By the time you read this, London should have a mayor who once said that capitalism had killed more people than Hitler (as reported by Frank Millar in The Irish Times on Tuesday). But lastminute attempts by elements of the British press to link Ken Livingstone to the "spirit" behind the vandalisation of McDonald's and (other) monuments in London will have failed.
It had to be McDonald's, of course, a prime symbol of global capitalism, more precisely, globalised, American, consumer brands. Perhaps the anarcho-eco-vandals were incensed having studied last week's Economist which reported its annual Big Mac index of world currency values, as measured by the price in each country for a Big Mac.
Brands are built to attract attention, but their builders cannot control, as much as they would like, how that attention is used. Social campaigners, non-governmental organisations, or activists, hijack the awareness so expensively created for a brand, to magnify their own causes. The economics of protest mean that particular companies and particular brands are much more susceptible than others.
Inevitably, it was McDonald's, not O'Brien's sandwich bars, that was attacked. O'Brien's sandwich bars benefit from the structures of capitalism just as McDonald's does, but that isn't enough to make it useful for activists. The brand has to be of sufficient size globally and active in the area where the activist wants to make a point, be it a regime that violates human rights, or an area where a species is endangered.
Second, the brands have to be consumer brands. You don't tend to see political campaigns using the brand value of Cisco, ABB or Morgan Stanley. These can be as much involved in global capitalism as any consumer brands company but they are not emblematic in ordinary people's minds - and therefore potent for political campaigns.
It seems also a good idea if you are an activist targeting a brand to focus on those where repeat purchases are normal. It is no coincidence that brands and companies such as Shell, Nike and Starbucks have been prime targets for major social activism. Petrol, apparel and coffee are bought by consumers many times, even daily.
The threat of a boycott is all the greater, as Shell found out at its German petrol stations at the height of the largely fraudulent Greenpeace campaign against the dumping of the Brent Spar oil rig. It would be altogether harder to organise a consumer boycott campaign against a well-known white goods brand such as Whirlpool. Although very well-known, people don't buy washing machines and dishwashers all that often.
Targeted brands tend to be market leaders. A market leader, unsurprisingly, can lead an industry in socio-political standards just as in products. When Nike went through a sustained campaign against the labour practices of its sub-contractors in southeast Asia, the company was aggrieved that the employees of both its sub-contractors' were paid more than even doctors were paid (in Vietnam), but also that companies manufacturing apparel with no or low-brand awareness were left alone by activists.
That's life, one could say, but it does raise a problem for management of market-leading brands. One way that Nike lessened the problem was to take part in setting up an industry-wide common standards group, the White House Apparel Industry Partnership, with an independent monitoring unit.
A successful response of companies whose brands are targeted is to find a way to work with the sophisticated and reasonable social activist groups. Despite all the tensions over Brent Spar, Shell now co-operates with Greenpeace in meeting environmental standards.
The World Bank works with many environmental and human rights groups. One could say this neutralises the opposition, but the reality is that intelligent NGOs do not bargain cheaply and don't sell out principles for the influence they undoubtedly get from working inside the tent.
In this country, we have had few attacks on global capitalism - though you never know - and company boycotts and campaigns have generally been company-specific. In the 1980s, there were protests against Dunnes Stores for importing South African fruit. Dunnes workers themselves protested, not outsiders piggybacking on the Dunnes brand. But the awareness of that campaign was helped enormously by the brand awareness of Dunnes; it was also a market leader. On plastic bags, the big supermarkets are more likely to be the object of attention much more than hundreds of small shops, or even the RGDATA group collectively.
The management of political risk for business includes social activism risk. Companies with market-leading consumer brands would be foolish to ignore the management issues posed for their image, their practices and their business by political awareness campaigns.
Oliver O'Connor is editor of the monthly publication, Finance. E-mail: ooconnor@indigo.ie
