Hypocrisy in supermarket Iceland’s ban on palm oil

Posted on by unspun

This is an opinion piece I wrote for The Palm Scribe:

Supermarket Iceland’s banning of palm oil in its own brands – laudable or misguided effort?

by | Apr 11, 2018 | Opinion, Videos | 0 comments

Iceland Managing Director Richard Walker’s announcement that the frozen food chain will be banning the use of palm oil in its own brand products by the end of this year would strike some as a laudable and heroic effort to get the industry to be sustainable.

This is especially so when we see the youthful Walker being filmed, in a video released by Iceland Foods, braving forests, swamps  and what appears to be palm oil caused wastelands in Indonesia to uncover the truth about palm oil.

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In the video Walker is big on the word prove.

His visit to Indonesia, he said, has convinced him that “currently no major supermarket or food manufacturer can fully prove that the palm oil they use is truly sustainable and the damaged being cause to the global environment as precious rainforest continues to be lost.

he goes on, saying that Iceland’s ban on palm oil in its own brand products is a way to “prove to the food industry that there is no need to participate in the destruction of the rainforest.”

As such “removing palm oil is the only way we can prove to our customers that our products are not a cause of environmental destruction.”

Walker is young and idealistic. The 37-year old geography graduate from Durham University has been in this job for three years. Before that he was the International Business Director of Iceland. He is also the son of the founder and CEO of Iceland, Sir Malcom Walker.

Richard’s idealism is laudable. But has he been misguided in announcing the ban?

Here are three reasons why his decision may have been misguided:

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Why doctors are pissing themselves silly over an illustration of the controversial Dr Terawan

Posted on by unspun

Been told by a doctor friend that the medical profession in Indonesia is pissing themselves silly over the infographic on the front page of Tempo above.

The source of this derision? Stroke specialist Dr Terawan has been in the news lately for his controversial “brain cleansing” procedure, resulting in him being kicked out of the profession

In illustrating the story surrounding Dr Terawan, Tempo’s artists have drawn him holding a catheter, supposedly for inserting into the blood vessels in the brain.

The only problem is that the catheter portrayed is the one used to insert into the penis for patients unable to pass water properly.

So it is rightful that the doctors are apparently taking the piss out of the paper in their WA groups.

Crisis Management Observers: Watch how Pertamina manages the Balikpapan oil spill

Posted on by unspun

So far so bad. The company for four days ruled out the possibility that it was responsible for the oil spill.

It only admitted late yesterday that a raptured undersea pipe belonging to the company caused the oil spill that caused the deaths of several fishermen when part of the spill caught fire.

To jump to conclusions without first finding the facts and verifying them before making an major announcement is an early sign that this company has not been trained properly in crisis management principles.

Let’s wait to see how it makes this crisis situation in the next coming days.

Why one should never repeat an emotionally-charged negativism, even in denial

Posted on by unspun

In media training we tell our clients that they should never repeat an emotionally-charged negativism, even when denying it.

This, appearing on the cover of the latest edition of Tempo, is a very obvious reason why.

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Former Armed Forces Chief General (Retired) Gatot Nurmayanto has been jockeying to get into big-time politics in the upcoming 2019 presidential elections. He’s been known to be courting lots of parties and factions to become the Vice president Candidate.

Here, he denies being a “Political Whore”.

What effect do you think that this denial will have on his image? When the front page quotes you as saying “I am not a political whore (literal translation of pelacur is prostitute) the only thing that such a denial does is to associate the idea you’ve just denied with you.

From now on, no one who’s seen the cover of the nation’s foremost  politics and public affairs magazine can look at Gatot and not think “political Whore.”

Normally public figures make a mistake like this when they are trapped by journalists trying to provoke them or out to snare a good headline. The journalist might ask, for instance, “Some people say that your courtship of various politicians including Jokowi and the religious right makes you a political whore. What do you say to that?”

if that happens then Gatot should ideally frame his answer that is the antithesis of that idea with an answer such as, “I stand on my principles and my desire to serve the people. I’ll work with anyone who’s embraces similar values.” It’s not the best answer but it would avoid the “I am not a political whore headline.”

Ironically, however, the journalist at Tempo wasn’t even trolling for a sensationalist quote when Gatot exposed his vile thought. In Page 41 of the 2-8 April edition of Tempo  the question put to him was: “Are you attracted to the idea of becoming President Jokowi’s  aide?”.

So go figure how someone like this could have become the Chief of the Armed Forces in the first place. What total hand, eye or mind could have selected him to possibly lead brave sons and daughters of the republic into battle?

But there you have it. Indonesian politics is replete with little Gatots running everywhere, especially during this election season.

People often ask why we avoid taking on politicians and political parties as clients. The answer is simple: We didn’t but even if we advised  and trained Gatot on what to say and how to say it would he have listened, or would the ego and bluster get in the way?

 

Trending Topics Exposed

Posted on by unspun

I remember a colleague coming up to me with pride in his voice, saying that we managed to get our event last night on the Trending Topic of Twitter.

I applauded his enthusiasm but then asked him what did it mean for our company and the event?

He couldn’t really explain, apart from saying that theoretically a lot of people would be aware of our event, and therefore our company, because the hashtag made it to the Trending Topic.

I then asked him how does one get on Trending Topic on Twitter. He wasn’t sure but mumbled something about x number of retweets, y of them by users with huge followings.

This incident underscores the difficulty a rational mind would have when it comes to the question of how to measure for success on social media.

I come from an old school tradition that says that whenever a client pays us to help them communicate, whether using media relations or through paid, earned, shared or owned media, the communications must yield a result: it should either increase awareness of a brand or corporation, shift people’s attitude toward it or change people’s behaviour. All else is meaningless.

But because social media is so relatively new, many people do not understand that it is a tool, a channel like any others. Taking advantage of this misunderstanding, charlatans posing as messiahs of a new age have introduced all sorts of fancy terms and measurements so that they can make marketeers feel comfortable in hiring them.

So now in social media we have success measured in terms of reach, impressions and engagement. How these metrics will help a company or brand remain mysterious. Output is mistaken for outtakes and outcomes.

So its refreshing to see articles like this below that strip the mystique of Trending Topics as a measure of success. What do you think?

Trending’ on Social Media Is Worthless

By Brian Feldman  @bafeldman

In the wake of last week’s Parkland high-school shooting, right-wing conspiracy theorists are pushing the ludicrous story that the teenage survivors speaking out against gun violence are “crisis actors” — dupes hired to pretend to be victims of tragedy.

Earlier this morning, the top trending video on YouTube was one implying that David Hogg, one of the students pushing for legislative action on gun control, is an actor. What does it mean, exactly, for something to be “trending”?

YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter all make frequent use of the term, but none of them have a public or transparent definition — let alone a common one. When we sort through our feeds, “latest” has an obvious chronological sorting mechanism; even “popular” has a fairly clear and agreed-upon definition.

“Trending,” however, does not. It’s similar, but not the same as “popular”; generally speaking, it means “popular, in some relative, technically defined way.” That is, the “trending” sections of major platforms are, as of now, algorithmically determined, their contents selected by formulas developed internally at those companies and kept private.

Automated software determines what is trending, and it does so by examining the content according to a set collection of factors. YouTube, for instance, identifies trending videos by examining aspects like the view count, the rate of audience growth, and the age of the content.

A five-hour-old video is more likely to be trending than a five-year-old video; a video that goes from 100 views to 1 million is more likely to trend (yeah, it’s a verb now) than a video that goes from 250 million views to 251 million. Other factors might be considered as well.

A YouTube star with millions of subscribers and hundreds of uploads might be judged on a different acceleration rate than breaking-news footage uploaded by a guy with 19 subscribers.

Read more

Warning to PR firms: Dubious client in search for someone to handle their business

Posted on by unspun

Think of what’s the worst a client can do to you (apart from not paying you for work done).

That client is now looking for a PR firm for Indonesia. Be careful if you are thinking of taking them on just because they are a big brand and in a popular industry.

Mystery behind crazies attacking the santri and kyais in Java

Posted on by unspun

Fascinating story in this week’s Tempo of the mystery behind a strange series of attacks on the santri and kyais throughout Java since the beginning of this year.

There is also a gem of a line in the story on how Encep Muhaimin, the head of a pesantren in Pandeglang determined that the would-be assailant was of sound mind. His teeth were white and his underwear was clean, therefore he was 0 percent normal and 10 percent insane.  Go figure.

Teror Orang Gila

SEBERMULA para santri di Pondok Pesantren Minhajunnidzom Dluo-el-Gonna tak menaruh curiga kepada seorang lelaki yang melintas di depan pondok, di Jalan Lintas Timur AMD, Desa Sukaratu, Pandeglang, Banten. Mereka mulai curiga ketika laki-laki 28 tahun itu mondar-mandir setiap malam, bahkan selama tiga malam pada Kamis-Sabtu dua pekan lalu.

Karena khawatir lelaki asing itu bikin onar, ditambah berseliweran kabar di WhatsApp yang menyebutkan banyak serangan terhadap kiai di sejumlah tempat, santri…

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