Brandjack News

By Quentin Langley

The Economist carries a detailed article on Facebook’s Oregon data center which looks at the whole range of reasons for choosing the location. The main one is energy efficiency. The servers can be cooled by the desert air. The article also covers the fact that the electricity the center does need is mostly generated by coal. Some 63% of Oregon’s electricity comes from coal, against an American average of 45%.

The article seems to touch all the green bases. But there is one thing missing. Greenpeace launched a major campaign against Facebook, calling on it to ‘unfriend coal’. Like most Greenpeace campaigns it has been heavily based in social media including, of course, a Facebook page. Incidentally, this is an interesting departure that social media brings to campaigning. It is difficult to imagine a newspaper accepting advertisements which criticise the business policy.

That the Economist passed by the Greenpeace brandjack is remarkable, not because the Economist is demonstrating a rare journalistic lapse, but because Greenpeace has lodged a rare failure in its brandjacking campaigns. The Greenpeace #fail probably reflect the social media savvy of its target in this case, but also the fact that Facebook was willing and able to hit back. Greenpeace’s own US data center also uses coal.

You can find the full Babbage article in the Economist here.