Can we believe brands who get political?
Beyond Today
BBC
4.6 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 12 November 2018
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Iceland wanted to use a Greenpeace film about palm oil for its Christmas adverts, but was prevented from running it on TV by rules banning political campaigning. Instead the advert has been shared widely online, a PR bonanza for the supermarket. In a world where consumers want brands to take a stance, but we’re also more aware of the ways we can be manipulated by big companies, who do we believe? Melanie Abbott from You and Yours, Dr Cathrine Jansson-Boyd and Katie Mackay-Sinclair help us figure it out.
Producers: Philly Beaumont, Jaja Muhammad.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts. |
| 0:04.6 | Hello, I'm Matthew Price and this is Beyond Today from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:17.0 | Each weekday we ask one big question about one big story in the news. |
| 0:25.0 | Today, can we believe brands who get political? There's a human in my forest and I don't know what to do. We destroyed all of our trees for your food and your shampoo. |
| 0:43.0 | There's a human in my forest and I don't know what to do. |
| 0:47.0 | So that's a video that I'm just watching on my phone at the moment. |
| 0:51.0 | And the reason we're asking this question about brands getting political |
| 0:55.7 | is because of this video it went viral over the weekend James Corden linked to it and |
| 1:02.3 | managed to drive more than 13 million views of it. |
| 1:06.0 | It's a cartoon with a girl and an orangutan and it tells us about how the palm oil that's used in an awful lot of products that we buy is |
| 1:14.7 | destroying the rainforests. Now there are two different versions you can watch |
| 1:18.5 | online and I've just watched them both. The first version is a Greenpeace film that's available on their website and it ends |
| 1:26.1 | with a link to a petition that Greenpeace are running. Then there's another version you can watch, |
| 1:32.4 | which is from the supermarket chain Iceland and the only difference about that is that at the end |
| 1:38.5 | There's a little on-screen ad for Iceland the. And that's why we're talking about it now, because |
| 1:46.0 | Iceland wanted it to be their Christmas TV campaign, but it's been banned from |
| 1:50.6 | TV for being too political. |
| 1:53.0 | I wanted to ask them if they knew, which they must have done that this advert would be banned. |
| 2:02.0 | This is Melanie Abbott. |
| 2:04.0 | She's a consumer journalist for the BBC. |
| 2:06.0 | So I emailed them that question and I got an email straight back really quickly |
| 2:10.0 | saying, would you like to interview our managing director Richard Walker on this |
... |
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