Chevron's Makeover On 60 Minutes Is Greenwash

Chevron's latest advertising campaign, which gives the company the tagline "Human Energy," is a classic study in how large rogue corporations try to show themselves as having a soul and human meaning. The 2.5 minute infomercial on 60 minutes tonight (see the ad in the link in Ad Age) tries to turn Chevron's face into the human face of its employees. Chevron tries to present itself not as profit-driven oil machine but a human organization striving to save our planet. Obscured, of course, are little facts like the company's war against California's pioneering alternative energy development fund (Prop 87), its refusal to cleanup the oily mess its made in the Amazon, and its refusal to take pragmatic steps to deploy ethanol at its service stations. Let alone the corporation's well-documented supply manipulation to drive up gasoline prices on us other human beings.

A multi-billion dollar communications budget is the societal power to bring into focus and to blur, to promote fictions or facts that are beneficial for one's interests and to fade out facts that are not.

This is the force not only to advance the individual's identification with a particular brand, like Chevron, but also their empathy with the corporate form. In the marketers' Oz, individuals typically see the corporation's individuality, not corporations' commonality. Corporations are presented as independent, competing entities, each with its own "personality" and distinct values. Individuals engage personal characteristics of the corporation, personifications of human values that imply a person or personality is there for you. McDonalds loves to see you smile. You're in Allstate's good hands. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Avis is trying harder. Chevron is human energy.

The focus of the campaign is to build Chevron's brand and take our mind off the product its profiting from. Trust in an oil company today is not going to come easy to the American people. Even if the budget were $15 billion, not $15 million. Of course, Chevron could spend whatever it takes to achieve Chevron's transcendence.

Comments

[realitytrumpsbull]

Chevron is in the business of providing petroleum-based fuels and other petroleum
products. It's what they do. Is that evil?
Well, no, but it could be successfully argued
that a good chunk of the world's problems today are related to the oil biz, up to and including the Iraq war itself. Chevron makes gas and diesel, and they make money on the market,
and the futures people make a mint off the whole show, meanwhile getting from A to B has
gotten a LOT more expensive in america.
But, fear not, even now the automotive wizards
are well on their way to developing hybrids and
so forth that are going to semi-permanently
disrupt these peoples' revenue stream. Don't
think of Chevron as part of the Axis of Evil,
think of them and other oil companies as the
way we USED to do business, pre 9/11. But,
since our energy independence is higher on the
list of priorities than maintaining Chevron's
profit margin, well, into every life, some
rain must fall...they'll have to keep it down
to 9 executive summer mansions per employee
instead of the customary 38...

[LightningJoe]

Their drive to hide and ignore the side effects of their energy extraction is just an effort to hide the increasing costs of our way of life.

If they really operated in a responsible fashion, the costs of the oil economy would be only too clear to the consumers forced to pay for it. By hiding the costs, they encourage us to maintain our ignorance.

The Army and Air Force are doing the same thing in Alaska, with the toxic remnants of their Cold War early warning system. There are scores of sites left from old radar installations, that are actively contaminating native ecosystems, including native food sources. Diesel and PCB spills are common at these sites.

It would cost them billions to really clean up the toxins. Instead, they let them sit and leak for years, while they "budget" small slices of Defense money to make small stabs at the problem. When they do actually clean something up, they do it just "good enough," which really is NOT good enough. PCBs have hormone-mimic effects on people and wildlife far out of proportion to their actual toxic effects, and have great impact on fetal development and adult endocrine (emotional) balance.

The consequences are only too plain, to those of us who live here. Natives have many birth defects. Missing fingers and malformed hands are so common they are not usually remarked upon.

There are also periodic senseless crime sprees by young males -- and this in small tight-knit communities, who should be immune to such things.

[sgs23]

I think we've all become a little to jaded for that nonsense.

[TheWanderer]

I worked for Chevron for 2.5 years as a contract employee - no benefits, no nothing - They replace departing workers w/ temps and contractors to avoid paying benefits. They switched the rules on pensions punishing longtime employees for staying, in hope they would take early retirement and be replaced by non-benefited contract employees and temps. They force contractors to take weeks off w/out pay right before Xmas, in order that dept. heads might stay within budget and get THEIR bonuses for the year. This from a company reporting record BILLIONS in profit each quarter. Same dept head rude and thoughtless enough to urge same contractors facing two weeks with no pay to "enjoy your time off, have some fun." They outsource their own Helpdesk outside of the USA to avoid paying Americans who might want benefits and a health plan. A filthy polluted and polluting company that only cares about its executives and its bottom-line profits. Birth defects in neighborhood of this refinery were highest of any city in the area. The couldn't care less about the environment or the world or their employees or their own polluted worksites. Employee safety is turned into a competition, a game played between dept heads who think a reward for employee loyalties should be not a health plan or paid sick leave, but a few tickets to a ballgame or a couple of pizzas written off as business expenses. Their PR is about as believable as Burma's.

[frantaylor]

Pretty goddamn thick of them. "Oh, that PR thing worked so well for BP, let's do it too!"

[BCP]

James Glick's book FASTER talks about how the changes in modern life are occurring faster. I think it will also bring about the the demise of the oil industry faster too, no matter how much they try pump into their PR campaigns. Personally, I am not waitng for the oil companies, government or some elitist environmental organizations to propose policy. I have my own energy policy which I call SST which stands for 'Starving the Saudis and Texans". It works for me by saving money, energy and the planet.

BCP
http://beercanpolitics.blogspot.com

[jnuno]

"Did you expect a corporation to have a conscience? When it has no soul to be damned and no body to be kicked."

[Dem02020]

So Chevron is marketing itself (and oil) as "Human Energy"?

That makes me think of the movie/story "Soylent Green" (and I'm pretty sure that "global warming" is an element to that story; that "global warming" is the reason that futuristic story takes place in a world that's in a perpetual hazy yellow heat-wave).

Chevron's slogan of "Human Energy" also makes me think of that "Twilight Zone" episode, where a race of alien creatures arrives on Earth, and repeatedly state that they are there "To Serve Man"; and once they gain the trust of mankind, then sure enough they're good to their word: They start to consume mankind, as cannibals would; "To Serve Man" being the name of a cook-book, on how to boil and bake man, and "serve" him up on a platter, for consumption.

I'd think the makers of Soylent Green, and cannibalistic aliens from outer space, to mean us about as well as Chevron does.

[Snakeback]

Oh...my...God...its...happening....

I...think...I...love...Big...Oil

[davidly]

Frankly, I don't see where the campaign is necessary as the consumer is going to keep on consuming. Given the message here, with all the facts to back it up, the people just don't care. Human energy is riding a bicycle and I haven't seen a trend in this direction. To steal and paraphrase Smokey T. Bear: Only you.