Could Monsanto’s pursuit of Syngenta improve troubled image?

CREVE COEUR, Mo. — Monsanto’s unsolicited courtship of Swiss rival Syngenta AG has the potential to do many things for the St. Louis-area agriculture giant.

For starters, it could propel the company back to a business model more heavily based on chemicals, rather than seeds and biotechnology. It could make Monsanto an even bigger player in the world of agribusiness by strengthening its portfolio of herbicides and other crop protection chemicals. It also could offer an avenue to move the company’s headquarters overseas in a bid for lower taxes.

But could a massive merger — the price could run as high as $50 billion — do anything for the image of a company that’s become a punching bag for environmentalists, foodies and other activists?

Clearly, there’s no easy public relations fix for a corporation that’s blamed for a range of ills, including the rise of superweeds, the decimation of the monarch butterfly, legal assaults on farmers and the unwanted (in the eyes of critics) genetic manipulation of our food supply.

Still, a major move like this brings with it the potential for change, marketing experts say.

“Any time you change an organization, you have the opportunity to rethink things. It’s a great catalyst for change,” said Kelly O’Keefe, a professor and managing director of the Brandcenter at Virginia Commonwealth University.

That doesn’t, however, mean we would see an instant evolution of the company’s public persona. You can’t, after all, simply buy a new reputation. Hot-button issues would remain, said Haim Mano, an associate professor of marketing at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

But, he notes, Syngenta does have a better public image, giving Monsanto something to work with down the road.

“Maybe the goal is to become, in the eyes of the public, more Syngenta and less Monsanto,” Mano said.

COUNT THE REASONS

There is a message that comes out of Monsanto these days when executives explain why the company has become so despised in some circles.

They didn’t do enough, they say, in the early days of its genetic research to educate and explain things to the average consumer. They focused, instead, on the farmers who would buy the revolutionary seeds and herbicide combinations produced by that genetic tinkering.

“We never thought about our place in the food chain,” said Monsanto Chairman Hugh Grant during an interview this year with the Independent, a London-based newspaper.

It’s something that’s not all that surprising when you consider Monsanto’s history. The original entity, founded in 1901, spent its first 60 years as a pure chemical company. The agriculture division was spawned in 1960, but it was an additional 30 years before the company started selling genetically modified seeds to farmers.

And it wasn’t until 2000 that the current Monsanto was born, following a split of the corporation’s agriculture and chemical operations.

Basically you have a company that existed for nearly a century without really needing to talk to regular people.

“When they were a mass chemical company, they had no desire to be public at all,” said Peter Raven, president emeritus of the Missouri Botanical Garden. “They’ve had to adapt. There’s been some stumbling and falling along the way.”

To be sure, Monsanto was providing ammunition for its critics long before it entered the agriculture business.

In the 1960s, the company — along with Dow Chemical — supplied the U.S. military with the toxic cocktail Agent Orange, used as a defoliant during the Vietnam War. And the following decade brought revelations that PCBs — polychlorinated biphenyls — manufactured by Monsanto and other companies were linked to non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The stuff was used in a range of products, including food packaging and paint, before being banned by Congress in 1979.

But clearly, it is the company’s modern endeavors that draw the ire of a very vocal segment of consumers and environmentalists.

Most of that can be traced, in one way or another, to the company’s signature Roundup herbicide, sold generically as glyphosate.

The herbicide, which has revolutionized weed control for farmers, has been named by critics as one of the culprits in the troubling decline of both the monarch butterfly and honeybee populations. Widespread use of glyphosate has destroyed large amounts of habitat needed to support both insects.

An over-reliance on the herbicide also has contributed to the growth in so-called superweeds — plants that have developed an immunity to some herbicides. That, in turn, has spawned a new series of herbicide-seed combinations and new reasons for critics to complain.

More recently, glyphosate came under attack by the International Agency for Research on Cancer — an arm of the World Health Organization. The agency declared the herbicide a probable carcinogen, prompting harsh criticism by Monsanto and others in the industry, who questioned the quality of the findings.

The company’s genetic modification of seeds also is tied strongly to Roundup, with the key engineered trait being resistance to the herbicide. The genetic research — and desire to protect its seed patents — has led to high-profile legal disputes with farmers.

And increasingly, the company finds itself clashing with consumers over genetically modified foods, waging high-profile fights around the nation against laws that would require labeling of foods with GMO ingredients.

Some of those consumers look at the company and see a disconnect between its actions and the way it portrays itself as a champion of sustainability.

“They’re a chemical company. There’s nothing wrong with that,” said Robyn O’Brien, author of “The Unhealthy Truth,” a book about the U.S. food supply. “Their job is to sell chemicals. But don’t pretend to be something you’re not.”

PART OF A CONVERSATION

In the past year, the company has boosted efforts to improve its standing in the public eye.

Last summer, for example, the firm created a new post — director of millennial engagement — targeting one of its more skeptical audiences.

The man hired for the job, communications consultant Vance Crowe, touted the company’s new direction on his blog when announcing that he was making the move: “Monsanto has a strong desire to open up, be transparent in what they are doing, and be a part of a conversation with people who are truly interested in voicing real concerns and listening to candid answers.”

It’s a sentiment the company says is real and not simply a marketing campaign.

As is common when companies are involved in merger-acquisition talks, Monsanto’s executives were not available to discuss this story. But a spokesman offered highlights of several key initiatives undertaken in recent months.

Among them:

— Monsanto hosts what it calls listening sessions for farmers and consumers to hear more about their concerns about food and where it comes from.

— The company launched its discover.monsanto.com website last fall as part of an advertising campaign highlighting Monsanto’s role in agriculture.

— Executives have become more involved in agriculture-related discussions at events like the World Economic Forum and Aspen Ideas Festival. And they’ve been more willing to take part in debates and forums where critics are on hand to offer their challenges.

— The company is involved in gmoanswers.com, an industry website that solicits questions from and offers answers to consumers.

The company also has taken an active social networking presence with blogs, Facebook and Twitter, both from its official account and through executives like Robb Fraley, the company’s chief technology officer.

Yet its efforts to draw attention — sometimes through paid tweets — invariably draw hostile responses.

Consider, for example, a promoted tweet last year linking to an article about Monsanto’s seed and sustainability endeavors. Among the responses not laced with profanity:

— “I don’t want to see ads for your poison on my (time line).”

— “Seriously think you guys need a new approach. Starting to feel bad for you.”

— “Yep we know all there is to know about u Monsatan! What’s with the PR tweets?”

— “We know all about you. That’s why we hate you.”

This year, the Missouri Organic Association said it was approached by the company’s philanthropic arm, the Monsanto Fund, offering a donation of $2,500. The money was part of the fund’s America’s Farmers Grow Communities program, which has given some $20 million to nonprofits in thousands of communities since 2010.

Sue Baird, executive director of the Missouri Organic Association, recalled her reaction when she got the call from Monsanto. What they wanted in exchange for the donation was a photo opportunity and a press release noting the gift.

“I was flabbergasted,” Baird said.

And she felt obligated to make clear her organization’s position on Monsanto. “You know we lobby against you every chance we get,” she told the company’s representative.

It was a cordial conversation. But after consulting her board, the small nonprofit declined the donation.

“If we had taken money and done the photo op, it would have besmirched our reputation. It would have hurt us a lot more than the $2,500 would have helped us,” she said.

For its part, Monsanto said it couldn’t find a record of the offer being made, but that donations through that particular program are directed by farmers living in the communities.

It’s the sort of thing that illustrates the long road facing the company in its efforts to change the way the company is perceived.

There is no easy fix. But the company needs to take a more proactive approach at getting its own message out to people, while also countering the attacks by critics, said Denise Lee Yohn, author of the book “What Great Brands Do.”

“They need to play what I would call both offense and defense,” Yohn said. “You’re going to have to do a lot of it over time, and you’ll have to suffer through a lot of criticism.”

But is there an easier way? Could the pursuit of Syngenta be the beginning of the end of the Monsanto name? It certainly wouldn’t be the first time a company’s name disappeared during a merger.

It’s a strategy that would be unlikely to work, particularly in this age of social media, said O’Keefe, the professor from Virginia.

“A name change alone isn’t enough to polish up a tarnished image,” O’Keefe said. “You really don’t do anything except look like you are hiding.”