Brand Terrorism - a Powerful Corporate Responsibility - Research Proposal Example

BRAND TERRORISM Table of contents Executive summary 3 Introduction 4 Analysis 5 How your company can fight “brand terrorism” 6 Ways that companies should follow to address the issue of brand terrorism 8 Recommendations 10 Conclusion 11 Bibliography 13 A Report on Brand Terrorism Executive summary Brand terrorism has been one of the most challenging business and marketing contemporary issues for the past few years. The past few decades have witnessed a challenge in corporate eco-promising, which is the practice of placing environmental claims on products. Eco-promising involves a wide range of activities such as pictures (un-spoilt wildlife or landscape), direct text claims (“this is a carbon neutral product”) or developed labels and symbols (Belz 2012, p. 54). Most companies are carrying out these eco-promising activities on websites, advertisements, and on the products themselves. These eco-promises can focus a particular issue such as organic or focus on the inputs’ characteristics such as chemical-free. The proliferation of both eco-labels and environmental claims cause confusion to many customers (Bowers 2005, p. 24). This confusion creates uncertainty to customers about the claims to trust and when deciding the best way of making environmentally friendly purchases (Blowfield and Murray 2011, p. 56). Currently, many companies, spotting this issue are working together with governmental and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to ensure that business organizations use convincingly and honest labeling, and eco-promising principles (Burke and Cooper 2001, p. 90). It is my hope that this report provides essential and useful basis that will help end this brand terrorism issue. The report also concludes with some recommendations that companies and consumers must follow and practices in order to get rid of this on-going collaboration and dialogue. Introduction The issue of brand terrorism/greenwashing has risen dramatically in the recent years. The accelerating number of bolds’ commitments in high-profile organizations evidences this (Trevino and Nelson 2010, p. 76). Greenwashing refers to the practices carried out by many companies to make misleading or unsubstantiated environmental claims to benefit their products, services, or technology. Greenwashing tends to make an organization a more environmentally friendly more than really it does (Gordon 2011, p. 54). Companies also use this practice to create a difference between its products and those of its competitors by promising that their products and services have a more efficient power use or are cost effective. Organization should values the significance of the brand. This has highly increased the need to communicate about the environmental attributes to customers concerning the products and services they purchase. This drive involves claims to improve environmental credentials. Many companies are currently trying to improve product sourcing in relation to fish and forest, and cleaner production processes as well as use of low harmful chemicals. In addition, most companies are taking steps to decrease the environmental footprint (Hawken 1993, p. 65). Technology advancement is currently enhancing the means that most companies use to share this environmental information. Most companies are now able to develop advanced tools to track their supply chains. Consumers are now making the use of online tools to access, purchase is information or request for detailed product’s information (Greer and Bruno 2008, p. 76). However, governmental, non-governmental, and advocacy groups are helping consumers to reveal between the accurate and false environmental claims. Therefore, what constitutes to brand terrorism and credible promise? Why is that claiming a product as organic is more persuasive than indicating that it is carbon neutral? What is the meaning of greenwashing, and environmentally friendly? This report purports to answer these questions by giving a clear analysis of the issue of eco-promising. Thereport concludes with recommendations to company stakeholders who are responsible for delivering and shaping eco-promises. Analysis of eco-promising This business report aims at helping business organizations’ managers to ensure that they communicate their products’ environmental credentials convincingly and honestly. The report examines the development of greenwashing. It examines why most companies are currently indicating environmental messaging on their product, the development of different messaging formats such as eco-labels, and the challenges and risks these environmental claims pose to consumers. This report uses the term eco- to address the issue of making environmental claims and communication for goods and services, as well as labeling (Arnold 2009, p. 14). Eco-promising was first started by the Blue Angel certification, which is a national eco-label created by German in the year 1977. Before this, the Coca-Cola Company had conducted a research to know whether its plastic and glass containers posed any harm to the environment (Mellahi, Morrell and Wood 2010, p. 54). Arguably, Coca-Cola efforts laid foundation for eco-label development in the 1970s, which later spread to many other countries such as Japan, France, and Nordic countries (Crane and Matten 2010, p. 76). There are so many varied corporate responses to these labels. For instance, Hewlett Packard uses multiple standards to drive its design and innovation, hence it markets its products and services following this basis (Beres and Beres 2010, p. 34). Blue Angel, Energy Star, TCO, Greenguard, among others, is the main certifiers of products and services. Other business organizations are using their own strategies from NGOs (Dauvergne and Lister 2013, p. 45). For example, McDonald’s in 1989 publicized the corporation’s recyclable plastic clamshells under the assistance of EDF (Environmental Defense Fund). Nowadays, most companies are using labels as a strategy for eco-promising with many of them developing approaches that are more sophisticated (Matthewson 2002, p. 43). For example, Wal-Mart has highly helped in making North America an MSC-certified. The company purchases large quantities of organic cotton than other entities around the globe (Elkington 2012, P. 13). The company’s encouragement of organic sourcing has highly helped in reducing the quantity of herbicides, pesticides, and synthetic fertilizers used in production of its clothing. Another example is PepsiCo, which launched a carbon label of the Walkers Crisps label in the UK in the year 2007 (Laszlo 2008, p. 90). Currently, so many would-be journalists are using Twitter and blogs to reveal the truth behind brand terrorism and be the next eco-ethical scandal authors. These are enough challenging and bad news for big companies and nowadays, mass media are fast picking up these stories in the social networks (Elkington 2012, P. 13). The issue about Starbucks was about its low-pressure water tap located behind the café’s counter used to clean spoons. The tap is always running, and according to the Sun, Starbucks wastes an estimation of 23.4 million liters of water on a daily basis. This water is enough to supply the extreme drought-driven countries such as Namibia, where there are many deserts. According to its 2003 census, the Namibia’s population is only 1,987,000 supporting the issue that Starbucks wastes millionlitres of water enough to sustain a country. However, being famous, Starbucks, just like McDonald’s receives unfair criticism, but these companies are clever when it comes to dealing with this criticism. Starbucks has one of the largest Facebook fan page, which has approximately 23 million “likes”. The company uses this fan page to inform its fans (referred to as ‘Brand Fans’) about this criticism and leaves them to the fans. You can challenge a certain brand, but you cannot assault fans. By contrast, when Pret, a UK sandwich shop gotattacked because of selling one of its shares of McDonald’s, the two organizations briefed their employees on how to handle the situation. However, the companies’ staffs were able give a face-to-face respond, a strategy that contributed to the winning of the propaganda (Kotler 2004, p. 35). Small groups can soon grow to massive groups and influential forcing big brands to listen to them. Simon Berry’s Cola Life started an idea placed on Facebook and spread. Berry has kept on getting Coke to make use of their huge distribution channel for the good of saving thousands of people. The idea here is that Coca-Cola could make use of its distribution channels to supply people with rehydration salts. However, this idea could give Coke a new meaning to its famous strap lines “Coke adds life” and “Life tastes good” (Houlne and Maxwell 2013, p. 76). Simon’s campaigns are now gaining a massive support using social network to spread his word and creating a digital group of activists whereby most of them have joined the Facebook group (Cohen-Rosenthal and Musnikow 2003, p. 56). Could social media networks serve as a tool to end brand terrorism since raising an idea on these sites, one stands a chance of getting more supporters to push the idea. There is only one rule that companies must acknowledge-the rule of being honest (Kramer 2012, p. 46). Those who have the responsibility of packaging and labeling in companies should understand that if they lie, this would catch them out. Companies should remember that becoming “economical with the truth” can only be success for a politician and that the public would purchase it (Houston 2005, p. 56). Customers have a greater power than you have because people believe people first. Additionally, with the current use of social network sites, they can bring a company down just as David did to Goliath (Ottman 2010, p. 72). Apart from greenwashing, there are other types of brandterrorim whereby companies make false advertisement claiming that they have a conducive workplace environment.Many companies also promise employees good pays and promotion, but all these getsinto vain. An excellent example for this type of brand terrorism is the McLibel Verdict, which took place in the year 1997(Vick & Campbell 2001, p. 204). Although the company (McDonald’s) claimed that it has a good working environments, the workers complained against unfair working practices and low payments in the company’s British operation. To begin with, McDonald’s offers poor employment practices to the workers, yet the company is among the biggest companies in British and claims to offer the best working environments and produce quality products. Many of the workers by the year 1997 complained of the poor employment practices and the headlines in the complainants’ leaflets started with the headline “what does it mean to be working with McDonald’s?” there is a serious predicament in the company. Although a bigger percentage of the employees work for part-time, the year staff turnover is less than 60%. Due to this type of brand terrorism, most of employees resign from duty after three to six weeks (p. 220). Most companies do not allow for unions. For instance, the McDonald’s catering employees do worse when it comes to salaries and working conditions. They work for long hours, even during night and during weekends. These employees do their duties in extremely hot, noisy, and smelly environments. They get low payments, and chances for them to receive a promotion are minimal (p. 225). Improving these terrorism issues through union negotiation is not easy since there is no specific trade union for such workers and the unions they join show less interest towards part-time employees’ problems. McDonald’s has a policy that prevents unionization by avoiding pro-union employees. Studies show that most companies’ success comesas a result of young people’s labors. For instance, in McDonald’s, the majority of the employees are under 21 years of age.The company does not employ skilled staff for its production line. Any worker can carry out any production practices such as grilling hamburgers. Cleaning the washrooms and smiling to customers requires no training (p. 234). The company employs no skilled staff, so long you are willing to work for long hours and low salaries, you are qualified to get a job at McDonald’s. Ways that companies should follow to address the issue of brand terrorism This part provides the employees within companies who are responsible for delivering and shaping eco-promises and the human resource managers since they are the ones responsible for workplace and salaries. Understand the impacts your products causes-those who play the role of delivering and shaping eco-promises in companies should understand the impacts related to their products’ manufacturing and consumption. This is the key to reduce impacts of environment and communicate credibly about environmental credentials. Without this information, the company would be wasting its precious management time trying to encourage consumers and suppliers about irrelevant issues such as manufacture, disposal, and use of a product. A good example of responsible companies is Unilever (Wells 2010, p. 87). It estimates that only 40% of emitted CO2 related to the company’s goods occur ‘upstream’ and about 20% come from the transportation means used by the company. Be transparent-Most companies’ stakeholders and customers are currently asserting that companies should be more transparent about the impacts their practices and products cause to the environment as well as to the society. There are very many significant benefits experienced due to disclosing this information. Disclosure of this information can create and improve the relationship between companies and pressure groups. In addition, this can also provide a competitive advantage to a company (Kotler 2004, p. 46). Lastly, being honest and open plays a valuable role in securing the products’ brand loyalty. Companies should bolster their claims with independent verifications-third-party verification of a company’s environmental credentials will always bring authenticity to its eco-promises. Most of successful labels are only those backed by issue-led associations, for instance the Rainforest Alliance for coffee and tea and Soil Association certification for organic products (Wells 2010, p. 87). Third-party verifications range from qualitative general claims’ assurance to detailed verifications of the stages involved in a product’s life cycle. It is recommendable that, when a company is deciding on the type of verification to use, it should make an evaluation of the type of the product, its market, and the level of the product’s integrity and trust already in the market (Stern and Under 2008, p. 92). Companies should avoid making claims “in a vacuum”-the key to successful eco-promises are to understand the life cycle of a product, be transparent about the product’s impacts, and throw in several third-party verifications. For any environmental claims to be rated credible, the company needs to develop it within a wider context of sustainable and environmental program (Ryan and Jones 2009, p. 62). Without this wider sustainability and environmental context, any eco-promise will seem rather hollow. Additionally, consumers still have a large interest on personal benefits. The most flourishing promotional campaigns for goods, which have less environmental impacts, emphasize the value of customers first (Vincent 2012, p. 78). A good example is Philips Marathon campaigns for light bulbs. Eco-promises would have more effect if associated with consumer benefits like freshness, health, lower operational costs, durability, and quality (Lincoln 2009, p. 81). Enable and encourage consumers to take action-recent data from researches conducted in many countries suggests that there is increased consumer care about the environmental impacts caused by products (Rogers 2012, p. 57). However, other researchers conclude that there is a major ‘value to action’ gap. This is because the concern of customers does not forever translate into changes of purchasing and other behaviors (Paetzold 2009, p. 81). Therefore, it is advantageous for companies to enable and encourage consumers to take action about the environmental impacts that some products cause. Recommendations Employees should play a vital role in shaping the rules and regulations that govern products’ labeling and improve communication of environmental performance in the industries they work. Ensure that workers work under conducive environments and receive reasonable payments as well working at average working hours. Companies should adopt a detailed approach of getting their messages across to all their customers. They should use a wide range of communication to cater for the needs of the eco-conscious to avoid overwhelming those who are less committed. Industries must develop a deep understanding of the life cycle of their products and where their products highly affect the environment in order to prioritize performance improvement in these areas. In order for companies to build trust, they should be transparent in how and what they communicate to their customers. Companies should seek third-party verifications in order to increase the confidence of consumers. Companies should develop a sustainable strategy that ensures that claims for a product are part of corporate approach that is credible. Conclusion Eco-promises are just like any other promises and manufactures should not enter them lightly. Those who play the role of delivering and shaping products’ labels in industries should understand that promises are built on trust and once this trust is broken it is difficult to restore (Molloy and Whittington 2005, p. 51). This report has outlined some ways in which companies should use to address the issue of brand terrorism and make eco-promising effective. Governments should pose some penalties for companies that are caught practicing greenwashing. I hope that the knowledge that this report shares will evidently assist in shaping eco-promising industries and improve the relationship between businesses and consumers. Bibliography Arnold, C 2009, Ethical marketing and the new consumer. Chichester, U.K: Wiley. Belz, FM 2012, Sustainability marketing: a global perspective. Chichester, Wiley. Beres, R., and Beres, L 2010, Just Green it!: Simple Swaps to Save Your Health and the Planet. New York: Perseus Books Group. Blowfield, M and Murray, A 2011, Corporate Responsibility. 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