Written Case Analysis

INTRODUCTION

Facebook is a USA based social networking site founded by Mark Zuckerburg. By 2009, Facebook was recognized not only as a household name but also as a valuable public relations tool by the media, the government and business. Datacenters form the backbone of Facebook’s operations and after a series of leases, Facebook decided to setup its own datacenter. After considering various factors including availability of renewable power resources Prineville, Oregon was selected for setting up the new data center. Though the data center was designed to be energy efficient, it obtained power from Pacificorp, a utility provider who sourced over 60 percent of its energy from burning coal, the largest contributor to global warming.

Greenpeace is a USA based NGO committed to preserve the environment and to create awareness of activitiesthat may harm the environment. By 2010, Greenpeace had become established as one of the largest and most recognizable global environmental organizations in the world, involved in a wide range of issues, including climate change, forests, oceans, agriculture, toxic pollution, and nuclear power. Considering that datacenters consume large amounts of power, Greenpeace protested Facebook’s decision of sourcing power from a coal based supplier. Called “Unfriend Coal”, Greenpeace used Facebook’s own social media to campaign against it, which was followed by over 500,000 users.

Greenpeace’s director KumiNaidoo sent a letter to Zuckerburg, which was posted in Facebook,urging him to address climate change and also inviting him to discuss and reach a common ground. Facebook’s director of Policy Communications, Barry Schnitt responded to this through a blog post citing that Facebook had no control over its source of electricity and that Greenpeace’s power provider itself sourced 46% of its power from coal.Following this, Greenpeace escalated the issue by a cynical video that taunted Zuckerburg and aired the onus his firm has in adopting cleaner sources of energy.

PROBLEM STATEMENT

Greenpeace is staunchly opposing the use of coal based electricity for Facebook’s new data center to be set at Prineville, Oregon. Greenpeace is trying to pressurize Facebook into using cleaner energy by using Facebook’s own social media and posting videos that vilify Facebook and its founder Mark Zuckerburg. How should Barry Schnitt, Facebook’s director of policy communications, respond to mounting pressure from Greenpeace and increasing negative publicity?

ASSUMPTIONS

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• Facebook stated publicly that it would be using energy efficient systems and assumes that this would be a tradeoff for use of coal based electricity.
• Facebook assumed that the campaign would die its natural death and so planned to double capacity at the Prineville data center.
• Schnitt assumes that use of cleaner energy is not feasiblefor a company as large as Facebook and supports this with the fact that Greenpeace itself uses coal-based electricity for its few data servers.
• Schnitt believed that blogging about Facebook’s position and Greenpeace not offering any solutions would silence the campaign. However, Greenpeace launches a much stronger campaign following this.

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