ing asymmetrical methods to disseminate information. On the eve of the trial, McDonald's issued 300,000 leaflets that called the activists liars, as a way of discrediting them. This strategy backfired because the company did not conduct any background research on the activists, thus just deciding to utilize one-way communication to argue its side. Mcdonald’s had failed to do environmental scanning on Greenpeace itself. The company had no idea of the size of the activist groups, its power to influence publics locally, nationally, and internationally, the resources the group had available to defend its position, or the credibility of the organization. As McDonald's felt justified in the legal action it took against Morris and Steel. In the September 16, 1999 issue of Marketing, a weekly UK trade magazine, an article on the case exerts the fact that no matter what McDonald's does, it will "always be a bad guy in the eyes of pressure groups which don't like multinational capitalism, particularly when its well marketed.2. How could other corporations learn from the case? According to Murphy and Dee (1992), many public relations practitioners generally assume that the solution to dealing with activist publics lies in negotiation and compromise: The solution is a redefinition of the relative roles in a non-adversary climate, no matter what is takes. The rule makers are not evil, capricious, unthinking people, but more likely hardworking public servants. They can, with some sense of community, engage in a dialogue...(to) balance the conflicting needs of employment and the environment. (Schnancht, cited in J.E. Grunig & Hunt, 1984). Research has shown that business and industry are not always held in high esteem in the eyes of the public when words are put on someone else’s mouth. Oftentimes when an organization attempts to advocate a good image, it is not supported or accepted by the public because it knows who the organization is....
