Whybins becomes Greenpeace target after winning ANZ
Greenpeace activists outside Whybins
Greenpeace activists have today targeted Whybin\TBWA’s offices in Melbourne after the agency won the account of ANZ bank.
Greenpeace is campaigning against ANZ because of its support for the coal industry and what it claims are false green claims in its advertising.
Greenpeace campaigners arrived on bicycles at 288 Coventry Street this morning and distributed literature that criticises ANZ’s role in financing the coal industry. The NGO offered Whybins congratulations for winning the global ANZ account last month, and argued that the agency had the opportunity to affect how ANZ runs its business as well as its advertising.
“Our climate campaigner John Hepburn and a couple of the bike activists dropped by to offer their congratulations and a bit of encouragement to push ANZ in the right direction,” Greenpeace Australia/Pacific’s media and communications manager James Lorenz told Mumbrella. “Unfortunately Scott [Whybin] was out, but we left a nice parcel of materials and will try to drop in later.”
Whybins declined to comment on the incident.
This is first time that Greenpeace, or any other NGO, has targeted an agency as well as its client in Australia. The tactic has been used before in the UK, with three PR agencies on the receiving end of Greenpeace pressure in its efforts to persuade Unilever to stop using unsustainable palm oil in 2008.
These efforts come off as slightly parochial – pissing in a wind no-one cares about.
I used to like Greenpeace, possibly due to rose-tinted naivety and outrage at the Rainbow Warrior bombing. But that was a long time ago.
The ANZ corporate direction is set by the bank itself. The agency (merely) works to deliver that in an effective and engaging way. They may as well picket the ANZ rubbish collection firm.
Greenpeace are masters of the fallacial argument, with their age-old nuclear power hobby-horse still making infinitely more noise than sense.
Greenpeace should make more noise about Carbon Tax, Mining Tax, Solar Power subsidies, Public Transport and less sitting around on a fixie outside some hapless bank supplier.
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Where’s Bob Brown to add some real credibility to all this, or is he still telling Julia how “his” government should be running the country?
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Hey Adgrunt
Been to Tokyo lately? 😉
The agency chooses to do the work. This is just a ramification of that choice. I don’t like Greenpeace doing this either as they need to be fair and do it to all agencies that do work that pushes a bullshit line, but it isn’t like the agency is just a pawn.
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They (Greenpeace) were lucky Scott wasn’t in, they may have got more than they expected if he was in a bad mood, what a bunch of wankers, what’s next? bikes outside everyone’s home for using electricity? or are they just trying to be a bad copy of The Chasers War on everything? go pedal your wankery in Tasmania the home of Greenpeace wankery
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It’s this juvenile one-side-of-the-arguement-because-we-know-everything-and-are-so-pious-attitude that gives people the absolute ####s! It just drives reasonable people to say ‘F%&$ it!’ and vote for the Libs.
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Well, you say the agency “chooses” to do the work…
Not quite sure why any agency would tell a client to get stuffed on account of them doing their legal (banking) business with another legal (mining) business.
But then we get close to the moronic pokie / cigarette / booze agency witch-hunt that others are forming in other Mumbrella threads.
Play the ball, not the man. That goes for Greenpeace as well as the baying mob on the pokie advertising thread.
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I think you’re all missing the point. Businesses have often been the first to lead the way on creating change in society. Imagine if a corporation as massive as ANZ said it wouldn’t finance coal power. Doing this stunt today was not Greenpeace’s whole campaign – just another way to get their message across. I don’t see how criticising organisations that are trying to do positive things for society is good for anyone.
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Kerry. I infer you were involved in this. I’m pleased you have the warm glow of validated action.
But you have missed the points we raised above. What do you believe you were saying and to who? Change driven by business is rarely altruistic. I’d love some local examples as inspiration.
It seems strange to single out one agency, working for one bank, on one issue that only the population, via government, can alter. It actually distracts from the issue at hand, Sustainable Energy. Like nuclear for instance…
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There are so many things wrong with the ANZ campaign – maybe Greenpeace should stop chasing one of the only industries that’s keeping the country afloat and campaign against the real issue….bad TV commercials!!
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what’s with all this agency name and shame rubbish that seems to be the topic of the moment? is the idea that if you can’t get a result with the actual issue at hand you should harass a bunch of people going about their business, creating jobs and feeding families?
and how (i guess not surprisingly) lacking in commercial nous are these hippy losers? the agency has just been appointed to the business and greenpeace thinks they can convince the agency to start pushing ridiculous agendas in client meetings?!
agencies are easy targets, would have loved to see these idiots try to harass anz customers as they go about their banking and the reaction of security/police
@the accountant, you’re in the wrong place with those kinds of views champion
@adgrunt agree we need more playing of the ball, not the man
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Why don’t we get Tim Flannery, Earth Hour, The Greens and Greenpeace in the same room so they can bore themselves to death instead of us?
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Sitting here in the bush alongside farmers, greenies, lifestylers and general country-folk desperately scared stiff trying to fend off the coal and gas companies who are rampaging thru our gates, poisoning air and water supplies , breaking the property owners protections all over the place and dropping wells at an incredible rate – anything anyone does to try to bring more awareness to this issue is appreciated . Please look at LocktheGate.org.au – this is happening Australia wide – its a front line of personal protection out here with so little awareness unles its your own, or family’s community targeted.
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Maybe it’s not the best way to get the message out, but the first people to attack the work of Greenpeace (& organisations alike) will be the first ones who will be complaining when there is no clean air left to breath, no clean water to drink and no fertile land to sow. At least they are raising issues in the public domain so we can all discuss. Otherwise big companies can get away with murder as I’m sure alot of them still do. It seems everyone is more concerned with business and money as usual.
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Wow – judging by the comments on this article, it looks like Greenpeace has touched a nerve here. Want to keep the hippies off your comfy advertising turf, eh?
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@Ally the problem with you nutters is that your clumsy attempts to do this “important work” on behalf of the rest of us ends up actually inconveniencing/costing us (Israel boycott anyone?) so in turn any support from the community evaporates.
it’s not enough anymore to wrap yourself in a greenpeace logo and undertake random and indiscriminate attacks about all sorts of disparate issues on the rest of us going about our business.
these backlashes are becoming deservedly more visible from the normally silent majority who have no interest in this rubbish
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Ally. It’s precisely the (in)effectual nature of the Greenpeace communication effort that is being critiqued on a board that is, after all, about marketing.
Greenpeace must communicate their point compellingly, effectively and meaningfully. This effort fails on all three. The “better something than nothing” argument simply doesn’t wash – you’re justifying pointless noice.
As a red-hot tip, suggesting “the first people to attack the work of Greenpeace (& organisations alike) will be the first ones who will be complaining when there is no clean air left to breath, no clean water to drink and no fertile land to sow.” is exactly the fantasist, emotional bollocks that turns people off eco-crusading in their droves.
Make it real, make it relevant, make it achieveable.
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Greenpeace are targeting the ad company because it creates the greenwash that helps banks legitimise funding new coal, while their customers continue with the false belief that their money is paying for nice new schools and wind turbines.
When advertising peddles misinformation, someone has to say what our money is really paying for.
AdGrunt – maybe you’re right about the message, but if its effectiveness bothers you so much, why don’t you do some pro-bono work for Greenpeace and help them ‘Make it real, make it relevant, make it achievable’?
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The nutter fringe element, remember Flannery said Australia would “Never” have significant rain again, “Ever”, he is this groups demigod. If they got their facts straight and didn’t tamper with scientific findings to reach their point-of-view, maybe we would take them more seriously, when they carry on like year 12 students at an end of year rage, who can take them seriously?
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Jedstar, and all your Armchair Activists chums that are painfully obvious in this thread.
You don’t get the “play the ball, not the man” idea, do you.
There would be reduced incentive to use coal (or other polluting energy sources) if there was a carbon tax and trading scheme in place. So why not aim for and highlight that goal.
At the moment, you’re rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic.
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I recently – indirectly – brought the Greenpeace ANZ campaign to the attention of the Australian head of CSR for a major international bank. To say he was interested in it is an understatement.
Ineffectual? I think not.
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Wayne Wood is right.
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This visit was a really small part of a broad campaign to get anz to live up to their pr – and an even smaller part of the campaign on climate change. Just to be clear, we aren’t targeting the agency, rather talking to them about the campaign because we believe they can influence anz to some extent. Glad to hear peoples thoughts on that.
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having followed and commented on this thread i took the challenge and thought I’d have a look at the greenpeace website to better understand the environmental crime being perpetrated by ANZ. turns out they have provided funding to coal-fired power stations (along with all the other big 4 banks).
now i’m no expert on all this stuff but as I understand it this type of power is currently the cheapest and most efficient available if we all want to have lights, hot water and some of the other luxuries of modern society. I’m yet to hear that any other form of energy is able to meet our needs in total, so there will be some form of coal fired power for a long time to come, albeit with the (welcome) introduction of renewables such as solar, wind etc over time to take some of the load. how much of the load they’ll ever be able to handle is a stat i’m not across.
i imagine that some of these new coal-fired power stations are to replace inefficient and older ones earmarked for de-commissioning, so they probably have better, more efficient technology etc being newer.
if someone approves the construction/license/whatever for a coal-fired power station then obviously it’s a valid investment for a bank given the above, so if we follow the greenpeace logic and pressure/deny all potential sources of funds for new coal-fired power stations the most likely outcome is we’ll all be in the dark.
have I missed something or is this the position of the green movement – to remove access to coal-fired power of any kind right now? with no valid replacement source of power generation at hand?
i would suggest it’s the absolutes the extreme left seems to deal in that ultimately derails their support by more moderate and less self-righteous members of society
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James. It walks, talks and smells like a beat-up. Why else have the pull-up banners and fixie-riding hipsters and a photographer to capture the event? Don’t try and bullshit a professional bullshitter.
Which leads me to Jedstar. My good friend, you have quite a large volume of probono insight in this thread. Read it. Then read it again. Especially the bit about what you’re saying, who you’re saying it to and why they will rationally buy into what you’re saying. Here’s a clue – many of your policy tenets are fundamentally flawed. Address those and telling the story will get easier.
And lastly, sorry to pop your bubble but you’ve highlighted why nuclear is an extremely viable option for Australia.
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I just wanted to clarify a couple of things. Greenpeace isn’t ‘targetting’ Whybin. I dropped in for a chat while I was in Melbourne and thought I’d give them a sample of some of the campaign materials we’ve been distributing. We had some activists out on the streets that morning with the bicycle billboards and we’re never shy to take advantage of photo opportunities that can generate debate (as this has done).
The issue of coal financing has implications for the ANZ brand and it is therefore no doubt of interest to Whybin. Whybin will no doubt need to come to a conclusion about how damaging the issue is to the ANZ brand, and what (if anything) they might recommend to neutralise it.
We don’t have any naieve ideas about the influence that an ad agency has over a company the size of ANZ, but if it creates another conversation with senior decision makers in the bank, from a different angle, then it can only help build momentum for change. We’ve been talkiing to as many ANZ customers, shareholders and recipients of sponsorship as we can – to try to create as many conversations as possible. This is just one chat among many about the campaign.
To address a couple of the other points above…
Nuclear isn’t ‘an extremely viable option for Australia’. It isn’t financially viable, nor is it politically viable. Apart from the unsolved problem of storing nuclear waste, and their astronomical cost, they require vast quantities of water and therefore need to be built near the coast. Which community in Australia is going to want a nuclear reactor in their backyard? As a result of Fukushima, nuclear power is dead in Australia.
Renewable energy is capable of providing baseload power today. Sure it has a higher capital cost than fossil fuel power stations, but the costs are coming down rapidly, while the costs of fossil fuels continue to rise. There will be a point in the next few years (maybe 5, maybe 10) when renewable energy is cheaper than coal. After that point, there will no longer be a debate. Our challenge is to stop a new generation of coal power stations being built in the meantime. If they are built, it locks in another 30-40 years of greenhouse pollution that we simply cannot afford.
Search for “energy revolution” or “solar thermal” on the Greenpeace website and you’ll find some more detailed info about it if you are interested.
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So many post hoc arguments from, so little attention span from me.
Read your site and it is strong on un-supported sweeping assertions, but thin on actual economic or practical detail.
Fukushima:
A nuclear plant survives a 9.0 earthquake and tidal wave with no loss of life from radiation immediately, or expected, based on any known measure of risk.
That’s a lot more solid than any other power source I’m aware of. Hydro for instance.
Best not overlook that nuclear danger is the lowest of any power generation, including solar – see here – http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/.....r-for.html
Ouch! Is that why you aren’t behind the carbon tax? Because nuclear is carbon-free and the most efficient and safe option after coal and gas lose their price distortion?
Now solar.
It’s really nice, but it’s conversion efficiency and output profile is simply not viable for baseline power, as power continuity relies on, erm, the sun. This doesn’t scale well.
Same for wind. Nice to fill in gaps, but don’t rest your baseline on it.
Over to you, my friend.
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AdGrunt,
This is an advertising site rather that an energy website so I am happy to take this discussion elsewhere if you like.
You are wrong regarding both nuclear and solar, as well as baseload power.
Any idea of the cost of power from nuclear once you factor in all of the costs (including waste storage)? Any idea who is going to pay the full cost of the cleanup at Fukushima for the next 100 years? It sure as hell won’t be TEPCO.
Sure storage is an issue with intermittent power sources but it is not insurmountable. “Baseload power’ is actually construct that was developed to suit the output of coal power stations that operate 24/7. We can be a lot smarter about energy these days and match supply with demand much more directly. The technology of Solar thermal plants continue to generate power long after the sun goes down through advances in molten salt storage. Tidal and wave is 24/7 as is geothermal, albeit a bit further down the development pipeline.
You run into some difficulties getting above 50% from intermittent sources, but lets worry about that as we get close to it. We’re not even at 10% now. Our failure to embrace the new energy paradigm is almost getting embarrassing.
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John
BS
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I expected more from you Wayne
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While reading AdMap the other day there was a comment that the amount of solar radiation that falls on the Earth every 30 seconds was the same as the annual global power consumption.
I thought, that can’t be right, and it wasn’t. It’s a little over 4 hours (allowing for the azimuth). Now of course 70% of the earth is water and we can’t harness that energy, but regarding land mass we’re talking around 1 day on the land mass. If just 1% of the land mass could be used to harness this energy (think the roof of your house) then we DO have a viable source of virtually limitless energy. Also, look at the work being done locally by Paul Dastoor’s polymer solar roof paint to see that this is more than feasible.
Regarding nuclear, with a half-life of 700 million years for U-235, and a half-life of 24,200 years for P-239, ANYONE who declares them ‘safe energy’ is a total nong.
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John,
Do point me somewhere. I’d love to see your working on the 100 years claim, since it is utter, unmitigated tripe. Greenpeace have an illustrious track record of making claims that involve magnitudes of error. This seems destined to join them.
Informed commentator, talking about half-life is relevant here only in that most of the isotopes had completely decayed before passing over the plant fence, suggesting you have little grasp of the situation. Follow us to wherever John points us and learn.
For those who like pictures, this http://dashes.com/anil/2011/03.....facts.html may prove illuminating and put into context the barely relevant impact of Fukushima, in spite of the hubris from Greenpeace.
ps – John, do your homework on Thorium before this all kicks off again.
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“If Not For Me” is brave enough, show your real name, I expect more from you. The faceless (Nameless) BS artists commenting lack conviction. Greenpeace continue to ruin their credibility with stupid stunts and so do nameless people who support them.
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