When planning communications on public policy in Europe, it is often easy to think of the EU as ‘one Europe’; to focus on Member States in terms of numbers of votes; to roll out a communications plan market by market which is conceived entirely at regional level. This is to forget Martin Luther.

We have reviewed the most effective communications work of the past few years, and we notice that communications in Europe works best when it remembers the Protestant reformation. Pharmaceuticals. Energy. Chemicals. Bioscience. All current policy debates are impacted.

This is not a religious point but a cultural one. Since the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, two parts of Europe have spent nearly 400 years living with Protestant culture or Catholic/Orthodox culture. This drives attitudes to many issues, and it is key for communications; yet so many campaigns we looked at seemed to make no allowance for it at all. Attitudes driven by culture impact almost all current policy debates in Europe.

So, it is well known that environmental concern is strongly linked to Lutheran culture, and that REACH and other EU environmental legislation was born when Sweden and Finland joined the EU and ‘tipped the balance’ in 1995. Now this relates to issues from shale gas to endocrine disruption.

It is also clear that there is a connection here to the current Eurozone crisis. But it is perhaps less well-known that the European Central Bank itself, usually focused on numbers rather than culture, has recently been studying the effects of Catholic / Protestant culture on the Eurozone (read the study here).

The cosmetics and fragrance industries know that the North views fragrance with worry as the direct descendant of ‘bells and smells’; whereas in Spain it is a sign of good parenting that your baby smells of fragrance.

The Protestant reformation created different patterns of industry in the North and South, so an SME focus means different things in different parts of Europe. Attitudes to labour markets and social protection are again drawn on Lutheran lines. For the financial services industry, the two attitudes to credit started diverging 400 years ago.

So too healthcare. As the industry plans to engage with the next round of policy-making, keeping people at home rather than in hospital will mean different things in North and South. A shift towards greater caring and treatment by family will be easier in the South, where recovery rates from heart attacks are already higher because of greater family presence. Anyone working on the Information to Patients debate will have seen support coming from those countries which translated the Bible into the vernacular, and vehement opposition where only the priest – and therefore the doctor – should be listened to. So to the future. ‘Self-care’ will resonate better in half of Europe, as will ‘personalised medicine’ and the trade-off between personal privacy and targeted therapies.

The list goes on. Shame culture in the South, guilt culture in the North, and why therefore binge drinking happens where it does; attitudes to personal privacy; ‘attachment to the land’ and attitudes to PPPs and biotech; responses to ‘innovation’. Few policy issues are unaffected by the syndrome of ‘two Europes’.

This is important for public affairs and communications, another example of where strategy makes all the difference. For intelligence and war gaming, once an issue breaks somewhere, you know where it will likely break next. For advocacy, you can work out where the base, the opposed and therefore the swing Member States will be. It helps determine whether to have one product formulation or two, and where to pilot. It allows you to create the communications which best influence attitudes in each part of Europe.

HLC has a process which tests which messages work where, and how to develop two messages from one. We’re happy to work through this with you in creating advocacy or communications. The effectiveness of lobbying and public opinion campaigns is to be measured, in part, by the extent to which the audience has been understood. The old 80/20 rule applies here – 80% understanding the audience, 20% refining the case: this is the percentage used by politicians for election campaigns. If corporate communicators or lobbyists spent even 20% of a budget understanding what will sway the audience, this would be more than is done now. Knowing how the electorate of a given politician interprets information will make all the difference in communicating with her/him.

To conclude. Europe may have integrated politically, but political decisions every month reflect this historic contrast of cultures. Next time you’re planning your lobbying or comms, remember Martin Luther.

Several years ago, we coined the phrase ‘retailer as gatekeeper’, to describe the growing trend for public policy issues to be impacted by the decisions of retailers and other brandholders, as opposed to regulators (to read more on the subject, click here). The trend continues, and will play a large role in many debates to come (e.g. endocrine disruptors).

A number of readers of this blog have asked us to share some of HLC’s issue cartoons. This is the first in a set we will be posting, as we also create a section for cartoons on the HLC website…enjoy!

There are two reasons for their success where they achieve it:

• The inability of corporate culture to accept that they are in a competitive communications marketplace. We have lost count of the number of meetings where the reaction to a NGO campaign is to question the legitimacy of the NGO itself. “They shouldn’t be allowed to get away with this; our scientists say we are right”. Some version of this phrase usually precedes the collapse of the corporate position in the face of public hostility.

• The increasing sophistication of the smartest of the pressure group campaigners. A competitive marketplace has developed for the hottest of campaign strategists and one of the most valuable properties is our friend Chris Rose.

Chris has just produced a new book, What Makes People Tick: The Three Hidden Worlds of Settlers, Prospectors and Pioneers, which we think is essential reading for corporate managers who want to understand why and how they are so frequently bested in the marketplace for public support. Taken in conjunction with what is in effect its companion volume, How to Win Campaigns: Communications for Change, they are a ‘how to’ guide for winning arguments in the public sphere.

Rooted in the psychological theories of Abraham Maslow, interpreted by the eccentric genius Pat Dade, and put into practice by the campaigner of thirty years’ experience Chris Rose, the book shows a model of public attitudes and motivations that is changing the way pressure groups think about their work.

We will not attempt to explain the book in this blog, you can easily find it here. However, there are three things to which we would draw your attention:

The book is based in data in a way in which most corporate thinking on public attitudes is not. Corporations spend large sums on understanding the public as consumers, but virtually nothing on understanding the public as agents in the ‘licence to operate’ area. These campaigners have conducted thousands upon thousands of interviews to shape their model of what drives individuals, their motivations, their emotional needs. Chris Rose is himself a scientist (botany and zoology, with a specialism in lichen) and his love of ‘data’ shines through every page. So one reason why the great campaigners are so effective, is that they take what moves the public as a subject worthy of intense research.

The model is about people, not ‘messaging’; the author repeatedly warns the reader against thinking about communications in terms of ‘our message’. The book illuminates why facts and data are only part of what moves humans, the crucial issue being the values drawn from their life experience. The general public are not a passive audience waiting to be ‘informed’. It is not the role of the public to ‘get with the programme’; it is the role of the communicator to understand the needs of the public.

A central message of the book is that it is motive that matters most, not reason. The focus is on culture, understanding it and how it changes, what people believe rather than how they might answer a one-dimensional opinion poll question. For many corporate managers this is dangerous stuff; it implies making judgements about cultural dynamics (also the name of Pat Dade’s company) rather than assuring the board that the science is right.

All in all the two books are a must read for anyone who wants to understand the nature of competitive communications. Of course, many corporations do not know that the market place exists and that explains why they are sometimes bewildered by the effectiveness of NGOs.

An important caveat: The perception of the power of many NGOs is often exaggerated. Just as NGOs often attribute failure to self-serving fantasies about the “power of multinationals”, so the corporate world often attributes losses on public issues to “emotional campaigning”.
Small, single issue pressure groups are rarely successful in campaigns against major corporations. It is the successful campaigns by structured organisations like Greenpeace that achieve their goals, capture the headlines and stick in the memory.

Therefore, it is Chris Rose’s former role as Campaign Director for Greenpeace and other organisations that makes these books such a valuable guide.

You can find more information about Chris Rose and his work here.

For information about Pat Dade and Cultural Dynamics click here.

The consequences for the energy sector may be very different in the short and in the long term. There seems little doubt that the economic travails of the Europe and the U.S. are creating further headwinds for those pursuing climate change action.
Conversely, therefore, for the oil and gas industry it seems less important to keep good relationships with the environmental groups, as their impact appears to be reduced; easy drilling seems back in the game. The industry appears to have entered bonanza time.

Rather like the banks up until the collapse of the credit bubble.
As the bubble grew the consensus was that a ‘new dawn’ was upon us. The ‘goldilocks economy’ meant that debt could get higher and higher, to question this was to be a ‘naysayer’. From Wall Street to Dublin regulation and prudence collapsed; to the wild applause of the politicians and the public rejoicing in the ‘end of boom and bust’ and access to apparently endless credit.
Then came the bust.

Now comes the blame. The public hostility to “the bankers” is fertile ground for politicians transferring blame and creating ‘haircuts’ to match the new mood. As the mood sours further, the recriminations may get personal.
Those oil and gas executives who are getting a warm glow from their popularity with politicians now should remember that what goes around comes around. The belief that the public will recognize that it is the politicians who are now calling for more fossil fuel extraction and that therefore that is where the blame will go if something goes wrong, will surely turn out to be mistaken.
If climate change brings nasty surprises sooner than the optimists hope, it will be open season on ‘big oil’ once again. Then the view that ‘no one cares what the environmental pressure groups think’ will seem as quaint as calling bankers ‘masters of the universe’.

One of the themes of this blog is the need to keep it simple in public affairs. A politician may understand your complex argument, but will also be listening for how it will play in public. Simple arguments travel further. Then, even politicians tweet them out…

There are few policy areas more complex than the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy. Hence, the public rarely pays attention. Here is our effort to make it simple – to make the message travel further. Enjoy the first episode of Fish TV…

(click here if you can’t see the video)

Click to see the the original article on Comment Visions

The question of what role oil/tar sands should play in the global energy mix will not be decided in Europe by a gentle discussion of the pros and cons but by a titanic struggle for public opinion that is likely to illuminate the contours of environment and energy politics for a generation. The issue of what one side calls oil sands, and the other calls tar sands, may well be the one that shows to a wider public audience how climate change is changing the politics of Europe.

For the environment movement globally, and in Europe particularly, this is the issue that cannot be lost. For the energy industry whose core products are derived from fossils, it is the issue that has to be won. The environment movement’s case can be simply put; if you accept the evidence that man-made climate change is happening, then proceeding to further fossil fuel exploitation in ever more remote areas, at ever higher costs in the emissions of climate change causing gases, demonstrates that you do not think that the issue can be meaningfully addressed in our generation. For the industry, the case is equally simple, Europe’s oil and gas companies have to be globally competitive in the hunt for the natural resource that is their core product. A decision by the European Union to handicap fuel from tar/oil sands would inevitably impact on the ability of those companies to operate in countries such as Canada and, sooner or later, others where equally controversial resources are to be found. For the Western world’s energy industry, if the political debate leads to them being unable to participate in the exploitation of these resources, they will be faced with a rapidly growing perception that they are “sunset industries”. The implications for both of these important components of Western society, the environment movement and the fossil fuel energy industry, are huge – and they both know it.

The issue has come to a head in the European Union’s Fuel Quality Directive. The politicians of most member states in Europe rarely miss an opportunity to emote in public about how concerned they are about climate change. It was always the case that sooner or later an issue would emerge where a practical decision would show if politicians are prepared to accept a political and economic cost in a commitment to action on climate change. What the issue would be, and when it would emerge, was always far less predictable. Neither side in this epic struggle were able to select the battlefield.

The battle will not be resolved by rational argument, the political decision will be the outcome of highly emotional public campaigns. Behind-the-scenes much “power play” in every sense of that phrase. Several of the largest environmental organisations globally, and their representatives here in Europe, are coming under increasing pressure from their supporters who are beginning to wonder what they are getting for their donations. Senior figures are to be found writing newspaper articles questioning whether the large organisations have become as bureaucratic and as “establishment” as the corporations they set out to hold to account. To lose on this issue, which is from an environmental activists perspective clear-cut, is likely to hugely exacerbate that debate and to encourage those who are pushing for a much more radical stance.

What is the politician to do? To alienate the environment movement and render themselves vulnerable to continuous charges of hypocrisy and worse, or to risk the wrath of an electorate all too ready to blame the politician for rapidly rising energy costs, whether petrol, electricity or gas. What we are now going to witness is a power struggle between the industry and the environment movement to demonstrate which is able to mount a more emotionally powerful campaign for public support. As an example of “competitive communications” it would be difficult to beat.

For those who wish a ringside seat for the first round, the place to be is the United Kingdom. Both BP and Shell are hugely influential corporations there; an influential Parliamentary committee has recently come out in favour of shale gas, a cousin of tar/oil sands and equally detested by the environment movement. The British government is under heavy pressure from Canada to do all it can to prevent the Fuel Quality Directive from discriminating against tar/oil sands. The Prime Minister, David Cameron, has declared his intention to make his government the greenest ever. A significant proportion of his Parliamentary party in both Westminster and the European Parliament, privately believe that this commitment is madness. Their public spokesman is Margaret Thatcher’s former Chancellor of the Exchequer (Finance Minister) Nigel Lawson.

Within the government, the energy and climate cabinet minister is caught between a rock and a hard place, constantly under pressure from environmentalists to rule out various forms of energy supply, most notably nuclear power, whilst passionately desiring not to be the man in charge “when the lights go out”. The cabinet minister responsible for industry and business, is the former chief economist of Shell. The transport minister, whose department is meant to be largely responsible for the British position on this directive, is Norman Baker with a long record of “green commitment”. All three are members of the junior partner coalition party, the Liberal Democrats, they are vulnerable to losing votes to the greens and their party conference knows it.

In recent comments on the issue, the President of the United States, Barack Obama, referred to “tar sands”. As ever with such exquisitely contentious political issues, it is by the words you choose to use that you send messages to your supporters.

This issue will not turn upon the technical arguments concerning the extraction of fossil fuels, it is already clear that it is to become the defining issue for where politicians stand on the much broader issue of climate change. Expect screams of anguish from those who suddenly discover they can no longer sit on the fence.

Several recent meetings have reminded us of the following story of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the civil rights movement.

During his time in office, FDR was visited at the White House by a group of leading civil rights activists.  At the meeting, the activists laid out their case and their policy asks. Walking them to the door, FDR summed up the need to convince politicians from without, not within: ‘I agree with you,’ he said. ‘Now go out there and make me do it…’

Sometimes public opinion is the driver because it is passionate and clear; see the German government reverse on nuclear power.

But other times, public opinion is a decisive factor because the public couldn’t care less. If politicians believe that a project is likely to be difficult, expensive and unlikely to bring benefits within the “electoral cycle” because no votes are going to be swung by it, then its fate is that of the Nabucco project. Whatever happened to that? Quite.

The national governments of the European Union have jealously guarded their “sovereignty” on energy policy. France is pro-nuclear, Germany is anti. Germany wants Russian gas piped in, Poland and the Balkans wanted it from anywhere but Russia (guess who won?). The UK looks to be pro-shale gas and oil, along with Poland. Most states of the European Union seem to be anti. And so it goes on, a bedlam of contradictory policies driven by national interest and popular opinion’s perception of that interest.

Public opinion on energy is becoming the great prize for an awful lot of powerful groups. Not just ‘big oil’ or the nuclear industry but a range of environmental pressure groups. The issue of climate change has become of primary importance for groups such as Greenpeace, Sierra club and WWF. Not to mention the foundations like Pew and Packard. Some of these groups are sophisticated operators, they know how to compete in the communications market.

Over the coming weeks we are going to look at how this battle of competitive communications is playing out in the various states of the European Union – and between the differing energy sources. As it unfolds it is not an edifying story in coherent policy making…

…it is the tale of Europe’s energy policy.

In order to ask whether the whole “Stewardship Council” concept has worked, we have to ask why they exist and what the initial objective was.

Both organizations were founded because of a systemic failure in the global political process. We, at HLC, would argue that the systemic failure has more recently become clear in a wide range of other environmental questions, not the least of which is climate change.

The central problem is that when a politician looks at conservation issues they generally appear to be a vote loser. Consequently, although the political class acknowledges a basic scientific consensus across a wide range of environmental conservation issues, that scientific consensus is not carried across into legislation and regulation because it would be highly unpopular.

There is nothing particularly surprising about this analysis, other than that it is clearly stated. It is generally considered impolite to refer to the fact that the electorate do not support specific environmental conservation measures, and that this is the primary impediment to addressing environmental questions.

In the case of both fish and forestry, the general public good of protecting these primary resources is outweighed by the acute interests of the producer industries and the general indifference of public opinion.

This is hardly a new phenomenon, probably the wisest political commentator in human history referred to it in quite clear terms:

“There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, nor perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than the introduction of a new order of things, because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new.” (Niccolo Machiavelli, 1532)

As the political process failed to address these questions of primary resource conservation, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) attempted to address the question by circumventing the political process. In establishing both the Forest Stewardship Council and the Marine Stewardship Council, WWF was quite consciously attempting a private sector initiative to address a public sector regulatory failure.

However, what is becoming clearer with each passing year is that this courageous initiative is foundering on the rocks of retailer hypocrisy as well as political cowardice.

For the Stewardship Council idea to work, retailer support was essential. It was reasonable for the environment movement to assume that such support would be forthcoming, since most major retailing chains in Europe give a high profile to their environmental commitment. However, in the case of both the forestry and the fishery stewardship councils, what has happened is that the retailers have used “inadequate supply” as a reason for not giving 100% support. It should be said, that the retailers are not one homogenous group on these issues by any means. Marks & Spencer’s, for instance, has given a very clear commitment to the Marine Stewardship Council. All the major retailers in Holland have agreed to supply only MSC fish as soon as possible.

Some however, are using very weaselly worded commitments which are gradually undermining the entire concept. Of course, it is the case that, if you decide to ensure that your timber or fish only come from sustainable sources, that you will reduce the overall number of resource sources, at least in the short to medium term. The whole point about distinguishing between sustainable and unsustainable fisheries and forests is that many of them currently being exploited are not sustainable. For the industry to maintain that adhering to the criteria devised by the sustainability councils would restrict supply is to demonstrate that they have not understood the objective. When the upstream industry then goes to the retailers and say that if they sign up to the Stewardship Councils they will not be able to get adequate supplies of resources, they are correct.

The obvious market answer to a shortage of supply is an increase in price. That is also the appropriate signpost to the consumer that the resulting resource is under pressure. If retailers are going to argue that they cannot support Stewardship Council efforts to conserve these resources because to do so would push up prices, they have fundamentally misunderstood the nature of the enterprise. To be fair to them, this is only the commercial version of the political belief that environmental conservation can be a no cost policy option that was, until recently, widely believed in the political community as well. But the fact that the political process cannot get to grips with reality is the starting point for these initiatives, not their refutation.

The attempts by some retailers to establish their own environmental sustainability criteria for these kind of primary resources is, and is known by them to be, destructive of the initiatives that most independent observers believe to be the last slim hope for the world’s fisheries and forests. If this is being done for commercial advantage, these companies should be called to account. Unfortunately, the politicians have fled the field. Either the environment movement launches a campaign to prevent this destructive retailer activity, or the Stewardship Councils will be just the latest demonstration that nothing will be done about climate change since the political process cannot even cope with much more manageable environmental challenges.

There is the possibility that the anger at the inability of the political process to make progress on climate change will find an outlet in the commercial world. Bellowing environmental commitment whilst undermining global initiatives may then seem a little less clever.

It is much better to think of decision-makers not as judges but as politicians, which many of them are. Their focus is not on which side is right. Their focus is on working out which side has the most politically attractive case if/when the issue goes public. Or put more simply, which side will win?

This way of thinking has some immediate practical implications for planning:

1. Prepare your messaging competitively. Assume that if you visit a regulator, MP or MEP in the morning, your opponent will visit in the afternoon.  What will their messages be? What frame are they using? Which worldview / macro-narrative are they attaching themselves to? Are they thinking about your messaging? How are they trying to defeat you?

2. Think in the mindset of the politician. Imagine you are the politician listening to both sides. What are you listening out for? Who is right? Are you sifting through the science? Or are you listening for something else…

How about thinking like this. If these two advocates appeared in a TV studio, who would win?  What will the tabloid headline be?

Who has given more thought to explaining their position to the public? If each side’s case had to be explained in one sentence, which proposition is more politically attractive? (Think twitter length, a useful exercise).

Useful questions, we hope. In future posts we will develop this further. If politicians care most about public opinion, what is the one thing you can do that shows them most clearly you are focused on this opinion? What is the relationship between a political majority, university education and the average position paper inside the beltway? How long does a politician have to explain his position in public and why should this matter to lobbyists? Why should you show early that you will win?

Asking yourself these questions starts to change your advocacy plan quite quickly.