Current events

Yesterday I attended a Tom’s of Maine press briefing on the company’s new Rivers Awareness Partnership, in which it will donate $1 million over five years to two nonprofits focusing on riparian issues.

It was a small, feel-good affair that gave American Rivers and the River Network a chance to talk about their laudable work, and it let Tom Chappell, a friendly fellow who resembles a more approachable John Kerry, describe how the grant is the outgrowth of his company’s long-held commitment to social and environmental responsibility: “Better values build better value,” etc.

One reason I went to the event is that the company’s acquisition by Colgate-Palmolive in 2006 was one of the things that led me to start this blog. I’d already become interested in corporate parentage and buyouts, but when that purchase happened, it put a real bee in my bonnet—perhaps because Tom’s was the first green brand I ever encountered, thanks to a college roommate who used the toothpaste.

Why shouldn’t the label on my Cinnamint tube be required to say, “A Colgate-Palmolive brand”? It’s a disservice to consumers, who are understandably skeptical of multinational corporations, that companies are not (and are not coerced to be) completely open about such information.

This opacity is particularly irksome when it’s companies or brands that base their appeal on progressive values that fail to volunteer this information freely. Consider Odwalla, now owned by Coca-Cola: unlike Tom’s, its website contains no disclosure or acknowledgment of its acquisition—even in the homespun “Who We Are” and “History” sections.

I felt Chappell out—not about the labeling question specifically, since that was off-topic, but about the ownership issue. I asked him whether the ability to give the rivers grant came in part from being owned by Colgate-Palmolive, and what the negatives and positives of the arrangement had been so far in the context of the company’s mission.

“They respect our values,” he replied. “They’re our biggest supporters.” And no, the grant had nothing to do with the Colgate partnership, as Chappell put it—Tom’s level of charitable giving hasn’t changed. He characterized Colgate-Palmolive as having principles similar to those of his company, and added that “if we don’t bring our values to scale, we won’t succeed.”

I hadn’t done my homework on Colgate-Palmolive before the briefing, alas, but I can tell you now that the company has been criticized for its environmental reporting, its use of animal testing, and its role years ago in polluting the Chemsol Superfund site. It gets a middle-of-the-road rating of 40 from Climate Counts, which describes it as being “at an early stage of addressing climate change,” a “poor” score of 5 from Ethiscore, and a neutral-to-negative rating from Knowmore.org.

To be fair, that’s Colgate’s record, not Tom’s. The latter company has pretty unimpeachable green credentials; indeed, it has been a leader in the sustainable-business world, and it seems—so far, at least—to be operating autonomously from its corporate parent. I still use Tom’s toothpaste. But guilt by association is all it takes for some people to stop buying your product.

As my parents always told me, be careful of the company you keep.

Comments

[Darren]

Interesting point -- though this really goes to the basic activist question of whether it is more useful to agitate from within or stand outside and point. Tom's (great toothpaste, by the way) is in a position to slowly, and incrementally, alter perceptions within a much larger company that may have never addressed corporate responsibility issues in quite the same way. If he had not been acquired (and his prior customers did not continue to support him) that macro-change could never have occurred (and perhaps this environmental contribution never takes place). Purity is an impossible goal in responsible consumer choice -- instead, we should do those things which encourage large actors to do the right thing -- and that may in some cases involve purchasing goods from a good part of a significantly less perfect whole.

[Bronwyn Ximm]

Well said!

Your comment makes me realize that I neglected to mention that Tom Chappell told me the company's level of giving has not changed since entering into the partnership (as he put it) with Colgate-Palmolive. (Hmm, I should probably go back into the post and add that.) Still, I imagine there are many examples of businesses that can only afford to get more charitable after they are acquired by a larger company.

[Aaron]

Well said or not, Darren, I agree with the original thrust of the post; your question of whether to work from within or not really has nothing to do with the essentially black and white issue of whether brands and companies which have built customer trust should [be required to] disclose the fact that they have been subsumed by larger entities which have not themselves built similar trust.

There should not be an "offset" style market for goodwill.

[Darren]

Aaron -- good to hear from you! (if only electronically!) Every time I read Douglas Hofstadter I think about you...

I agree that there should not be an "offset" system for goodwill -- that is exactly the type of approach likely to be abused by consumer product companies. Instead, I would suggest that good behavior is rewarded, and poor behavior is not. For example, when a large company buys a smaller company that has been long-known as a conscientious member of the community, activists should not immeditely drop those products like a hot potato. Instead, we need to recognize that the only way to accomplish massive change is to get larger actors like these to behave, and the best way to do that is to make it in their self-interest to do so. So my suggestion would be to continue patronizing these brands -- and even encouraging other people to patronize these brands -- so that those brands (and their ethos) become forces within the larger company. Of course, if that brand loses its way due to its new ownership, all bets are off and they should be whacked upside the head.

As for the question of disclosure, that's a complicated one. I agree with both of you that it is a good idea in the abstract. I think a good place to start would be a rule that when a company that sells consumer products changes control -- whether through purchase, merger, asset sale, etc.) that it must disclose that change of control on its website for a period of one year. Your point about being subsumed by larger entities is, however, likely to be impossible to implement. Colgate, in that case, merely creates a special purpose entity which is registered in the Bahamas, is smaller than Tom's, and thus requires no notice. Notice of change of control will at least notify people to look, and won't incentivize companies to try to hide the ball.

[Aaron]

Hey Darren,

That's funny, I didn't know it was THAT Darren! Wassup!

I agree that acquisition is not a grounds for dropping a product, itself...

...but I am much more unforgiving than you when it comes to disclosure and transparency.

To parrot with devilish relish an argument I've been on the receiving side with ever more frequency lately -- if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to hide, right?

Regardless of any product's intrinsic merits, it's actionably unethical to capitalize on its progressive image even as you willfully betray its [implied] progressive values. Look at the saccharine hagiography on Odwalla's and Naked's websites... that's more than spin. It's intentional deception.

I am certain that it *is* possible to put in place mechanisms that disclose ownership in a "user-friendly" way. Though it invites comparison, we're not talking campaign finance reform here. Plain-English product labeling standards have worked well in other areas.

There are surely headaches. But foreclosing on loopholes and dodges is, in the words of so many of our friends here in the Bay, merely an engineering problem.

With that in mind...

...got many pro bono hours still in ya? :)