Chevron’s Greenwashing PR Campaign Derailed By Pranksters

This past week Chevron launched an advertising campaign called “We Agree”. In it, Chevron says that they agree with the public’s overall negative impressions of the oil industry, and then it makes broad general statements about what they are doing to improve conditions like “Oil companies should support the communities they’re part of” and “Oil companies should put their profits to good use”. However, the corporate pranksters with a social conscience the Yes Men beat Chevron to the punch with a much more honest “We Agree” campaign. Supported by Rainforest Action Network and Amazon Watch, they describe Monday’s action this way:

The activists’ pre-emptive campaign began early Monday with a press release from a spoof Chevron domain, which launched the fake “We Agree” site hours before the real Chevron could launch its own, real campaign The fake “We Agree” site featured four “improved” advertisements, complete with downloadable PDF files to be used in on-the-street postering.

Nine hours later, after issuing its own “We Agree” press release, the real Chevron decried the hoax in a predictably curt and humorless manner. Mere moments later, the counter-campaign issued a much better denial on Chevron’s behalf, laying out Chevron’s principal arguments in its Ecuador case. “We have binding agreements with the Ecuadorian Government exempting us from any liabilities whatsoever, granted in exchange for a $40 million cleanup of some wells by Texaco in the 1990s,” the spoof press release crowed, absurdly yet accurately.

The Yes Men describe what they do as:

Impersonating big-time criminals in order to publicly humiliate them. Our targets are leaders and big corporations who put profits ahead of everything else.

If you are looking around for something to do tonight, you could do worse than rent “The Yes Men Fix The World”. If you can’t find that new release, you might want to look for “McLibel: The Postman and the Gardener Who Took On McDonald’s”, a true-life David and Goliath story that shows us that sometimes the good guys do win.

More links:

Pranksters Lampoon Chevron Ad Campaign

Activists Derail Massive Chevron Campaign, Spark Media Vaudeville