Hoe meer dreiging van regelgeving voor de fossiele industrie, hoe meer ze reclame maken. Dat blijkt uit een analyse van de timing van grote publieksreclamecampagnes van 5 fossiele bedrijven in de VS gedurende 30 jaar.

Oliemultinationals als Shell en Exxon maken vooral fossiele reclame vlak voor belangrijke politieke beslismomenten gemaakt, denk aan verkiezingen, de wereldwijde klimaatonderhandelingen (COP) of als er er een politiek beslisproces plaatsvindt over een maatregel die belangrijk is voor de fossiele industrie.

“Naarmate de dreiging van wetgevende of regelgevende actie toeneemt of de negatieve media-aandacht toeneemt, vergroten grote oliemaat-schappijen hun inspanningen om hun bedrijfsreputatie te verbeteren. Deze inspanningen zijn erop gericht om (…) de mogelijkheid van regelgeving of wetgeving te verminderen.”

“Geraffineerde propagandacampagnes, ontworpen om de perceptie van het publiek en de elite over de grote oliemaatschappijen te manipuleren zijn een belangrijke belemmering voor zinvolle klimaatmaatregelen.”

“As media outlets have proliferated, the bases of a common public opinion have fragmented.
Greenberg et al. (2011): 69) noted: “It can no longer be assumed that there is any unity of reason acting as the point of departure and destination for public discourse. Public discourse is fragmented structurally and culturally as different, incommensurable forms of interest come
into competitive play.” In this situation, organizations have powerful incentives to engage in
activities to set the terms of the debate to favor their preferred policy outcomes. Empirical
analyses of advertising campaigns show that they can have a substantial impact on public
opinion. Pfau et al. (2007), utilizing a controlled experiment, demonstrated that repeated
exposure to carefully crafted messages significantly shifted the test subjects’ support for different policy measures. In this “promotional” public sphere, a distinct advantage is maintained by well-resourced organizations with sufficient economic, political, or organizational
capacities to generate publicity campaigns on behalf of their positions and thus realize a significant advantage in influencing the public agenda and political
processes.”

“. These advertising campaigns can be seen as strategic political communications
efforts that aim to modify perceptions of key actors and the public to accomplish certain goals.
The objective is to bring about a shift in the beliefs of the targeted audience. In this sense, these
campaigns rely on the promulgation of propaganda (Collison 2003), which Carey (1995): 20)
defines as “communications where the form and content is selected with the single-minded
purpose of bringing some target audience to adopt attitudes and beliefs chosen in advance by
the sponsors of the communication.”

“Two promotional strategies in which fossil fuel companies engage are issue advertising and
image advertising. Issue advertising (also called advocacy advertising, single-issue advertising,
controversy advertising, and legislative issue advertising) is the creation of media messages by an organization to advocate its position on political or social issues. They
generally are time limited and focus on a specific issue.”

“A second form of advertising is image advertising. It is aimed at increasing the legitimacy
and reputation of the organization sponsoring the advertising (Tedlow 1979). They are longer
term efforts and are not tied to a specific political issue.”

“Image advertising is understood to be part of a company’s “social responsibility.” Attention
to the “triple bottom line” (financial, social, environmental) performance is meant to show
companies’ interest in and commitment to activities beyond the economic. Whereas “Milton
Friedman famously described the social responsibility of business to maximize shareholder
wealth”, today’s businesses conceptualize social responsibility in terms of broad social obligation beyond shareholder benefits and environmental
commitments to offset polluting behaviors.”

“The data clearly indicates
that the level of promotional effort by major oil companies directly corresponds to levels of congressional action and media coverage related to climate change. As the perceived level of
threat of legislative or regulatory action increases or increased adverse media coverage, major
oil companies will expand their efforts to improve their corporate reputation. This effort aims
at increasing the perceived legitimacy of these corporations, and in the process, decrease the possibility of regulations or legislation that would change its business operating procedures”

Brulle, R.J., Aronczyk, M. & Carmichael, J. Corporate promotion and climate change: an analysis of key variables affecting advertising spending by major oil corporations, 1986–2015. Climatic Change 159, 87–101 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-019-02582-8