Poor man’s activism or How Christer Gardell didn’t do it
Over the last 6 months or so Christer Gardell and his company Cevian has aggressively been investing in Volvo in order to get a chair on the board. The Swedish press has presented him as a money-devoted-tennis-playing-beast. He has continuously made bad communication choices and hasn’t been able to remotely change that image. So one small communication tip.
Eric Jackson, who successfully ran the campaign against Yahoo’s former CEO Terry Semel, is using all kinds of new media tools in order to communicate his arguments and thereby achieving much larger influence as a shareholder. He is now doing the same thing against Motorola and its board of directors, whit what he call Plan B. He launched a wiki with a five step program with his thoughts and also encouraging other shareholders to edit his suggestions with their input. He also has a video on YouTube with his statement, arguing quite well for his case.
How many shares he has in Motorola? 130. How many shares currently supporting his efforts? 436 943. And that’s 5 days into the campaign. Financial Times calls it Poor Man’s activism.
Two important notes. He’s controlling the communication platform he uses, which makes his arguments and solutions come through much clearer than in an intervew. He also leverages social media in a very targeted and efficient way, pressing the right buttons to get people involved and excited about the campaign.
[tags]Eric Jackson, Terry Semel, Yahoo, Motorola, shareholder[/tags]
Christer Gardell, Cevian, Börsbolag, kampanj, PR-kupp, Social media
Add New Comment
Thanks. Your comment is awaiting approval by a moderator.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.