It's fascinating.

Greenpeace activists break into a facility up in Fort MacMurray and do their thing: banners, chaining themselves to equipment, etc.

The media reaction is "protesters enter suncor site."

The following week, they do the same thing at shell.

The media reaction is again "protesters shut down shell production."

The following week they do the same thing again.

The media reaction: "If it's this easy for greenpeace to get into oil sands facilities, what about terrorists?"

So the story has gone away from oil sands being a thing that deserves protest, to the oilsands being a thing that deserve enhanced security protection.

Those two ideas are, at least in my mind, mutually inhibiting. It is difficult to think of the oilsands in terms of a big environmental evil and at the same time a thing deserving of better protection from evildoers.

Which means that Greenpeace, by doing what they always do, but by doing it more frequently than usual, has turned their own message upside down. Or, some genious intentionally turned it around on them.

Either way, it's a valuable lesson in communications. There is always more than one story you can tell. Pick the one that has your side as the hero, or victim, not the villain.