Live8 negotiation

Exercise 16 Live8*

NEGOTIATION 7e

LEWICKI ▪ BARRY ▪ SAUNDERS

Confidential Role Information for Manager of Live8 Art Galleries

June, 2005. As the summer heat begins to take its toll on Istanbul, many of the city’s inhabitants desert it in favor of beach resorts. This does not bother you in the least, as it makes room for the incoming flood of tourists. Two million tourists visit the city yearly, 70% of them during the summer months. A large number of these find themselves, at some point during their visit, visiting one of your shops ‐ the Live8 Art Galleries, a chain of art galleries located across Turkey.

After graduating from business school in 1995, you directed an NGO promoting civic involvement and urban renewal in Istanbul’s poorest areas. The work was hard and your efforts were always underappreciated, but every little bit of change you were able to bring about made it all seem worthwhile.

In August 1999, your world – along with that of thousands of others’ – changed. The earthquake that destroyed huge sections of Istanbul, killing thousands of people and leaving thousands of others homeless affected you deeply. Although you and your family made it through the quake safely, the catastrophic event that scarred the country left its mark on you as well. The period after the earthquake seems like a blur to you now; it seems as if you never slept, working first in rescue efforts and than in reconstruction. Besides the physical stress your job entailed, the period was emotionally draining as well. You felt a great deal of anger towards the government for not foreseeing and preparing for the catastrophe, as well as for hampering reconstruction efforts through inefficient bureaucracy.

This anger was surpassed by the anger you felt towards the rich countries of the West ‐ the U.S. and Great Britain particularly. While these countries promised aid in various forms, you feel that whatever materialized was always too little and too late. In many situations, your calls to Western government agencies and donor NGO’s ended with them making promises that they did not keep. Projects you planned and prepared for had to be abandoned, leaving you to face the angry and disappointed people who had depended on you. After six months, you were completely burned out. Frustrated by the whole notion of dependency on aid, you decided that people have to work their own way out of tragedy.

Sooner than you would have thought, you identified an opportunity to put this belief into practice. An old school friend, now a sculptor, told you about an idea he and some friends were considering. A group of seven artists, each of whom had lost someone or something – a friend, a relative, a house or an art studio – in the earthquake, were considering opening a joint art gallery. The artistic themes would be those of survival, finding hope in the depths of tragedy, self‐ dependency and human courage. The artists would individually and collaboratively create artwork in each of their respective media – painting, sculpting and metalworking – and share all profits equally.

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Concerned about the venture, and realizing that none of the seven had any business

experience or know‐how, your friend asked you to meet with them, hear their plans and perhaps give them a few tips. After one meeting with the group (and a couple of sleepless nights), you made them an offer: you would join the group as an eighth, equal partner, practicing the arts of management: marketing, finance, logistics etc. The group agreed willingly, giving you full authority and control over all business‐related decisions, and your new career had begun. The group agreed on the name Live8, and decided to allocate 10% of its profits to a fund dedicated to help other artists take the same step they were taking through giving business loans to new galleries and artistic ventures.

In six years, the venture has expanded from a cramped gallery in Besiktas to six expansive, European‐style galleries in Istanbul, Ankara and several resort areas, catering to locals and tourists alike. Events such as 9/11 and the Madrid train bombings created international sympathy for your galleries’ themes abroad. Realizing the potential of the export market, you purchased the rights to the Internet domain name www.live8.org. Designed as a showcase for Live8’s creations, you put in months designing the site, and it is finally set to be uploaded and online next week.

The domain name itself cost five thousand dollars – you bought it from someone who made a big profit at your expense, but there was no good alternative: live8.com, live8.biz and others were already taken. You spent another twenty thousand dollars on the design process, hiring an expert web‐design artist, and consider this money well spent. You view the website as another gallery, a venue where clients could visit, appreciate – and purchase.

Additionally, you see the website as the first step in your plan to expand the chain to Europe. You feel almost ready to open branches in Paris, Rome and Barcelona, and the website would provide the chain sufficient exposure to make this feasible. Feasible, of course, only as soon as you can find the $1,700,000 necessary to finance this plan. You could borrow most of the money from banks, or find an external investor, but don’t want to place the chain heavily into debt, or under someone else’s control. You are hesitant to start off with only one gallery, knowing that the effect of opening all three at once as a Turkish/European chain would have a much more powerful effect.

Lately, people have been asking you if you were connected to the Live8 concerts. Confused, you Googled the term and discovered that it was the name of an event set to take place in two weeks time, organized by the people who organized the “LiveAid” concerts twenty years ago. Concerts with leading artists would be held all over the world, and all proceeds – from television broadcasting, disc sales, refreshment concessions at the concerts etc. – would go towards combating poverty in Africa. Additionally, the organizers hope that the sheer mass of people sharing in the event – by coming to the concerts or by following them, on TV or through the Internet – will have an effect on the leaders meeting at the G8 summit, forcing them to deal seriously with new proposals for aid to Africa.

You find it ironic that this pro‐aid initiative adopted the same name as your own venture, promoting the opposite ideology of self‐dependency. While the situation in Africa has always troubled you, you know that the only possible way out is for Africans to take responsibility for themselves. You wonder how much of the aid will actually reach the population it was destined for, and how much will be wasted on the aid agencies’ inflated administrations – to say nothing of corrupt locals on the ground in Africa. You are willing to bet that – once again – Africans would

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receive too little, too late; their energy would once again be wasted on anger towards the West instead of being used to take charge of their own continent, their own countries and their own lives. Now, whenever anybody asks if your chain is connected to the event, you are quick to set them straight on this issue.

Yesterday you received an e‐mail, from someone saying they were interested in the live8.org site and asking if you were the owner. You replied that yes, you are indeed the owner and what do they want? They still haven’t gotten back to you, but you suspect that they will very soon. ____________ * Although this exercise alludes to the “LIVE8” concerts that actually occurred in July 2005, the circumstances involved in the exercise itself, including information in these role instructions, are fictitious.