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Chevron We Agree: It's Time You Cleaned Up Your Act
Culture jamming environmental activists have done it again. San Francisco based Rainforest Action Network is behind a headline grabbing hoax targeting Chevron.
Photo: A protest in Richmond, California, where Chevron has an oil refinery. Richmond is the site of frequent demonstrations against the major oil firm.
Photo: A protest in Richmond, California, where Chevron has an oil refinery. Richmond is the site of frequent demonstrations against the major oil firm.
Culture jamming activists have done it again. San Francisco based Rainforest Action Network (R.A.N.), together with famous corporate spoofers the Yes Men, outsmarted Chevron's "We Agree" advertising campaign with an elaborate hoax that fooled some corporate news outlets.
In the early morning hours of Monday, shortly before Chevron let loose a self aggrandizing campaign to highlight "the common ground Chevron shares with people around the world on key energy issues", a fake media release hit the internet. Amongst those receiving the release from mediamail [at] chevron-press.com were climate justice activists and other allies of the Yes Men and R.A.N.
Although savvy political activists in the San Francisco Bay Area recognized the media release immediately to be a prank, corporate media sources including the online news website "Fast Company" fell for it.
Youth climate activists from "It's Getting Hot in Here" pointed out that Chevron spends around $90 million a year on advertising , "and that’s over twice as much as what they spent on their sham clean up of the worst oil-related disaster on earth in Ecuador." The youth group went on to say that , "Today that very public relations bravado and those slick advertising campaigns caught Chevron up in something they try to avoid…the truth."
In a reversal of fortune, Chevron’s million dollar ad campaign getting hijacked is the top news when you google the company name. The clever hoax is getting a lot more attention than the actual advertising blitz.
In the early morning hours of Monday, shortly before Chevron let loose a self aggrandizing campaign to highlight "the common ground Chevron shares with people around the world on key energy issues", a fake media release hit the internet. Amongst those receiving the release from mediamail [at] chevron-press.com were climate justice activists and other allies of the Yes Men and R.A.N.
Although savvy political activists in the San Francisco Bay Area recognized the media release immediately to be a prank, corporate media sources including the online news website "Fast Company" fell for it.
Youth climate activists from "It's Getting Hot in Here" pointed out that Chevron spends around $90 million a year on advertising , "and that’s over twice as much as what they spent on their sham clean up of the worst oil-related disaster on earth in Ecuador." The youth group went on to say that , "Today that very public relations bravado and those slick advertising campaigns caught Chevron up in something they try to avoid…the truth."
In a reversal of fortune, Chevron’s million dollar ad campaign getting hijacked is the top news when you google the company name. The clever hoax is getting a lot more attention than the actual advertising blitz.
For more information:
http://www.chevron-weagree.com
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Saw that Rainforest Action Network is quoted on the wire (AFP I think) and gets credit for gathering "intel" leading up to the successful hoax.
After looking at the mock website, I read the fake press release, and at the bottom is a link to Chevron itself, which takes you to their actual "We Agree" advertisement. Well, I mistakenly thought that the whole idea of "we agree" was the hoax, so after clicking the link, I thought their site was an extension of the parody. I proceeded to watch all of the videos and was hysterically laughing at how absurd they were, while thinking they sure went through alot of trouble to pull this off.
Later that night I discovered I had been wrong, and that Chevron's ad campaign, which had been the subject of the YES Men, RAN hoax, was real. Well sort of. I still find it hard to believe that Chevron actually contrived this stuff. There's this one video where these people explain how Chevron is separating water from oil, and then using it to help grow agriculture. There's this other video where they talk about how Chevron is helping the environment on an island in Australia by drilling it. And then there's a video about how how Chevron is helping to improve education in Africa by bringing televisions into schools. In another video, this woman living in Oakland explains how she was kicked out of her house and made homeless by her husband, and how Chevron helped her start her own restaurant and become a successful entrepreneur. And on and and on. Every one of the videos is just totally preposterous. Chevron's campaign is far more of a hoax.
Later that night I discovered I had been wrong, and that Chevron's ad campaign, which had been the subject of the YES Men, RAN hoax, was real. Well sort of. I still find it hard to believe that Chevron actually contrived this stuff. There's this one video where these people explain how Chevron is separating water from oil, and then using it to help grow agriculture. There's this other video where they talk about how Chevron is helping the environment on an island in Australia by drilling it. And then there's a video about how how Chevron is helping to improve education in Africa by bringing televisions into schools. In another video, this woman living in Oakland explains how she was kicked out of her house and made homeless by her husband, and how Chevron helped her start her own restaurant and become a successful entrepreneur. And on and and on. Every one of the videos is just totally preposterous. Chevron's campaign is far more of a hoax.
RAN sold out when they entered into an "environmental agreement" with Citigroup, ended their Citigroup boycott, and took out full page ads in the New York Times claiming that citigroup was now environmentally enlightened. most mainstream "environmental" groups have been sold out, which explains why no progress is being made environmentally in the US. for example NRDC is controlled by laurence rockefeller jr, the nature conservancy is controlled by oil and timber executives, and the former head of greenpeace is now a lobbyist for the nuclear power plant industry. i am not just saying this to be a sourpuss, this is the main problem facing the environmental movement today.
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