The communication of Greenpeace. Campaign strategies of non-profit organisations and their effectiveness regarding the public using the example of Greenpeace

Abstract

Campaigns and communication are all around us nowadays. The launch of a new product, the marketing for a new movie or the next election: Campaigns reach out to the public and try to bring the desired message across. This study, however, investigates the art of campaigning aside from politics and the economy, but instead focuses on non-profit organisations and their communication using Greenpeace as a representative example. The aim of this research is to provide an answer to the question, what campaigning strategy of a non-profit organisation is most effective in reaching the public. In order to do so, a both quantitative and qualitative methodological approach centring on a digital-based questionnaire was used to reach the sample group, thus using the quantitative advantages of a broad distribution and large sample group as well as the qualitative opportunity to investigate the attitudes and opinions of the participants through open questions. The conducted results and corresponding analysis have shown, that in the case of Greenpeace their actions are the most effective campaign strategy, since they are widely known and associated with the organisation. However, it was also shown, that firstly these actions neither convey the strategy behind the actions nor any valid content and secondly tend to polarize among the public.