French risk managers meet in Paris to discuss the threat of Web 2.0
StrategicRISK attended the annual conference of the French risk management association, CARM, which took place yesterday (17/06/11) in Paris. The theme of the conference was Web 2.0- Threats and Opportunities.
During the first seminar several of the participants touched on the threat of internet activism. If a group of activists disagree with the ethics of a business, the internet enables them to express this opinion in an effective way and share it with a huge number of people. A good example of this is the use of videos that go “viral” by spreading across various web 2.0 sites like Facebook and Youtube.
One of the speakers cited the Nestlé / Greenpeace case. In 2010 Greenpeace produced a video that questioned how Nestlé sourced its palm oil. The video, which can be viewed below, parodies the Kitkat brand in a provocative way.
Greenpeace was drawing attention to the effect of the deforestation on the habitat of orang-utans in Indonesia. One of Nestlé’s palm oil suppliers, Sinar Mas, was reportedly contributing to the deforestation.
Nestlé dealt with the viral video by citing copyright issues to get the video removed from Youtube.
The speakers at the seminar explained that in the context of Web 2.0 this only increased interest in the video, which was made available on other sites. Nestlé changed its palm oil supplier soon after, but the damage to its reputation had already been done.
This behaviour is known as brandjacking and can be a problem for large companies.
The participants at the CARM conference asserted that risk managers need to know how to deal with these issues in a way that does not antagonise the public.
This seminar was moderated by Olivier Caff of DEVOTEAM and the event was overseen by Michel Dennery.
Greenpeace
