A Transatlantic Divide

European companies use the web to help defend their reputations; Americans do not. This much I have learned from looking at Monsanto's UK and US sites, and from other companies on each side of the Atlantic.

Reputation management, a cousin of corporate social responsibility, is well suited to the web for the same reason CSR is. A website gives a company the space to explain complex issues clearly - it is useless for soundbites, but excellent for intelligent analysis. And that is what issues like genetic modification, labour practices and behaviour in the developing world need.

The first stage of reputation management is, of course, to be prepared to admit you have critics - and this is where the Europeans' edge starts. The main UK Monsanto site (www.monsanto.co.uk) is entirely about biotechnology and is designed to engage the enemy. The first item sets the tone - it is an article headed "Angry Argentinian farmers refute allegation over their GM soy and superweeds", and aims to counter "newspaper headlines in Britain" claiming that GM crops were a disaster in South America. The piece - from another paper - quotes a farmer “smiling with pride as he looked over thriving fields of genetically modified soya". Like it or loathe it, this is good fight-back stuff.

Reporting opposition is one thing. Allowing opponents into your camp is another, which is why Monsanto UK’s discussion area is so interesting. The company sets the agenda by allowing only one topic at a time, but it then lets opinion fly. The current discussion has the vocabulary-stretching headline "Pollen, contamination or minute adventitious presence?” - and it seems to be used by the sort of people who know what adventitious means. A majority of the postings (which are said to be "representative") take an anti-Monsanto view, but also have a sophistication that leaves me impressed and a little baffled.

Clicking on the Knowledge Centre link brought me to the Knowledge Center, a spelling change that told me I was now in America. This is a different field of corn. The Center says it is a collection of news items, technical reports and other documents representing "many points of view". But I could find only one - Monsanto’s. Biotech Basics include "Why biotechnology works" and "The benefits of biotechnology". It is detailed and interesting, but I don’t see those "many points of view" - a characteristic of the whole corporate, that is US, site (www.monsanto.com). It is a well-designed, serious effort but one that does not anywhere acknowledge the controversy raging around the company.

Even journalists are expected to be happy with a diet of blandness: there are no briefing papers at all in the news section. This is surely dangerous given the amount of anti-GM material around on the web. The top headline this week on the Greenpeace site (www.greenpeace.org) is "Victory: Monsanto drops GM wheat"; no shortage of background material here.

The transatlantic rift may have much to do with the greater acceptance of GM in the US - but not everything. Wal-Mart is under attack for many things, including its anti-union stance, and has been getting a good deal of negative publicity on and offline (look at www.walmartworkersmi.net for a taste). Yet its corporate site (www.walmartstores.com) is utterly bland. There is plenty about "Wal-Mart culture" and a chirpy aren’t-we-nice "good.works" section, but it makes no attempt to acknowledge or engage its critics. That’s not quite true - there is a three-line statement on unions saying that "we do not believe there is a need for third-party representation."

Crossing the Atlantic again, we find a contrast in Shell. It can hardly avoid acknowledging its troubles, but its site (www.shell.com) holds them up on a silver platter. A "proved reserves recategorisation" link on the home page leads to a page that pulls together announcements, interviews and webcasts into a convenient self-flagellatory package. But the openness to criticism goes deeper. The Shell Report’s "highlights and lowlights" section points out that the group received the (uncomplimentary) Greenwash award, while the long-established Tell Shell forum continues to publish attacks on the group.

Or Nestlé. A couple of clicks from the home page (www.nestle.com) takes you to its Baby Milk site (www.babymilk.nestle.com), which concentrates on criticisms of its policies in the developing world. It quotes its opponents - "A baby dies every 30 seconds from unsafe bottle feeding" - and robustly puts its counter-viewpoint.

Whatever your views on any of these issues, Monsanto UK, Shell, Nestlé are surely doing themselves a favour by acknowledging their critics, and bringing the fight onto their own ground. Why don’t the Americans do the same? Maybe they feel it opens them to legal attack; maybe it’s a cultural thing. I don’t know - but I can’t help feeling that a little more openness would make a great deal of sense.