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အတိုချုံးပြောရရင်
An imposter posing as a Dow Chemical spokesperson announced live on BBC World News that Dow would spend $12 billion to compensate the victims of the Bhopal disaster, creating an instructive PR disaster for Dow.
In 1984, an industrial gas leak in Bhopal, India killed thousands of people and injured hundreds of thousands. Neither of the companies responsible — Union Carbide and Dow Chemical — ever took responsibility for the accident or compensated the victims. However, on the twentieth anniversary of that disaster, Mr. Jude Finisterra, a “spokesperson” for Dow, appeared live on BBC World News, in front of a global audience of 300 million viewers, and announced the impossible: Dow accepted full responsibility for the Bhopal disaster, and, in fact, had just created a $12 billion dollar plan to compensate the victims and clean up the site! Dow’s stock immediately (but temporarily) lost billions of dollars.
When the broadcast ended, the BBC studio technician was beaming. “What a nice thing to announce,” she said. “Well, I wouldn’t work for Dow if I didn’t believe in it,” he replied. He wasn’t lying; then again, he didn’t actually work for Dow. He was a member of the Yes Men, a band of corporation-impersonating pranksters.
How had someone with no acting training (see: PRINCIPLE: Anyone can act) managed to impersonate one of the biggest companies in the world in front of one of the biggest media audiences in the world? Embarrassed to have let it happen, the BBC chalked it up to an “elaborate hoax.” But all it took was one research error.
When the broadcast ended, the BBC studio technician was beaming. “What a nice thing to announce,” she said.
In November 2004, an email from a BBC researcher came in to DowEthics.com. The BBC was looking for a Dow representative to discuss the company’s position on the 1984 Bhopal tragedy. However, DowEthics.com, which looked like an official Dow Chemical corporate social responsibility website, had actually been set up by the Yes Men years earlier for a different project. The BBC thought they were emailing with Dow, but they were really emailing with the Yes Men!
Wanting to seize this unexpected opportunity, but not being able to afford to go to London on their shoestring budget, the Yes Men asked to be booked into a studio in Paris, where one of them, Andy, was living. No problem, said the BBC. And that’s how Mr. Jude (patron saint of the impossible) Finisterra (earth’s end) became Dow’s official spokesperson.
And now came the big question: What to say? They settled on the impossible: Jude would announce a radical new direction for the company, one in which Dow would take full responsibility for the disaster. He would lay out a straightforward ethical path for Dow to follow to compensate the victims, clean up the plant site, and otherwise help make amends for one of the worst industrial disasters in history. Dow would either have to confirm the newly “announced” direction (um, actually, they would never do that), or deny it. Either way (see: PRINCIPLE: Put your target in a decision dilemma), they would embarrass and further incriminate themselves, which would generate tons of press and needed attention to the disaster (see: PRINCIPLE: The real action is your target's reaction).
After the announcement was made, the Yes Men helped Dow express itself more fully by mailing out a more formal retraction: “Dow’s sole and unique responsibility is to its shareholders, and Dow CANNOT do anything that goes against its bottom line unless forced to by law.” For a while, this statement was picked up by Men’s News Daily — a reactionary online publication that didn’t realize that this news release was also fake, and didn’t object to what it said (see: PRINCIPLE: Use others' prejudices against them) — and became the top story on Google News.
The action put Bhopal and Dow front and center in the US news on the twentieth anniversary of the disaster. And it forced Dow to show, by its curt refusal to do anything positive, exactly how irresponsible “corporate social responsibility” can be.
Originally published in Beautiful Trouble.
အဓိကနည်းဗျူဟာ
As fake Dow representative Jude Finisterra said in the interview, this was “the first time in history that a publicly owned company went against their bottom line simply because it was the right thing to do.” And it was, of course, too good to be true: Dow quickly made clear that it would not do the right thing . . . simply because it went against their bottom line.
အဓိကအခြေခံမူများ
By announcing on live television that Dow was going to clean up the mess in Bhopal, the action forced Dow to respond. Any move they could make would make them look bad and draw further attention to their inaction on the issue.
Figuring out what Dow should say on the twentieth anniversary of the Bhopal disaster proved to be easy: The work was already done by Bhopal activists in India, who had very specific, clearly articulated demands. It was a simple matter of putting those words in Dow’s mouth.
When Dow’s stock fell because the market thought the company did a good deed for the Bhopal victims, it revealed — in an almost clinical way — the callousness of the market.