The Multinational's Secret Biofood PR Plan for Europe

EuropaBio, Europe's most powerful biotechnology association, has contracted the PR agency Burson Marsteller Government and Public Affairs to battle European resistance to genetic engineering. Burson Marsteller has earned a notorious reputation as a high-level, political cover-up specialist. It has worked alongside oppressive regimes in Argentina, Nigeria and South Korea and provided the PR strategy for coping with crises such as mad cow disease in the United Kingdom, the Exxon-Valdez oil spill in Alaska and the Union Carbide disaster at Bhopal.

EuropaBio is intent on smothering the issues at the heart of the genetic engineering debate - risks to the environment and human health, and corporate control over the world's genetic resources.

Burson Marsteller's January 1997 proposal (leaked to Greenpeace and abridged for the Journal) outlines a scheme aimed at weathering the storm of protest.

Communications Programs for EuropaBio Prepared by Burson Marsteller Government and Public Affairs

Introduction

The Burson Marsteller Government & Public Affairs [B-M] practice is a single worldwide team of public affairs specialists. In Europe, we cover the institutions of the European Union, all 15 member states of the European Union, Norway, Switzerland, a growing number of Central and Eastern European countries, and a growing number of CIS [formerly Soviet Union] countries. No other government and public affairs communications group is constituted as a single, borderless business entity across Europe, and none has B-M's reach and depth.

Common Principles

EuropaBio has firmly established [itself] as the primary representative of European bioindustrial interests within the political and regulatory structures of Europe. But it has become self-evident that this role is no longer sufficient to ensure the supportive environment Europe's bioindustries need to achieve global competitiveness. A sustained communications strategy and program able to generate favorable perceptions and opinions beyond the policy world is now essential.

[F]our basic [rules] must shape [the] initiative: Stay off the killing fields; create positive perceptions; fight fire with fire; create service-based media relations.

Stay off the killing field: Public issues of environmental and human health risk are communications killing fields for bioindustries in Europe. [P]erception of the profit motive fatally undermines industry's credibility on these questions.

Deep-seated perceptions of the risk will kill any product. But the industry must accept that it is for those charged with the public trust in this area - politicians and regulators - to assure the public that bio-industry products are safe.

Create positive perceptions: [U]ntil strong positive public perceptions of bio-products are created in Europe, there will be no effective counterweight to the negative perceptions generated by adversaries.

Fight fire with fire: [I]t is essential to shift from issues-based communications to stories-based communications. Good stories go around the world in minutes.

Stories must focus largely on the products of the new technologies, because they are the only way most people connect (directly or indirectly) to the benefits of the technology. [T]hese benefits must be personified.

Adversaries of biotechnology are highly skilled in the cultivation of symbols eliciting instant emotions of fear, rage and resentment. Bioindustries need to respond in similar terms - with symbols eliciting hope, satisfaction, caring and self-esteem.

Create service-based media relations: EuropaBio must turn itself into the journalist's best and most reliable continuing source of biotechnology/bioindustries inspiration and information - the first-stop help-desk where they get practical, editor-pleasing, deadline-beating connections to interesting stories and personalities.

Campaign for the Agri-Food Sector

[In 1997], entry into force of the EU Novel Foods Regulation will precipitate a new and potentially divisive political debate over safety and transparency. [O]ver the next 12 months the first genetically modified crop varieties destined for the food chain will become available for planting in Europe, offer[ing] new opportunities for adversaries to stage media events.

Our proposed agri-food campaign strategy is conceived around the vertical industrial and commercial chain. Starting at the "bottom:" technology innovators-proprietors, seed companies, farmers, commodity brokers, food companies, retail sectors.

Within the chain, consumer "trust" attaches to product brands and retail brands; therefore, the top two sectors of the chain are the two most effective direct channels of communications with the consumer.

In contrast, research reveals no public awareness or knowledge at all of the companies at the bottom of the chain (Monsanto, Ciba, Sandoz, PGS, etc.) - except what adversaries have been able to put into the public consciousness in recent months, all of which is intended to engender fear and distrust.

[T]here are very strong public perceptions of risk to human health attached to the idea of genetically modified food. [T]he current climate of public suspicion and resentment surrounding the arrival on the European market of genetically modified soya and maize is rooted in the perception that dangerous, unnatural ingredients are being forced into traditional European food by the American chemical industry for reasons of pure profit, against the will of European consumers and over the objections of at least part of the European retailing and food sectors.

Strategic Recommendations

Companies in the food sector must be perceived by the public to have their own independent view, voice and scope of action on the introduction of genetically modified ingredients or organisms into their product ranges. They must be seen to have a choice; they must be seen to control that choice; and they must be seen to have made a choice.

Food companies must also be seen to ensure that this power to choose is passed on to the consumer.

[B]ecause the greatest consumer credibility within the industrial chain is carried by the branded sectors at the top, endorsements of the regulator's integrity, competence and reliability should come only from them.

Regulatory endorsements from the bottom of the chain, on the other hand, are to be avoided because they contribute to the credibility-killing perception that those with the greatest self-interest control the regulators.

[T]here is a great and bitter irony in the current situation in Europe: The products now causing the greatest furor were born from efforts to relieve environmental pressures brought on the farming sector by the very same militant organizations who today condemn them.

That adversaries have had considerable success in this bizarre form of infanticide is largely a failure of public perceptions management in Europe at the bottom of the chain. [R]ecent research shows that Europeans are generally receptive when told that these new varieties can help reduce the use of agricultural chemicals.

[I]t is both absolutely vital and perfectly achievable to position [genetically engineered products] in European public perceptions as environmentally superior to standard crop varieties and therefore desirable.

[W]e can see absolutely no down-side risk in taking on the environmental lobby on this, its own turf.

[Perhaps] retailers and food companies should announce immediately that this basic environmental criterion will (or has) largely dictated their policy toward the use of ingredients from this class (once certified safe by the competent authorities), [as] an ethical response to a real environmental problem about which consumers genuinely care.

[S]trategic campaign focus by the [biofood multinationals will be] on carefully selected economic benefits stories specific to their sectors. [T]hey can be used to great effect to build pockets of strong support.

Implementation

[A]ctual media campaigns will need to be tailored and conducted in target countries. This "localisation" of stories is crucial not only to actually connect to consumers, but also to overcome the perception that US interests have co-opted an unwilling Europe.

The environmental and economic benefits need to be interpreted and portrayed through story-telling in the national and local context, taking into account the cultural, historical and economic characteristics which determine public perceptions on the agri-food issue at those levels.

(For example, in Spain, the issue of water pollution is one of very few environmental issues of concern to the majority of Spaniards. Media campaigning in Spain can be effectively positioned to exploit this perceived vulnerability.)

We see the following countries as first priority: France, Germany, Italy, Spain, UK, Belgium, The Netherlands, Ireland, Denmark. Second priority include: Austria, Finland, Sweden, Portugal, Greece, Norway, Switzerland.

[The] central coordinating budget is $400,000. Category A: $150,000 per country (UK, France, Germany, Italy). Category B: $80,000 per country (Spain, Ireland, Belgium, Netherlands, Portugal, Greece, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Austria).

A Long-Term EuropaBio Program

[S]uccess requires significant commitment. [T]he magnitude of the potential payoffs are a multiple of the investment. In one highly relevant case, the public and market perceptions of the environmental liabilities of a particular product [Monsanto's genetically engineered tomato - ed.] - fanned by concerted Greenpeace campaigning - had put it on a death-watch list in Europe. A three-year campaign funded by an alliance of competitors and upstream suppliers turned that perception around, to the point where today the product is widely seen as part of the environmental solution.

The primary value of B-M over the longer term will be [in this type of] perceptions management.

Reclaim the Streets, PO Box 9656, London, N4 4JY, UK, rts@gn.apc.org, http:///www.envirolink.org/orgs/shag/genetix.html.

A Communications Initiative for Amsterdam
[Prepared for the first European Bioindustry Conference held in June.]

EuropaBio must at all costs avoid creating a media-centered event which will draw protesting environmental groups to the Amsterdam venue. [C]onsiderable media coverage inevitably [would] focus on the conflict surrounding biotechnology (the killing field). EuropaBio will have set the table, and Greenpeace will have eaten the lunch.

* Media coverage should not be about the congress per se. Rather, preliminary work would focus on identifying bio-product and bio-industry stories of national and local interest for target member states.

* Agri-food stories would presumably already be up and running by June. Additional conference-specific, story-based communications efforts would then focus on the other EuropaBio sectors (health care, industrial processing, environmental remediation), and also on key horizontal issues (entrepreneurism, capital markets, global competition, job creation, job market, educational opportunities).

[A]ll stories will need to be thoroughly vetted for their accuracy and vulnerability to hostile reaction with arrangements being made for added commentary on them by appropriate spokespeople from the congress.

We believe the primary target media should be radio [because]:

* The environment movement deliberately does not target the radio because it is difficult to attract attention; i.e., demonstrations rarely get covered by the radio because they can't film them.

* Although we do not want to concentrate media interest on the congress itself, the congress creates an excellent news hook for the stories we really want running "back home." [S]chedule interviews with people attending the congress [so that] we control the choice of commentators discussing the local story and the relevance of the congress to it.

A similar approach can be taken for TV, relying on the daily feed to national networks of standard footage from the congress, shot by us. [T]his should generate considerable simultaneous coverage across Europe, but without the risks associated with the presence of live TV crews looking for conflict.

Finally, print media can be dealt with in a similar fashion.