BP's Adman Got Suckered by His Own Scripts [1]
Submitted by John Stauber [2] on
BP [3] is the most successful oil company at greenwashing [4] its own image. Unfortunately for BP, the recent news about its massive oil leak in Alaska and the shutting down of its corrosive pipelines have revealed the truth -- it really is all about oil profits. In the New York Times , a BP adman admits that even he was suckered. John Kenney writes, "Six years ago I helped create BP’s current advertising campaign, the man-in-the-street television commercials. I can’t take credit for changing the company’s name from 'British Petroleum' to 'beyond petroleum' (lower case is cooler); my boss at the time came up with it. ... I believed wholeheartedly in BP’s message, that we could go -- or at least work toward going -- beyond petroleum." Now Kenney sees it differently: "They didn’t go beyond petroleum. They are petroleum."