Monkey Business

I loved the Orangutan protest covered in today’s Daily Mail. Environmentalists dressed in Orangutan costumes and besieged the London headquarters of Unilever, the giant household products conglomerate.

At the same time, its offices in Rotterdam and Rome and a factory in Merseyside were targeted. According to a Greenpeace report, Burning Up Borneo is accusing Unilever of destroying the Indonesian rainforests, a natural habitat for Orangutans, to get palm oil which is used in soaps and lotions. Unilever admitted using palm oil but only in some of their products.

This simple publicity stunt involving humans dressing up in monkey costumes has certainly undone all the great publicity that Unilever generated for Dove. The “real women” campaign for Dove was an amazing idea to use real women rather than models to promote Dove products and one which created traction for the brand. But if you haven’t got a robust sustainability programme in place, the Greenpeace stunt has the ability to make your shares drop 3p.