Corporate Campaigns- determining the scale of the ask (Animal Ask)

Within animal advocacy, corporate campaigns have become an important and widely used tactic as evidence of their efficacy has accrued (Šimčikas 2019; Philanthropy 2016; Sarek 2019a, [b] 2019). These campaigns allow the movement to leverage a relatively small amount of funding to disrupt and apply large amounts of pressure onto corporations with the intention to achieve policy change. The asks for these anti-corporate campaigns can come in several forms; from more simplistic singular asks such as the cage-free campaigns, to more complicated composite asks which include several elements such as the Better Chicken Commitment (“The Better Chicken Commitment Policy” n.d.). From our previous research into the asks used in such corporate campaigns, we identified a foundational uncertainty in their construction. Namely, how much should we ask for? The more additional elements incorporated into the ask, the greater the potential benefits to the animal we are trying to provide improved protections. However, as more elements are added, the greater the investment required by the companies targeted, and the more difficult it becomes to communicate the ask to the public and the companies’ decision makers.

In this report, we examine the fundamental theories behind how these campaigns work and the factors determining their success. Ultimately we view corporate campaigns as a form of extortion, where interest groups threaten companies with either supply chain disruption, or more commonly, reputational damage if they do not comply with their demands. We find that if companies experience anti-corporate campaigns or suffer from other similar revelations of unethical business practices, this information can have significant lasting damage to their market capitalisation and financial performance. Thus, companies should be willing to invest significant resources to mitigate this risk. It is possible to model this decision from a rational economic point of view where corporations should be willing to pay up to the potential damage to avoid a campaign. However any attempts to do so should be understood within the specific context of that corporation's decision-making and in light of the large amount of uncertainty involved. As corporate campaigns are ultimately a social phenomena, precise quantitative estimates are not reliable, but various research methods can be used to make more informed decisions on the magnitude of the ask that can be made. To better inform future decision makers in ask formation, we should combine this sort of analysis with scoping the specific context of the campaign including the supply chain, key stakeholders and their motivations.