"I Thought Shell Was the Bad Guy": Narrative and Fictionality in Greenpeace's Campaign against the LEGO-Shell Partnership

In 2014, LEGO decided not to prolong its co-promotion with Shell due to an extensive global campaign initiated by Greenpeace. The campaign was a reaction to Shell's plans to drill in the Alaskan Arctic. Rather than initiating a factual campaign targeting Shell's activities in the Arctic, Greenpeace attacked LEGO on account of the policies of Shell by impugning LEGO's reputation as a socially and environmentally responsible enterprise. What is noteworthy in this case is that Greenpeace used narrative and fictionality as strategic communicative tools to achieve its goal.

Narrative and storytelling have received increasing attention in studies of organizational communication. In recent years, special interest has been shown toward organizational master narratives and counter-narratives. But hitherto only very little has been said on the role of fiction and fictionality as a rhetorical resource in the context of business and organizational communication. By means of a case study, this article examines how fictionality within a counter-narrative realm can merge the real and the fictive and thereby produce an effective campaign that highlights the possible and imagined rather than truth or untruth, avoiding discourses of proof or falsification.