Any big company, and most smaller companies, develop enemies one way or another-dissatisfied customers, disgruntled pressure groups, unpaid creditors, revenge-seeking ex-employees, and honest people who've an honest grievance.
In some cases, one or several of these individuals will set up a website devoted to vilifying the company. Such websites are known as McNitemares after the McDonald's shadow website, and even though they operate on a relatively low level they can still be very damaging to companies.
Royal Dutch Shell is an Anglo-Dutch oil company-in reality it's one of the Large 7 companies in the oil business. As such, it has major involvement in the exploitation of North Sea oil and has many offshore facilities in the North Sea for this purpose.
One such was the Brent Spar storage facility. In 1991, Brent Spar had reached the finish of its useful life, and was in reality slightly damaged (during installation), so it was doubtful regardless of whether it could realistically be salvaged. Shell conducted a scientific study that showed that the least risky way of disposing of Brent Spar, both from an environmental viewpoint and for the safety of workers, was to tow it to deep water in the Atlantic and sink it, using explosives.
Greenpeace disagreed. They occupied the rig for several weeks, and when they had been evacuated they held a press conference in Aberdeen: as is frequently the case, the protest groups have slicker PR than do the companies they protest against. Over the ensuing weeks, Shell petrol stations and offices had been boycotted or even attacked, and Shell staff had been sometimes abused.
Shell ultimately backed down and had the rig dismantled. Their PR individuals then looked for ways to prevent any such action taking place in future-and the result was the TellShell website. TellShell is a site that offers an open forum for discussion of anything associated to Shell, its activities, its employees, and so forth.
The site is moderated by Shell to remove anything libellous or simply malicious, but the intention is to promote genuine debate. The running costs are relatively low, and the impact is powerful in terms of flagging up issues before they get out of hand. It also offers Shell having a source of totally free advice for avoiding additional PR disasters.
People frequently really feel that they are bombarded with messages from businesses. This isn't strictly accurate, of course-bombardment is rather a powerful term for what really happens, and needless to say we are surrounded by messages from family, buddies, the boss, and Uncle Tom Cobley and all-we merely ignore most of them.
Amongst the hardest audiences to reach are young individuals. Frequently they're suspicious of the older generation, who following all represent the authority that the young people are finally finding themselves out from beneath. Even in the 1960s we had the slogan "Don't trust anyone more than 35," and most of us did not trust anyone over 25!
During the 1997 general election, Labour realized that one of the main planks in their campaign could be getting younger voters out. Young individuals tend to vote for left-wing parties, when they vote at all-many don't bother to vote, and care small about politicians and their policies.
Labour's PR individuals decided to take the fight to the pubs and clubs exactly where young people congregate. They put signs up in the toilets of pubs and clubs with the slogan "Now Wash Your Hands of the Tories." This humorous and unexpected approach resonated with young people in an environment where they might be expected to speak to other young individuals concerning the message-and, needless to say, Labour won the election.
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