The impact of Rang-Tan: How the banning of Iceland’s ‘controversial’ advert, was the best thing to happen to the #DirtyPalmOil campaign.
According to the recent UN report, published a month ago, ‘rapid and unprecedented action’ is required to stop global temperatures rising 1.5°C.
So why, a month on from this harrowing report, has an advert about the disastrous consequences of unsustainable palm oil been banned for being too political?
Originally a promotional video for Greenpeace’s campaign against the rapid clearing of rainforest areas for palm oil farming in Asia, ‘Rang-tan: The Story of Dirty Palm Oil’, was initially produced in an attempt to mount public pressure against major NGO’s, such as Nestle and Unilever, forcing them to consider sustainable palm oil production.
The film, narrated by Emma Thompson, who endorses the campaign argued that “for too long, big brands have been getting away with murder…by making a noise, demanding answers and forcing change, we can stop feeling sorry.” Thompson’s choice of words in ‘sorry’ is important, she elicits feelings of empathy and sorrow from activists, forcing shame on those who perpetrate these actions against Rang-tan. This shame as Thomas Keenan notes is ‘reserved for those without a conscience or a capacity for feeling guilty—and is required only where an external, enforceable law is absent’.[1] This technique entitled the ‘mobilisation of shame’ is, as Keenan discusses, ‘the predominant practice of human rights organizations’ and is ‘the watchword of the international human rights movement.’[2] The film instilled with ‘realistic pessimism’ enlightens its audience and mobilises them to shame the ‘unenlightened’ perpetrators, whilst avoiding what Susan Moeller calls ‘compassion fatigue’.[3]
Sadly, like many other NGO environmental campaigns, Rang-tan and his story faded into the background. That is until this month when Iceland announced its purchase of the short for its 2018 Christmas advert. Iceland’s director, Richard Walker, noted that it was the retailer’s “first chance to prove we can put commercial interests to the side in order to make the changes required to save our planet in the aftermath of the landmark UN report”.
Storm clouds on the horizon, Clearcast, the body responsible for vetting ads before they are broadcast to the public, said it was in breach of rules banning political advertising laid down by the 2003 Communications Act. Apparently Greenpeace’s, and now by association Iceland’s, campaign directly affronted the interests of the UK government. Despite Iceland’s £500,000 investment and Christmas advertisement being stripped by Clearcast, this ban was the best thing to happen to the entire Rang-tan campaign.
Iceland in one last attempt, uploaded the short to Twitter and YouTube, with the statement, “You won’t see our Christmas advert on TV this year, because it was banned. But we want to share Rang-tan’s story with you… Will you help us share the story?”. Walker stated, ‘we are hopeful that consumers will take to social media to view the film, which raises awareness of an important global issue’. For the first time, a well-known brand forced the environmental fight against dirty palm-oil into mainstream British domestic debate. This call for the mobilisation of action is exactly what William Schulz, president of Amnesty International, observed only comes from the power of ‘grass-roots people’ speaking out.[4]
Taking place on ‘informal, noninstitutionalized, non-hierarchical networks’ and interactive sites like Twitter and YouTube, the Internet as an unregulated body, allowed the campaign to catch like wildfire, propelled forward by ‘keyboard activists’. [5] Mellissa Brough notes especially, that ‘over the last several decades, younger generations in particular have become civically and politically engaged in new and different ways, related … more to personal interests, social networks, and cultural or commodity activism’.[6] Thus, when Iceland gave out the call, the troops rallied and the campaign against ‘dirty palm oil’ was transformed.
The interface of Twitter was integral to the mobilisation of online crowds. Hundreds of thousands of individuals coalesced together under the hashtags ‘#NoPalmOilChristmas’, the numerical value of hashtags giving a sense of the scale of the wider community engaged with the campaign. In this way, the nature of Twitter allows for unofficial, quantitative data in the numbers of likes, retweets, and comment a post has; which quite literally shows the numbers of people following the campaign. This enables, as Kate Nash notes, ‘people to understand themselves as part of a global political community’.[7] The internet’s unregulated, global reach, coupled with its ability to showcase its wide online community, allows for a mob-rule mentality. Citizens become activists online, and as part of the Twitter, community protests against NGOs, challenging them on their unsustainable practices. At this point in the Rang-Tan debate, as Nash would agree, British ‘national citizens came to understand themselves as global citizens’ they are ‘obliged to hold politicians to account for injustices systematically perpetrated on people in developing countries’.[8]
Newly empowered British consumers, impassioned by Iceland’s advert, took to Twitter impacting the campaign further by directly confronting other large Supermarkets on their unsustainable Palm oil practices. One tweet read, ‘@AldiUK @LidlUK @Tesco will you be responsible retailers and follow suit #BanPalmOil #Rangtan #PalmOil #askthepeople’. This prompted a reply from Lidl forcing them to address their own unsustainable practices. Without the social media impact in reaction to the banned advert, these brands would not have to answer for their unsustainable use of palm oil, nor would the campaign be reaching so many people. Arguably, the ‘Rang-tan: dirty palm oil’ campaign has achieved more than either Greenpeace or Iceland could have imagined. Within this short 1:31 video, two petitions have been spawned. One which will directly challenge organisations over their use of palm oil; the other challenging the ban of the advert from British TVs. The campaign’s impact even resonated into British schools, where one teacher tweeted ‘The advert inspired my pupils to write and published their own eBook for 50p with all proceeds going to help #Rangtan’. The tweet was further endorsed by celebrities such as James Corden, who quoted and retweeted the campaign to his 10.3 million follower base.
Importantly, aside from Greenpeace’s and Iceland’s individual motives, this campaign through the fact it was banned was propelled into mainstream discourse. Its trending hashtags on twitter created awareness, and arguably promoted informative articles such as Metros ‘A really, really simple beginners guide to breaking up with palm oil’. The empowered voice social media platforms have given to individual activists is immeasurable to the campaign’s impact. Its impact now means that politicians have ‘a mandate to so act or be likely to be bold enough to take the necessary measures – given their official positions as the elected representatives of the national citizenry’.[9] Now, we shall have to wait to see if firstly, the advert gets unbanned, or secondly, if palm oil practices become more sustainable.
Sign Greenpeace’s petition here, and Iceland’s unbanning here.
[1] Thomas Keenan, ‘Mobilizing Shame’, in The South Atlantic Quarterly, Volume 103, Number 2/3, Spring/Summer (2004), Accessed 12th November 2018, p. 436 https://muse.jhu.edu/article/169145/pdf
[2] Keenan, ‘Mobilizing Shame’, p. 437-8.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Melissa M. Brough and Sangita Shresthova, ‘Fandom meets activism: Rethinking civic and political participation”, in Transformative Works and Fan Activism, edited by Henry Jenkins and Sangita Shresthova, (University of Southern California, 2012). https://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/303
[6] Ibid.
[7] Kate Nash, ‘Fandom meets activism: Rethinking civic and political participation of Make Poverty History’, in Media, Culture & Society Volume 30, Issue 2, (2008), Accessed 12th November 2018, p. 172.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Keenan, Thomas. ‘Mobilizing Shame’. The South Atlantic Quarterly, Volume 103, Number 2/3, Spring/Summer (2004). Accessed 12th November, 2018. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/169145/pdf
Nash, Kate. ‘Fandom meets activism: Rethinking civic and political participation of Make Poverty History’. Media, Culture & Society Volume 30, Issue 2, (2008). Accessed 12th November, 2018. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0163443707086859
Brough, Melissa M. and Sangita Shresthova. ‘Fandom meets activism: Rethinking civic and political participation”. In Transformative Works and Fan Activism, edited by Henry Jenkins and Sangita Shresthova, University of Southern California, 2012. https://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/303