There’s a new TV spot from ExxonMobil that asks us to take an energy quiz; a quiz for which they already give us the answers on screen in a spinning, morphing pie chart. The thing is, the chart claims only 1% of all electricity is produced by oil, and they have another ad that claims they’re responsible for the energy that makes everyone’s music, charges their cell phones and tablets, etc. But if they’re only creating 1% of that energy, then aren’t they claiming credit for someone else’s work?
It seems to me that the whole point of this ad and the whole “energy quiz” is to deny they are responsible for energy production, so we should blame someone else for whatever environmental damage is caused in energy production. But then why do they claim to produce the energy we need for all the things we enjoy? I’m a little confused here…
Here’s the commercial where they claim they’re not responsible for energy production (Oil = 1%):
And here’s the ad where they take credit for all the energy we use:
Maybe it’s just me, but I think of ExxonMobil as an oil company, and it seems to me they’re sending mixed signals in their ads: In one they want to claim credit for energy, but in the other they want to point the finger somewhere else. Unless they own all the dirty energy stuff now, in which case I wouldn’t want to send mixed messages, because people are pretty mad about all of the dirty energy these days. (Or unless they’re trying to show how little of our energy comes from renewables, which would be odd, because at 13%, that’s 13-times higher than oil, and without the environmental damage. {But never mind that, they’ve got this neat-looking spinning chart… Wow, man!})
