For most consumers, seducing a company is probably not an effective strategy for getting what they want. There are better alternatives. Consider the American automobile industry’s response to consumer demand for smaller cars. After decades of buying gas-guzzling and highly seductive dream cars, American motorists turned away in droves from the offerings of Detroit in the 1970s to embrace more sensible Japanese models. This forced American auto manufacturers to retool factories to accommodate tastes that ran counter to what their ad agencies had been promoting. Consumers had been seduced into wanting high-powered automobiles in the 1950s and 1960s, but they were able to manipulate (through traditional market forces) the US automobile industry into giving them what they wanted a decade later.

The strategy of many anti-globalists has in fact been to undermine the capitalist economic model at a grass roots level by enlisting the support of consumers on issues that no one can find much fault with in an effort to cripple the operations of the multinationals that drive globalization. Clearly by diverting attention from what they do best — supplying goods and services that consumers will pay money for – multinationals have little choice but to become less efficient and less profitable.

Meanwhile the central agenda of the anti-globalists (overturning the capitalist economic model) never gets addressed, buried as it is beneath the debris of street demonstrations. How can there be any resolution of the deeper conflict between the activists and the multinationals as long as the multinationals allow themselves to be seduced into fighting street battles over non-central issues? Still another problem is that the demands of the activists frequently escalate as companies capitulate. As Baudrillard has noted, “The cycle of seduction cannot be stopped.”

Consider the apparent seduction of Shell Oil. After the company was accused of ecological and labor abuses in Nigeria, the company began reporting on its global social and environmental efforts. In 2003, a company spokesperson noted, “Each year, we spend an average of US$ 50 million [in Nigeria] on a range of community development initiatives — including the provision of clean drinking water, construction of health centers, hospitals and schools, as well as roads and electricity projects. In addition, we undertake such social programs as scholarship awards, youth training schemes, micro-credit, women’s development and agricultural support. An independent expert group reviews the resulting projects annually.”

There can be little argument that global labor and environmental conditions need to be improved, and that multinationals should — if only out of self-interest, run businesses that are socially responsible. But in this case Shell appears to have been seduced into addressing issues that would be better handled by a host country’s government. Ironically, there are anecdotal suggestions that Nigerians don't want Shell building their schools and hospitals. Corporate boardrooms have never been a good place to map out and implement social policies.

Next consider the brand Chiquita’s response to outside criticism about its banana plantations. The company agreed to obtain independent environmental certification for its 127 banana farms in Central and South America, and upgraded its operations to reduce the use of chemicals.

Of course it’s hard for many of us to object to pesticide-free farming. Many consumers in developed countries buy organic produce — not because they think it will make them live longer but because more care is usually taken to bring organic produce to market and it often tastes better. But you can't feed starving people in third-world countries with farm-inefficient techniques. Meanwhile the organic food market explodes in the US where almost everyone has enough to eat, but only because the majority of farmers have access to pesticides that allow them to produce bumper crops.

Is this really seduction? After considering the proposition, Professor John Deighton of Harvard Business School counters, “It's a matter of A trying to get B to comply, and B resisting so insistently that A ends up complying with B. The British spent 300 years trying to dominate India, and it ends up that the dominant cuisine in London is Indian. It's not what I call seduction, but I don't own the word. I see it as reciprocal persuasion.” Still Deighton concedes that, if one adopts Baudrillard’s framework, this could in fact be seen as a case of reverse seduction.

A few brands, as if anxious to consummate their seductions, have gone so far as to praise the anti-globalists for helping them run better businesses. For example, in 2002 Dennis Stefanacci, then Starbucks’ vice-president of corporate social responsibility, told the Financial Times, “Activists play a vital and vibrant role in our continued growth and evaluation of who we are as a company" (11 March 2002). Is there any question about who has been charmed in this case? But there is a high cost to succumbing to a reverse seduction. Robbed of their own seductiveness, the seduced are ultimately left vainly seeking their vanished lovers — and their equally vanished selves.    

[24-May-2004]