Greenpeace and Yes Lab vs Shell

Sites Default Files Styles Ad Preview Public Memes 1Dff95Abc986493Eb5F20C72390188Db 0

Greenpeace and the Yes Lab created a faux Shell site and are crowd sourcing ads criticizing Shells' Arctic drilling plans. (Above, an example generated by egilaslak.) In a statement released today, Shell refers to the site as a "scam but they apparently haven't fired off a nastygram to Greenpeace yet. This is on the heels of their June hoax involving a model oil rig and a fake party combined into a multi-layered prank that played some media outlets (ahem) for rubes.

"Is Greenpeace's prank on Shell oil a 'scam'?"

Shell's model oil rig spurts something nasty over guest at party ...

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

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Daneel

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/sci-tech/2012/07/epic-shell-pr-fail-no-real-villains-here-are-greenpeace
- EvilTerran
  
  … is this the bit where someone cries “concern troll!”?
Nick Weaver

IF shell wanted to sue, they really could nail Greenpeace’s head to the floor on this: It really is far beyond the legal standard for acceptable use of trademarks etc. The fake legal threats, the fake twitter feed, the fake site: they are all very very deceptive.

But Shell’s lawyers are smart here: They know that although Shell would win in court, they would lose in the court of public opinion.

Far better to just let the meme spread that “Greenpeace are liars”.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001048614989 David Botha

Stunts like this actually makes Greenpeace look far more scummy than Shell.
- http://twitter.com/ShengusKhan Shengus Khan
  
  ah c’mon bro! a bit of creative advertising and stickin to the man.
  
  i thought it was hilarious.
  
  to be scummier than shell is a bit of a stretch, actually.
Teller

Few things are more difficult to accomplish than sympathy for an oil company.
http://twitter.com/digitalArtform Joseph Francis

Wow. This makes Greenpeace look really bad. Look at that kerning!
- http://twitter.com/PeterKVT80 PeterKVT80
  
  You beat me to it. I was wondering if the kerning was deliberately bad to highlight the fact that it was a fake ad.
http://www.tumbleweed.net/ tyger11

I think this is pretty funny. The problem is, like all parodies that are a little too good – there WILL be people on the right who will take this as a good idea and run with it. See also: “self-deportation”
timquinn

I am still waiting for the end of the quote from Shell . . .
Michael Ellis Day

What’s really sad is the number of folks I’ve seen online — including good friends, I’m sorry to say — who sincerely bought this as an actual failed Shell PR initiative and railed against them for being so foolish. So many people (including friends of mine) will just automatically believe anything they’re told so long as it apparently confirms their existing views. This is not a good thing for anybody. But hey, at least Greenpeace and the Yes Lab handed Shell a useful tool in bashing critics: “The people who attack us have no critical thinking skills, just look at how they fell for that hoax site that wasn’t us at all and criticized us for it!” So, um…hurrah?
http://twitter.com/vanbinh Binh Tran

These guys are quite clever — they even created a Twitter account (@shellisprepared) begging people not to retweet anymore as they are “working overtime to remove negative ads from the site”.
Gene Poole

You forgot to close your quotes, David. Now the rest of the page is filled with Shell quotes.