Big Oil goes into marketing overdrive for image boost

Gigantic oil companies generally do not enjoy the best PR. They have caused tanker spills, proposed drilling into the Arctic wildlife ranges, crafted ties to shady nations and meddled in the affairs of others, and produced products that pollute.

Now, even as high gasoline prices continue to anger motorists and aggravate financial problems at General Motors Corp and Ford Motor Co, the oil companies are reporting record quarterly figures.

Last Tuesday, British energy giant BP PLC reported $6.5 billion in third-quarter profit, up from $4.9 billion in the same period last year. ExxonMobil's outturn of about $9 billion will probably be the largest corporate quarterly profit ever.

Grumbling has already begun on Capitol Hill.

To deflect the damage, the energy industry is relying on an ad campaign that was escalating even before hurricanes Katrina and Rita blitzed Gulf Coast petroleum refineries. The print and television ads are designed to educate consumers and lawmakers with a "we're all in this together" tone.

In the pages of The Washington Post, for example, according to the paper's ad executives, BP has taken out seven large issue ads so far this year, compared with zero through the same time last year. ExxonMobil has had 19 so far this year, compared with 12 last year. For Chevron Corp, it's 17 ads so far this year, compared with six last year. And the industry's trade group, the American Petroleum Institute, has purchased seven ads in The Post so far this year.

Chevron and ExxonMobil increased their ad spend in the third quarter of this year at the New York Times, the newspaper company reported in its earnings call last week.

"You still have 100 hours of press time on any oil spill versus a tiny blurb or nothing at all if a company spends hundreds of millions on pollution control," said Lyle Brinker, an analyst for John S. Herold Inc energy research firm. "The best thing they can do is keep the debate focused on educating the public."

Red Cavaney, president of the American Petroleum Institute, said the ads partially are designed to correct no-longer-true misperceptions about his industry. For instance, he said, even though 90 per cent of the Gulf Coast drilling platforms and refineries were hit by either Katrina or Rita, there were no oil spills.

The industry's ads range from simple conservation messages to those that attempt to re-brand the oil companies as something else. An American Petroleum Institute ad implores consumers to turn down thermostats, clean furnace filters, and weatherstrip windows and doors.

Full-page ads from Chevron ominously warn: "It took us 125 years to use the first trillion barrels of oil. We'll use the next trillion in 30."

The most conspicuously non-oil oil ads come from the former British Petroleum, which removed the oil from its name and became BP. Now, the company advertises itself as Beyond Petroleum.

The company's logo resembles a sun with leaves.

Stumble onto a BP television ad and it is easy to assume it is a commercial for a company that makes solar panels. Or that BP is an environmental organisation of some sort.

"Solar is but a tiny, tiny, tiny part of their business," Brinker said. "They make 99.9 per cent of their money in the oil business."

But the earnings now are such that oil companies may have nowhere to hide.

"Yes, our numbers are large, but when you figure the size of the companies, we are at an all-industry erage," Cavaney said.

"We are half the size of the returns of the financials and pharmaceuticals."