Advertising and Marketing Energy Production

Summary: Electricity generation in the United States is dominated by fossil fuels and nuclear power, which make up almost 90 percent of the total electricity produced. Despite calls to transition away from reliance on fossil fuels and nuclear power, this transition is happening slowly.

There is tremendous inertia in energy production and distribution systems: For technical and economic reasons, it is difficult to create significant shifts in how people get and use energy, and these shifts will most likely take a long time to occur. However, there are also important social and political factors that support this inertia. These factors often have less to do with statistics, and more to do with the kinds of stories told about energy production and use. Broadly speaking, such narratives—which include those produced through advertising and marketing—tend to encourage continued reliance on fossil fuels by normalizing their use, making them seem both natural and necessary. Conventional source energy companies rely on this normalization, and support it through the use of multimillion-dollar advertising and marketing campaigns that argue for the economic and political importance of fossil fuels to industrialized society. Advertising and marketing campaigns for fossil fuel companies tend to emphasize the national and economic benefits that accrue from status quo energy systems and de-emphasize the negative social, political, and environmental costs of energy extraction, distribution, and consumption. Advertising and marketing for renewables and other alternatives, on the other hand, tend to emphasize the environmental and social gains from energy transitions, but may de-emphasize technical or economic drawbacks, glossing over the difficulties inherent in transitioning away from fossil fuels.

Fossil Fuels, Advertising, and Marketing

In some ways, the purpose of advertising and marketing campaigns for fossil-fuel-based energy companies is similar to that of advertising and marketing campaigns for any company: to sell products. However, energy companies differ from other types of companies in significant ways, which affects the kinds of advertising and marketing they create. First, energy companies rarely sell their products directly to consumers; petroleum companies may sell their gasoline at particular gas stations, but the path from oil extraction to pump is anything but linear. Similarly, it is rare for electricity consumers to be able to choose from among a suite of coal companies, for example, when switching on the lights in their homes. As a result, energy companies often design advertising and marketing campaigns, not simply to sell products, but rather to preserve their “social license” to operate, which can be defined as maintaining the good will of particular communities, municipalities, or regions in which they operate. For this reason, advertising and marketing campaigns are often closely connected to the concept of “corporate social responsibility,” or the responsibility that corporations have or profess to have in promoting the public good.

Second, fossil-fuel-based energy companies in particular differ from other types of companies in that they rarely need to manufacture demand. A clothing company needs to convince consumers that the kinds of shirts they are producing this season are fundamentally different from the shirts the consumer purchased last season, and are therefore necessary. Advertisements thus create demand by playing on the consumer’s insecurity about not belonging because he or she does not have the most current type of shirt, as described on the “Story of Stuff” Website. Car companies, cosmetics companies, even fast food companies—all must manufacture demand in this way by using advertising to cater to the desire to fit in and feel good. Corporations allot significant budgets to marketing departments, which figure out how best to sell items, ranging from the specific organization of store shelves to featuring stars who can best convince people to buy what they “need.” Energy companies, on the other hand, are not in the same position; Chesapeake Energy’s natural gas is not more “attractive” or “in” this season than it was last season. There is always a need for electricity, and energy systems are so entrenched that it is easiest to simply do what has always been done: get energy from fossil fuels such as coal and petroleum. According to Vaclav Smil in Energy at the Crossroads, changing to different kinds of energy promises to be a long-term and complex process.

Further complicating things is the fact that most Americans do not understand where their energy comes from—energy production and distribution supply lines are mostly invisible to the average consumer—and systems of energy production and distribution are not set up to enable consumer choice on an individual scale, as noted by authors Benjamin K. Sovacool and Marilyn A. Brown in Energy and American Society. This means that energy corporations have both a responsibility to engage the public in policy discourse, but also that they have a significant amount of social, political, and economic power to shape the kinds of discussions about energy. Ironically, this political and narrative power is often invisible to the public. Furthermore, major shifts in energy production and consumption must occur at least in part on a large scale in order to effect meaningful change, so advertising and marketing campaigns for conventional energy companies tend to consist of broad ideological appeals regarding how things are or should be, or address particular discourses that are politically relevant at a particular time.

Third, energy companies must use advertising and marketing to counteract negative public opinions of their practices, or to conceal or de-emphasize those practices. Since the 1970s, environmental, public health, and consumer protection groups have launched effective campaigns critical of energy industry practices; more recently, documentary films such as Gasland (2010)—which is deeply critical of hydrofracturing for unconventional shale gas—and The Last Mountain (2011)—critical of mountaintop removal coal mining—have gained national attention and are supported by matrices of Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), Websites, and educational materials. Energy corporations—most of which have massive public relations budgets—are tasked with effectively responding to environmental, social, and public health critiques, while continuing to preserve a public image that gives shareholders confidence, supports lobbying efforts, and preserves status quo dependencies on dominant forms of energy production.

This puts fossil fuel industries in the position of constantly being on the defense; they must present themselves as deserving public trust, while at the same time managing public relations for disasters, controversies, and suspicion. Some scholars, such as Richard E. Crable and Steven L. Vibbert, have pointed to this public suspicion of energy companies as extending back to the oil supply crisis of the 1970s, if not to the long history of trust violations before that, and exacerbated by large-scale environmental disasters such as the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Prince William Sound and the 2010 BP Macondo well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico. To make things more complex, many companies engage in positive environmental and social work that merits praise, making it hard to discern genuine claims of responsibility from “ greenwashing.” All of this takes place in a contested social and political space in which the future of energy development is murky at best: Even discerning and critical consumers would find it difficult to navigate this terrain in search of the truth.

Petroleum Case Examples: and BP

Oil and gas production and distribution are multinational and even global endeavors, albeit with some significant local consequences. Most of the world’s petroleum is controlled by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), largely made up of countries from the Middle East, northern Africa, and South America. Outside of OPEC, the Supermajors are publicly owned corporations that control approximately 6 percent of the world’s petroleum supply and constitute multinational corporations operating around the world; these Supermajors include companies that many in the United States might refer to, in derogatory fashion, as Big Oil: BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, and Total. In addition to these companies, a group of corporations referred to as the Seven Sisters, made up primarily of Asian and Russian companies, is fast gaining power. There are also countless smaller companies involved in oil and gas corporations around the world, with varying degrees of relationship to the Supermajors.

Although the Supermajors’ advertising and marketing campaigns differ from one another in some ways, for the most part, they share approaches in common, many of which can be typified by ExxonMobil’s public relations strategies. ExxonMobil is the largest of the Supermajors and is the second-largest corporation in the world by profit. The corporation’s most visible public moment came in the wake of the Exxon Valdez spill, though it has also been troubled by public perceptions that it is unusually greedy or manipulative, distorting gas prices at the pump in order to boost profits. In recent years, ExxonMobil has embarked on a long-term television advertising campaign called Energy Solutions. According to communication scholars Emily Plec and Mary Pettenger, the campaign constitutes both a coordinated, formal response to public environmental concerns following the Valdez disaster, and a type of greenwashing, an attempt to highlight some of the company’s small environmental stewardship and renewable energy programs. The Energy Solutions campaign focuses on ExxonMobil’s research in biofuels, suggesting that the corporation is a world leader in renewables research. ExxonMobil thus deftly attempts to direct the television viewer’s attention to a framing of the company’s activities that emphasizes small, environmentally beneficial research and virtually conceals the company’s main focus, which is large-scale fossil-fuel extraction.

Similar efforts were expended by British Petroleum’s (BP) Beyond Petroleum campaign, appearing in print and television ads in recent years, which has touted the company’s renewable energy research program, its smallest energy sector. Symbolized by a green and yellow sunburst or helios, with the words “British Petroleum” giving way to the words “Beyond Petroleum,” the campaign was supported by the corporation’s controversial CEO John Browne, who promised a new direction given public concern over climate change. Unfortunately, the company’s efforts behind the scenes of the campaign did not support a long-term renewable energy research strategy, particularly beyond the term of Browne, who left BP in 2001. This campaign could be viewed in a particularly cynical fashion, in retrospect, given the BP-owned Macondo well blowout in 2010, which spilled millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

Natural Gas Case Example: ANGA and the Response to Gasland

Natural gas exploration has only recently come to be seen by the public as separate from petroleum exploration: In practice, most petroleum companies are also in the business of natural gas extraction. However, public attention to natural gas extraction in particular has dramatically increased since the release of the 2010 American political documentary Gasland. Gaslandis a narrative documentary focusing on the local impacts of a novel kind of gas extraction, called “hydrofracturing” by industry experts or “fracking” by the media and activists. Although the technologies used in hydrofracturing shale deposits to extract hard-to-get natural gas have been in use for some time, the scale and pace of extraction has increased dramatically in the last decade. Opponents of fracking insist that the process uses too much water, potentially contaminates water supplies, fouls the air around wellheads, and poses significant explosion risks. Proponents of hydrofracturing argue that the practice is fundamentally safe and tightly regulated, and provides jobs and energy independence.

Following the public attention garnered by Gasland, the American National Gas Alliance, or ANGA, intensified its marketing and advertising efforts on television and in print. These campaigns emphasized the “clean” nature of natural gas and in particular emphasized the importance of natural gas in ensuring American energy independence and providing jobs. Similarly, the Independent Petroleum Association of America launched a campaign called Energy in Depth. Energy in Depth and ANGA coordinated responses to Gasland, including online video shorts, debunking fact sheets, and other educational or promotional Web content. The Energy in Depth campaign has been instrumental—along with Gasland—in deeply politicizing the hydrofracturing debate in the United States, as described by Jan Schneider and Allison Knaak.

Coal Case Example: Clean Coal Campaign

The coal industry is in an interesting transitional moment; for years, the supremacy of coal in producing electricity in the United States went relatively unchallenged. Coal-fired power plants produced half of all electricity in the United States for decades, and produces significant amounts of power in China and elsewhere. It is considered one of the United States’ most abundant and inexpensive fuel sources. However, it is also viewed as one of the dirtiest fuel sources, contributing to fine-particulate air pollution, climate change, and the degradation of water quality. Furthermore, it is facing economic challenges as the availability of easily accessed, high-efficiency coal has decreased and the price of natural gas has significantly fallen due to hydrofracturing. Finally, it is facing significant environmental challenges as the Environmental Protection Agency has threatened to regulate emissions from coal-fired power plants.

The pressures on the coal industry to respond to environmental concerns led to its clean coal campaign in the 2000s, largely supported by the industry’s public relations arm, America’s Power. The meaning of “clean coal” is contested, but the clean coal campaign emphasizes technologies, many of which are still unproven, that could make coal-burning more environmentally friendly. Above all, however, the campaign falls back on more typical industry claims about the importance of coal for ensuring energy independence and affordability. The campaign received a significant amount of attention when America’s Power produced a 2008 video by the Clean Coal Carolers, animated pieces of coal singing about the benefits of coal to the tune of “Frosty the Snowman.” The video immediately went viral. Environmentalist organizations quickly responded with their own humor-themed Internet videos and television commercials intended to debunk the myth of clean coal.

During the 2020s, the Department of Energy (DOE) continued to reduce pollutants released from converting coal into energy. Additionally, the DOE noted that coal could be utilized in other industries for its high carbon content. Included among these industries were those that produced carbon fiber and graphene. However, the clean coal movement continued to face challenges when competing with the cost efficiency of nuclear power.

Messaging for Renewables and Alternatives

The picture for renewable and alternative energy companies is somewhat different. Nuclear power has a long and complex history in the United States, and while the nuclear industry invested significant efforts in hyping the glories of nuclear power for the first three decades or so of its existence, more recent efforts have been aimed at measured educational efforts via detailed online Websites, such as that hosted by the World Nuclear Association, and particular interventions in media coverage around controversial nuclear issues or disasters, such as the disasters at the Fukushima Daiichi plants in Japan in 2011. Other than some targeted utility-sponsored public relation campaigns, nuclear power’s advertising and marketing efforts have been less visible in recent years than fossil fuel producers.’ Most Americans might be surprised and perhaps discomfited to learn that approximately 20 percent of U.S. electricity comes from nuclear power plants. The industry benefits from a lack of visibility and therefore a lack of controversy.

Wind, solar, geothermal, and other renewable forms of electricity generation, on the other hand, must take an active approach to public relations campaigns. They are selling both a product and an idea. Unlike in the case of coal-fired power, for example, the wind industry needs to sell consumers a particular product: the wind turbine. It aims to sell turbines and the value of wind power in general to communities, businesses, and governments. The same holds true for solar panels, solar thermal heating systems, and ground-source heat pumps (GSHPs). While petroleum companies don’t have to sell consumers on the idea of using a pump to fill their vehicles with gas, solar companies must convince consumers to put panels on their roofs, and at a time when the cost is often prohibitive, returns on investment may be slow to materialize, or consumers are opposed to renewable energy for ideological purposes. These companies must sell their product and convince consumers and decision makers that status quo reliance on fossil fuels is no longer desirable. For these industries, marketing and advertising are crucial, but perhaps of secondary concern when compared with the importance of the lobbying efforts and policy reforms needed to support these industries’ competitiveness when compared with the dominance of fossil fuels.

Case Example: Wind Power and the Pickens Plan

Wind power is steadily growing in terms of absolute electricity production in the United States and around the world, although its total percentage share of production remains small, in the single digits. Wind turbines produce electricity that is more cost competitive, on average, than power produced by solar panels, and the turbine is fast becoming a symbol for renewable power production in general. Yet, like its fossil fuel counterparts, wind power has not escaped controversy. Initiatives to site wind farms in scenic locations, such as off the shore of Nantucket Sound, have met with stiff local resistance, and concerns about safety and noise pollution have also emerged. Scholars such as Miranda J. Brady and Salma Monani have pointed to the need for wind turbine farms to be developed with particular attention to procedural and distributive justice in order to avoid the public relations and environmental problems fossil fuel companies have faced, and to develop this form of energy in a democratic and just fashion.

Wind campaigns in the United States typically invoke similar rhetoric, as do other forms of energy production: They emphasize the contribution that wind power can make to energy independence, job growth, and environmental sustainability. Such claims were central to the advertisements funded by Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens, who supported wind in grandiose terms in 2008 as part of an overall energy strategy (the Pickens Plan) linking natural gas production to wind: In his vision, natural gas production would provide clean baseload power and wind would provide supplemental supply. Pickens emphasized the rhetoric of self-determination and independence in television ads strategically aired in advance of the 2008 presidential elections. The plan was later criticized for being self-serving, given Pickens’s tremendous investments in both natural gas and wind production. In terms of specific advertising and marketing campaigns, one key difference distinguishing wind’s messaging strategies from fossil fuel strategies is the centrality of the wind turbine. Presented as sleek, high-tech, safe, and clean, turbines point to a host of symbolic meanings that are meant to appeal to audiences invested in a clean and green energy future. Fossil fuel advertisements rarely feature oil derricks or slurry impoundment ponds, while wind advertisements make the technology—and all it stands for—central.

Bibliography

Brady, Miranda J., and Monani, Salma. “Wind Power! Marketing Renewable Energy on Tribal Lands and the Struggle for Just Sustainability.” Local Environment 17, no. 2 (2012).

"Clean Coal Technologies, Carbon Capture & Sequestration." World Nuclear Association, 16 Nov. 2021, world-nuclear.org/information-library/energy-and-the-environment/clean-coal-technologies. Accessed 29 July 2024.

Leonard, Annie. “The Story of Stuff.” (2007) http://www.storyofstuff.org. Accessed 29 July 2024.

Plec, Emily, and Mary Pettenger. “Greenwashing Consumption: The Didactic Framing of ExxonMobil’s Energy Solutions.” Environmental Communication. Forthcoming, 2012.

Schneider, Jen, and Allison Knaak. “Fractured Rock, Public Ruptures: The Debate Over Hydraulic Fracturing and Gasland.” Technology and the Environment. Edited by Philip Brey, et al. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, forthcoming, 2012.

Smil, Vaclav. Energy at the Crossroads. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005.

Sovacool, Benjamin, et al. Energy and American Society—Thirteen Myths. New York: Springer, 2007.

Winberg, Steven. "Clean Coal Is Crucial for American Jobs, Energy Security, and National Supply Chains." Energy.gov, 26 June 2020, www.energy.gov/articles/clean-coal-crucial-american-jobs-energy-security-and-national-supply-chains. Accessed 29 July 2024.