can easily determine if the company is genuine or not and develop a counter-productive perception of a ‘deceiver- company’. 

                                                                                   (Picture from: Greenertrends.com)

CIPR, which in 2007 published the best practice guidelines to uphold high standards of corporate social responsibility, describes greenwashing as:

"[greenwash] is a term often used when describing environmental sustainability communications that are false or misleading, generally when significantly more money or time has been spent promoting being green, rather than spending resources on environmentally sound practices. This can be portrayed by changing the name, or label, of a product, to give the ‘feeling of nature’, for example putting an image of a forest on a bottle of harmful chemicals. It is also sometimes used to distract from negative practices in other parts of a company’s business.

Greenwash can lead to a reduction in stakeholders’ trust, damaging reputation and investor confidence. Making false or over-the-top claims only strengthens media suspicions about eco-claims, which in turn damages efforts to improve the environment. PR practitioners should never knowingly greenwash and should take responsibility to question client claims if they believe them to be untrue or inaccurate."

Activists against BP's art sponsorship:

In a bunch of the most criticized companies for greenwashing their image is BP. I wonder what do you think of BP’s involvement in art sponsorship? From one hand the big, rich, oil corporation, whose main stakeholders are local communities and governments in areas where it operates, but on the other hand BP has 20 year long record of sponsoring the art, cultural and educational organizations. A genuine activity or greenwashing?

BP is currently searching for a PR agency, which will promote its sponsorships during 2012 Olympic Games. Here is a brief and the presentation I made for that case, as one of our course assignments: 

Presentation of a brief for a PR agency - BP case study

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Brief for a PR agency - BP case study

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If your presentation sucks wear red!

The key to successful communication lies in good recognition of the context we operate in. The context consists of: characteristics of people we are talking to (what is the environment they live in, what are their beliefs, attitudes and motivations) and the situational factors within we communicate.

While we can’t do much about other people’s believes and attitudes, we can however take a partial control upon their perceptions during the communicational process. Our perceptions of others strongly depend on type of the medium we communicate through.

The most famous example of that is a case of American presidential debate in 1960 between John F. Kennedy and Richard N. Nixon. The debate was broadcasted by both television and radio. After the debate it turned out that between the radio and TV audience there are remarkable differences in the candidates’ appraisal.

People who were watching debate in TV better rated Kennedy, whose appearance was simply better that his opponent’s. He was younger, more handsome, his behaviour was smooth. Nixon was acting unsteadily, he didn’t have make-up, couldn’t stand in one place, was sweating. However people who were listening to the debate on the radio, gave the higher ranks to Nixon, whose speech was more convincing for them than the Kennedy’s.

It is a clear proof that the observers’ perception is strongly connected to the medium of communication. It indicates that we should tune in our way of communicating to the medium – maybe if the debate was only transmitted by the radio, Nixon would have won the elections.

The differences which determine our perception on the type of the communication canal we can explain by the psychological theory (Petty and Cacioppo (1981) of two routes to persuasion: central and peripheral.

Persuasion is only effective when the receiver’s attention is respectively direct either to the power of arguments (verbal communication) or to so called peripheral indicators (non-verbal communication).

Directing the attention to the appropriate rout depends, in turn, on the conditions of message reception. When a person is focused on considering  the arguments – for example when is reading an article, then he focuses on the merits of the statement. But when his attention is distracted and he doesn’t recognise the substance and logics of the arguments (which most often happen during TV watching) then the person concentrate on superficial aspects and simple signs which in psychology are called as heuristics – for example if the person is attractive, if is an expert, or if others agree with his view. Drawing on this mechanism we can explain why in 1960’s debate for TV audience won Kennedy, and for radio listeners won Nixon.

So the next time if you don’t have time to prepare your presentation well, at least wear the best clothes you have, or put something red on. According to the central and peripheral theory of persuasion you will divert your audience’s attention from your arguments to the peripheral aspects of your appearance.

References:

Extracts from my BA dissertation (2010): 'Selected methods of building a personal image in the media’