When Shell set about communicating the brand values of creativity, invention and environmental care, its chosen medium was corporate advertising: The oil giant is just one of many companies that are using complex, targeted campaigns to help communicate specific messages about the brand. David Benady reports

When Shell’s chief engineer Jaap van Ballegooijen took his teenage son Max out for a milkshake, he sparked a chain of events that would revolutionise oil exploration and transform the energy giant’s corporate communications strategy.

Jaap had been wrestling with the problem of how to access hard-to-reach oil supplies. Much of the world’s oil is scattered in hundreds of separate pockets around major oil wells but drilling each pocket is economically and environmentally unviable.

In a Eureka moment, Jaap noticed the way Max drank his milkshake, sucking the bits of froth from the edges of the glass with his bendy straw. This gave him the idea for he ‘snake well’ drill. The drill bends around corners and snakes from side to side – much like the milkshake straw – to reach those isolated pockets of oil. Van Ballegooijen’s invention enables access to scattered oil reserves from a single drilling.

Shell portrays this inspirational story in a corporate advertising campaign using a glossy Hollywood-style dramatised film of the events, a cut-down 90-second TV ad shown internationally and a print and online campaign. ‘Eureka’ aims to demonstrate the creativity, invention and environmental care which Shell claims are central to its corporate vision.

The advertising, which ran in 2007 and 2008, was the latest in a long line of corporate campaigns from Shell stretching back to the public information-style documentaries of the 1960s. But Shell came under pressure to produce a more coherent communications strategy to address its corporate image after Greenpeace’s Brent Spar oil platform protests of 1995. The big budget campaign is perhaps one of the more lavish corporate advertising productions, but many companies, especially in the energy field, have launched important corporate campaigns. BP’s Beyond Petroleum campaign, launched in 1997 and only recently abandoned, is one of the more memorable.

For many companies, the 1990s proved to be a watershed as their activities came under the spotlight from governments and campaign groups. From tobacco giants to energy companies and food manufacturers to banks, corporations have been forced to communicate their broader social values to a wide range of stakeholders. Advertising has increasingly been employed to promote these corporate messages.

Ads have a clear advantage over media relations and other lobbying strategies. A paid-for commercial gives a company control over the message in a way that persuading a journalist of a point of view over lunch cannot match. And ad campaigns allow the companies to choose exactly where, when and too whom those messages are broadcast.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, corporate campaigns tended to be boastful exercises in corporate chest-beating. Conglomerate Hanson’s ‘The company from over here that’s doing rather well over there’ was a classic example of this style. Many corporate ads were like the “deep voice of the chairman booming down from the heavens”, according to one observer.

But Raoul Pinnell, former chairman of Shell Brands International, the oil company’s marketing unit which oversaw the Eureka campaign, says that today’s corporate ads are far more  xcomplex. “In a corporate ad campaign for a large company like Shell, you’ve got to target consumers, shareholders, business customers, stakeholders in the communities you operate in and sovereign states where you want to access natural resources. The complexity of audiences makes it much more challenging than simply trying to get someone to buy a product,” he says.

The snake well drill provides an apt metaphor for the role of corporate advertising in recent years. A single ad campaign must, in effect, snake its way through all these different  stakeholder groups anddraw them into the corporate story, engendering belief in the company’s motivations and garnering support for its operations. Pinnell is confident the Snake Well campaign has managed to target the various stakeholder groups and successfully portrays Shell as a company that is both innovative on behalf of shareholders but at the same time concerned about its environmental impacts. 

The need to project a positive image of a whole company rather than just the products it sells has caused a profound shift in marketing, according to Chris Dell, managing director of specialist corporate advertising agency Masius. “Corporate advertising is alive and well but has taken on a new guise. Twenty years ago, it was driven by the stock market, by mergers and acquisitions, by name changes and corporate ventures. Those have waned. But other areas have grown, particularly the need to know more about a company’s policies and relationships,” he says. He believes that the distinction between products and the companies that make them is being blurred in advertising. “It is easy to find out who owns what these days, it is an empowerment we all have. If you want to criticise a corporation, there are channels to do that, so corporations are becoming much less faceless. They are interested in what is being said about them and want to participate in the debate.”

In the UK utility sector, this year has seen a drive by the main players to position themselves as responsible advocates of solutions to the big issues in energy. E.ON launched a press advertising campaign in September portraying itself as leading the debate on the key issues in the energy market. Jeremy Davies, director of marketing and communications who recently joined E.ON from Abbey, says that energy companies’ advertising has previously tended to address consumers with messages about price. But this year more emphasis has been placed on wider social issues. E.ON is attempting to balance the ‘tri-lemma’ of low carbon emissions, security of supply and cost. “We’ve been talking to high-level stakeholders and opinion formers about this for some time. Now we are broadening it out to more mainstream audiences through the ad campaign,” he says. The integrated campaign includes messages about price for consumers and there is a YouTube site where the company can debate its policies with critics.

Davies says corporate advertising is firmly back on the agenda. “There is growing consumer power over the way people use the web and blogs. We are trying to change people’s opinions about us as a business,” he says.

For companies that share the name of their main product, the need to project a strong corporate image dovetails with brand advertising. Shell and E.ON have grasped the nettle. Marks & Spencer – with its Plan A environmental campaign – is also an active corporate advertiser. Other corporations, such as brand owner Unilever has put a corporate symbol - the U - on all its packaging and has introduced the branding device into its advertising to alert stakeholders about ownership of the brands.

As companies put their heads above the parapet and tell the world about their corporate policies through advertising, individual brands are at the same time promoting corporate messages in their ads. Cadbury Dairy Milk’s latest campaign celebrates the brand’s recently-awarded Fair Trade status. Set in Ghana, the main source of Cadbury’s cocoa, the ad features music from local star Tinny, which is available on a single with the proceeds going to development charity CARE. This re-inforces Cadbury’s commitment to corporate social responsibility.

Laurence Green, planning director at ad agency Fallon, which created the CDM campaign says that generally, today’s corporate advertising is completely different from the style in the 80s. “It looks more like soft soap brand advertising than corporate communication,” he contends.

Many companies are discovering the attractions of using advertising to promote their corporate messages. Coca-Cola Great Britain & Ireland has launched an ad campaign this autumn to promote its ‘Recycle Zones’, disposal bins that are being placed in town centres where people can recycle their Coke cans and other waste. The ‘Keep it going, recycle’ campaign was created after Coca-Cola carried out research with the Carbon Trust which showed that recycling cans and bottles of Coke can cut the products’ carbon emissions by up to 40%.

Liz Lowe, Coca-Cola GB’s citizenship manager, says this is the first time the company has run a national ad campaign around a policy issue. It has run in Metro and The Sun and on billboards in town with Recycle Zones. “We want to demonstrate that we can take our own effective action to make our business more sustainable and help the Government reach their targets without resorting to legislation,” she says. The campaign has been created by the corporate communications team rather than the marketing arm which oversees product advertising. Assessing the effects of the campaigns will be carried out by Coca- Cola’s research unit.

Lowe believes the corporate advertising should use the same brand values as the product ads and must not come across as worthy or distant. Coke’s recycling campaign plays on the brand’s values of optimism, excitement, fun and happiness. “Advertising is a good way of bringing the recycling message home. It’s better than a letter from the local authority,” she says.

Of course, promoting the CSR agenda is not the only reason for corporate advertising. It was once used extensively during hostile bids until the Takeover Panel banned such advertising in the late 1980s. An insider says this was because each ad tended to draw complaints from the other side in a takeover battle. “We found we were spending all our time adjudicating on takeover advertising, so we decided it was best to stop it completely,” says the source.

Another common source of corporate advertising is announcing company name changes, such as Aviva’s recent rebranding campaign. Rebranding often occurs after mergers and acquisitions and bosses at specialist corporate advertising agencies hope there will be a resurgence of such work when mergers and acquisitions return to the market.

The days of lavish corporate campaigns such as Shell’s Snake Well blockbuster may have passed for the time being. Preaching energy conservation while spending squillions on advertising can look a little insincere in the present economic climate. Nevertheless, corporate advertising has emerged as a powerful weapon in the corporate communications armoury and more companies are likely to give it a shot.