| Page 2 of 2 < |
Recasting Big Oil's Battered Image
Acclaimed cinematographer Lance Acord's documentary-like Chevron ads move from stark global images to hopeful messages focused on people.
(Screenshot From Chevron)
TOOLBOX
   Resize
COMMENT
 Discussion Policy
 CLOSE
Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.
Who's Blogging  |
"What we find a lot now is . . . people go to the idea of renewables. It is hope in a bottle," Clark said. "They feel it will all be okay. And of course this is not really true. Look at any statistics about the next 50 years, and oil is essential."
The company has also been pushing its educational message through an online game designed by the Economist magazine. It lets people make energy choices for a city -- dubbed "Energyville" -- of 3.9 million. In the past three weeks, 160,000 people have played it.
Clark said the need to educate the public was apparent in focus groups. "I've personally sat in groups where people say 'the answer is we have to drill for more ethanol,' " Clark said. "With such a lack of understanding, it is hard for people to make the right choices."
Ethanol is produced by fermenting corn or other feedstocks.
Clark also said that people in focus groups used words like "hopeless" or "helpless," and that the ads try to make people feel that solutions are within their grasp.
The long ad talks about using energy "more intelligently" and "more respectfully." It says "we live on this planet, too" and that Chevron is a company made of people, "not corporate titans," including pipeline welders and geologists, husbands and wives, liberals and conservatives, part-time poets and coaches.
"The theme is 'don't demonize us because, after all, we are just people like you,' " said Garfield, the Advertising Age critic. "And I say they are people like me except that their fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders is to . . . gouge me at the pumps."
The ads could be aiming to boost morale for Chevron employees, he said. "They thought they were working for Satan, and lo and behold, they're working for UNICEF."
Near the end, the commercial shows the runner Oscar Pistorius, whose legs were amputated below the knee; two mountain climbers celebrating on a peak; and a baby taking his first steps as the narration says "watch as we tap the greatest source of energy in the world -- ourselves."
Chevron used McGarryBowen, a five-year-old New York ad agency founded by ad-firm veterans. It has done ads for Crayola crayons, Marriott hotel rooms, and J.P. Morgan Chase credit and debit cards. For a Disney ad, the agency dressed up soccer star David Beckham as Prince Charming. In a Verizon ad, an open-mouthed boy stares at light bursting from a Verizon truck.
"You're always looking for a core idea, and the power of human energy was a huge idea for Chevron," said Gordon Bowen, a founding partner and creative director of McGarryBowen. "We felt strongly that there had to be a message that was not just factual but emotional, that was optimistic about what could be done by human beings."
He said he chose the cinematographer Acord because he wanted a documentary feel rather than a commercial one. He picked Scott because "he really did not sound like an advertising announcer." Leonard-Morgan could compose music with an "arc" that wouldn't get boring after two minutes.
"We didn't set out to do a two-minute spot," Bowen said, "but to see what message we wanted to convey and how best to convey it."
