If you’ve recently noticed some articles, posts and op/eds calling out Amazon for various sins, you may be surprised to learn some of these pieces may have been placed through the 18-month efforts of a non-profit financed by some of Amazon’s largest competitors. The Wall Street Journal broke the story last Friday in an excellent article by Pulitzer Prize winner James V. Grimaldi reporting that Walmart, Oracle and mall owner Simon Property Group have been among the secret funders behind a nonprofit called Fair and Free Markets Initiative (FFMI), which has billed itself as a “grass-roots” organization. If you don’t have access to the WSJ, you can find summaries here and here. The details are worth reading. According to the WSJ, the planted articles accused Amazon of “stifling competition and innovation, inhibiting consumer choice, gorging on government subsidies, endangering its warehouse workers and exposing consumer data to privacy breaches.” Sound familiar? Yes, I read those stories, too.
This wouldn’t be the first time that companies have tried to paint their competitors in a bad light. But the extent of FFMI’s sophisticated propaganda efforts and the misleading cover it used to hide its financial backers is troubling—especially in today’s world of fake news and social media manipulation. For purposes of this piece, I want to raise two questions:
First, if big corporate players like those behind this audacious ruse are willing to come together to mount a camouflaged attack on one of the largest and most successful companies in the world, what does this say about their willingness to go after a startup or a smaller competitor or a whistle blower that is threatening their competitive position? It’s a popular theme in the movies, both those labeled “based on (or inspired by) a true story” and those not—with pharma and chemical companies among the more established villains. Apparently tech companies will not be far behind. As in the movies, after the denials we’ll hopefully get to see who knew what about the FFMI game, what it says about the business ethics of the participating companies and their executives and whether the embarrassing exposure will have any effect of future conduct against large or small competitors. (Firing the corporate instigators and participants might be a good place to start.)
Second, if these big companies and their advisor successfully pulled off their charade for some 18 months without being outed, what does this tell us about the danger these efforts to manipulate public opinion at scale pose to our society and, indeed, to American democracy. According to the WSJ, “Free and Fair Markets is run by a strategic communications firm, Marathon Strategies, that works for large corporations, including Amazon rivals. Marathon founder Phil Singer is a veteran political operative who has worked as a top aide to prominent Democrats, including Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York and on Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign.” To use a highly technical term, “Yikes!”
Marathon’s website includes the following description: “Born from the trenches of some of the most high-profile political races over the last two decades, Marathon applies the strategic, fast-paced, results-driven execution of campaigns to the challenges of a wide range of brands, issues and candidates. We embed ourselves in our clients’ organizations (emphasis added) and we challenge the status quo, using our experience and intellect to shape opinions and deliver results. The Marathon team is as diverse as the services we offer. Our team members have prior experience as reporters, lawyers, economists, television producers, campaign operatives and crisis professionals.” The site includes a quote from Senator Schumer calling it “The best in the business.” One might ask “what business?”
I explored the impact of current efforts to manipulate social and political opinion in a new political cyber conspiracy novel about the 2020 election. Given my research for that book, I was distressed but not surprised to see a leading political advisory firm applying its talents to the business environment. As business is becoming more politicized, we can logically expect to see large businesses relying more on political strategy firms for advice, particularly in marketing. Unfortunately, we can also expect to see questionable political “ethics” and increasingly sophisticated and bitter political propaganda campaign tactics applied to influence public opinion about business in general, and specific businesses in particular. With the increasing conversations about capitalism and socialism, the efforts to reel in American tech companies and disguised efforts to manipulate social and political opinion, many businesses will find themselves on both sides of the barrage.
If you’re interested in how political operatives work in today’s bitterly partisan world, you might check out the advice and questionable actions of Bob Franks, a character in Intentional Consequences who made his reputation by applying multifaceted theater-level military tactics to political campaigns. In the book, Franks is the key operative for a wealthy activist investor and Democratic elite who is leading a geopolitical cyber conspiracy with Chinese associates and a leading social media company to dominate the 2020 presidential election and restructure American democracy. From the looks of the FFMI efforts to discredit Amazon, Franks may also have a future career in business.
Note: This post initially appeared as an article by the author on LinkedIn on September 23, 2019.
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