Greenpeace Mocks Shell’s Ad Campaign

London, 13/11/2014 Greenpeace launches a counter advertising campaign in response to Shell's latest ad. Activists scale the outside of a railway bridge next to Waterloo station to attach a giant billboard, facing Shell’s central London offices. As staff walk to work, they read the message ‘let’s keep the drills on, so the Arctic’s gone when she’s your age'.
On 28 August 2014 Shell submitted new plans to the US administration for offshore exploratory drilling in the Alaskan Arctic [2], meaning it’s on course to resurrect its Arctic drilling plans as early as summer 2015. ©Dalziel/Greenpeace

Greenpeace isn’t letting up in its campaign against Shell with the environmental activist group mocking Shell’s ad by placing its own counter-ad in three UK newspapers.

One ad for Shell’s ‘Let’s Go’ campaign features a young girl reading in bet by a light. The message reads ‘Let’s keep the lights on when she’s your age’, following on with info about Shell’s work.

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Mocking the campaign, the Greenpeace ad, which was crowd funded by 2,300 supporters according to Greenpeace’s UK blog, takes the same image, but changes the text to read ‘Shell’s Arctic drilling plans are the stuff of nightmares’.

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Sara Ayech, Arctic campaigner at Greenpeace, said in a statement: “We were inundated with calls from our supporters who were appalled by the hypocrisy in Shell’s latest ads. Shell just got dumped by LEGO for threatening to drill in the Arctic, but it’s back using kids once more to try to clean up its public image.

“Far from safeguarding kids’ future, its Arctic drilling plans risk polluting a pristine region and exacerbating climate change. And now Shell is even including polar bears in its adverts, despite the fact drilling for oil in the Arctic would threaten this unique species.”

The campaign also saw activists scale a building in London to place a similar banner directly in front of Shell’s office.

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Ayech added: “Shell is planning to go back to the Arctic as early as next summer if regulators let it, so this isn’t harmless PR. If Shell can trick people into thinking it’s a caring company acting in the best interests of our planet, then it’s less likely to face challenges to its Arctic oil grab. That’s why we have to challenge Shell wherever, and whenever, they spin their lies. And why so many thousands of our supporters were compelled to chip in for this counter-ad campaign, to get their voices heard.”

“It’s a bad day for Shell! If you opened the Metro, Independent or Telegraph newspaper this morning, you’re one of two million people who saw our counter-ad against the Arctic oil drillers,” wrote Greenpeace’s Danielle Boobyer.

“With this ad, we’ve delivered another blow to Shell’s dodgy PR. Our counter-ad shows millions of people what Shell’s Arctic drilling plans really are – the stuff of nightmares.”

Greenpeace has been on a roll recently with a three month long campaign in July this year that saw Lego decide to ends its partnership with Shell.

In October, the CEO of Lego said: “We want to clarify that as things currently stand we will not renew the co-promotion contract with Shell when the present contract ends.

Lego men drowning in oil and the disappearing of the arctic were two of the videos released as part of the campaign to put pressure on the toy company.

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