ExxonMobil’s new 30-second spot on Hulu is so insane, I can’t express my rage adequately. I’ll try.
1st: To Hulu, what the hell? Remember when you only ran commercials for micro-loans and clean water and other awesome do-gooder organizations? Nice job running a commercial to convince people fracking is a good idea.
2nd: To geologist Erik Oswald. Enjoy your blood money. And I’m sorry about the aneurysm you clearly had immediately before that commercial was shot. (If you read from a script, then send my condolences to the copywriter who had the aneurysm.)
3rd: To the people who take money to allow fracking on their land, you’re probably going to come back in your next life as your worst nightmare. I’m tipping my hand here, but I’m thinking child sex slave traded to a sadist. It’s not just “I drink your milkshake,” but “I poison you with your own tap water that ignites and I ruin you in every imaginable way.” Those lives are on your hands.
4th: To people who believe ExxonMobil when they say natural gas can be released safely using new technology, read a bit about Dimock, PA.
5th: To ExxonMobil, nice try. How dumb do you think we are? Wait, forget it. You know precisely how dumb, predictable, scared, and easy to manipulate we are.
6th: To the FTC, not that you care, but I think it would be awesome if you pulled this commercial for false advertising like the Brits did with Exxon’s liquefied natural gas advert. I mean, come on, Brits in movies are always saying Americans are cool. Let’s be.
Erik Oswald ExxonMobil: "Clean and Burning"
Here’s a shot-for-shot of the Exxon commercial that makes me want to kick shins (*with my comments):
Close up of Erik Oswald, geologist, in a suit on a stool grinning. So happy. He says:
“A lot of times things are right underneath our feet and–
[Cut to sunlight shining through treetops viewed from moving vehicle.]
–all we need to do is change the way we’re thinking about ‘um.”
(*No, that’s never the case. The expression is that something is right in front of our nose or face or “if it was a snake it woulda bit ya.” And you know what’s right in front of our noses? Poisoned water from fracking. But a lot of times things are not right under our feet. That’s hardly ever the case. Also, way to make us think you were going to talk about solar energy, which is actually right in front of our noses.)
Back to Erik.
On screen text:
Erik Oswald ExxonMobil
Geologist
(*Adopted by ExxonMobil?)
He says:
“A couple decades ago we didn’t even realize just how much natural gas was trapped in rocks thousands of feet below us.”
(*So?)
[Scene of flat, barren desert then grass covered mountains viewed from a speeding car with partial splice view of power lines, car wheels, dirt ground.]
“Technology has made it possible to safely unlock this clean and burning natural gas–”
(*No, it hasn’t. That’s the problem with fracking. It’s not safe. Nor has technology made it possible. Corporate greed, corrupt politicians, and unprincipled scientists have made it possible.
Also, clean and burning? I think you meant to say clean burning. But, you’re right about burning … flammable drinking water totally tastes like burning.)
[Scene of a drill rig at night with a bright light just obscuring the American flag. Partial splice of a red machine part, neighborhood street, and top of a building that could be from your town.]
“These deposits can provide us with fuel for 100 years–
(*Nice short-sighted solution. Screw you, offspring.)
[Shot of hometown America - storefronts with red white and blue half-circle decor and a smattering of people living their lives, walking, talking, shopping. Cut to a woman adjusting an Open sign on the door of a business.)
“Providing energy security and economic growth all across this country.”
(*Not to build up what’s to come too much, but please pause a moment. Take a breath.)
Erik says:
“It just takes somebody having the idea and that’s where the discovery comes from.”
(*Disney logic makes geologist happy. All you need to do is dream it and it will come true when you wish upon a star. No. This is absolute meaningless cliche garbage. “It just take a lot of corporate greed and that’s where this crap we’re cramming comes from.” )
The ad ends with this tagline:
ExxonMobil
Taking on the world’s toughest energy challenges
(*They decided not to go with “Creating the world’s toughest public health and environmental problems at your expense.” While easy to prove with some basic deductive reasoning, ultimately it was scrapped as it was just a skosh too long.
Still, I am curious what it pays to change your last name to ExxonMobil.)
{ 27 comments… read them below or add one }
Erik Oswald is nothing but a paid stooge for the hydro-fracking polluters. He has sold his soul for a few dollars and a few minutes of fame. He should be ashamed of himself for the nonsensical dribble coming out of his mouth on those Exxon Mobil commercials. I doubt he’s even a geologist – if he is, his peers should be censuring him for his obvious money-grubbing attempt to mislead viewers. Hopefully, they are smart enough to know he’s a paid liar.
Honestly, what a bunch of claptrap. He says almost nothing. Based on what made it into the commercial, can you imagine what sort of incoherent garbage some poor video editor had to wade through?
Not everyone gets paid for allowing those idiots to frack their land. In west Texas, they are allowed to just come in and take what they want. Texas land owners no longer own their mineral rights. Add to that the diagonal drilling where they set up off the land and dig diagonally beneath that person.
Outrage!: Criminals! Rapists! It’s chemical warfare on US citizens by US citizens. And what’s our recourse? I mean, we could stand with our puny little fists ready for a fight … but our aquifer will still just get poisoned from a distance. You can’t sell your land anymore. That’s meaningless. So, what then? We could move, start over somewhere that wouldn’t ever allow this … like Vermont. But I don’t think we can all stuff ourselves into Vermont.
This is the only Google search result that came up for that maddening last line. It’s mindboggling how meaningless (not to mention illogical) it is.
And he says it with such earnest glee, like it’s profound.
I was shocked when I saw this commercial. I saw Gasland a few months ago and can’t believe a commercial like this can be put out legally. I guess this type of shady, misleading lying has been happening for years with many issues public health related, but this is SO blatant, so ridiculous, so insulting. Exxon – you are sadistic. Don’t you realize that this means EVENTUALLY your families will have no clean water to drink. You can’t drink money, you ignorant swines.
They’re probably secretly investing in a second business … tanking clean water and saving it until they’ve poisoned us all.
Googling “I hate Erik Oswald” got me here. This ad is just repugnant, and it’s everywhere! Thanks for breaking it down for us.
I’ll probably post the ad soon enough. It wasn’t online anywhere but an anti-fracking friend said he’d record it and send it to me.
This commercial is running on MSNBC.com, like every 10-minutes, between short episodes of the Rachael Maddow and Chris Matthews shows. What I find as annoying as the content and the lies and misrepresentations and the fatherly advice that tells us children that “everything is going to be alright” is that it shows how inept they are by thinking that running this same stupid commercial over and over every day for months is going to make people have more trust in what they are doing, when the fact is that, because it is overkill, it is really making people more suspicious. It is also going to fix, in peoples minds, who the villains were when the pollution starts making the surrounding land unlivable,
The Erik Oswald fracking ad was on again today and it actually made me nauseated, so I Googled “I hate the Erik Oswald ad” and got to this site to see if I’m the only one. The ad actually turns my stomach. The first time I saw it, I didn’t know anything about fracking, but my impression was that whatever he was talking about must be bad if he was trying so hard to convince us it was good. Then a friend told me to watch GasLand. Horrible! Horrible! Appreciate your comments about fracking here. Thank you.
It just takes somebody having the idea (to learn about fracking) and that’s where the discovery (of the truth, of Gasland, of the horror) comes from.
I new the ad was BS, but I didn’t really think about the fact that he was talking about fracking. I couldn’t get past how much I hated the guy. Just a gut reaction, I guess. I mean, with few exceptions, ads are canned deception. But sometimes certain ads can really rub a person the wrong way, and this one did that for me. Oswald’s squinty-eyed, self-amused, if-only-you-knew-what-I-know smile…well, I just want to slap him. Now that I really think about what he’s peddling…well, I guess it’s satisfying to know that it hasn’t been lost on some people. Hopefully there are at least few self-described conservatives feel the same way. Sometimes it seems like only self-described liberals/progressives are willing to become morally outraged over corporate greed.
Hey Julie,
Thank you for putting this stuff on the internet. I looked up “erik oswald exxon ad” and found your website.
It is truly disgusting that Exxon is destroying the drinking water for so many common Americans.
The oil companies put their people inside our government, and we went to war with an oil-rich country that was NOT home to any of the 911 criminals.
Exxon stuffs their ad into my face every time I watch a video on CNN.com. Shame on Exxon. Shame on Erik. Shame on CNN.
Yuck.
Get corporations out of OUR government.
I agree, this Exxon ad with Eric Oswald is deeply offensive and should be pulled by the FTC. Misleading.
JR
I too am deeply disturbed by this ad. It is currently running between every segment of the Rachel Maddow show on MSNBC. It is a bit ironic since I doubt that Rachel would have approved of his message (the money must be pretty hard to pass up though).
I don’t think that Eric Oswald says “clean and burning”. I believe he says “cleaner burning”. To my ear the phrase seems to have been spliced into the original recording between “unlock this” and “natural gas”. Cleaner burning that what you might ask? Surely not cleaner burning that natural gas from conventional non-fracked sources. The gas they pump out may be clean, but the ground water certainly isn’t.
JM
I must have listened to this a hundred times and couldn’t for the life of me imagine why they’d leave that “clean and burning” line in there…now I know, because it’s not what he said. Still, I like to think Oswald did say it and they spliced it in from his personal ad – “I’m clean and burning for a lady who wants to dig deep and torch this world to the ground together.” He’s a dreamer.
I hate everything about this ad. And I hate this person. Here’s a less substantive point: He says “a lot of times things are right under our feet” as if he’s talking in a metaphor but then proceeds to speak literally. I know it’s a small point but I feel like it reinforces the fact that this is aimed at idiots. Every time I see this add I want to bang my head against a wall.
Me too! I also googled “I hate Erik Oswald”!
Lot of times things are under our feet and we have to be really careful when to pull out our NO RENEWABLE RESOURCES ERIC you M***N
Exxon Mobile is not fooling Americans and Eric must have an IQ of 2 if he thinks people are going to buy into this. HAVE SOME REAL SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY.
THESE ARE TRULY NON RENEWABLE RESOURCES. We have a responsibility towards it. it is not like nobody had the idea to dig it out in the first place. it is about preserving it for future generations and using it responsibly
Eric Oswald clearly doesn’t have a whole lot going on upstairs; but he’s smart enough to take a sweet deal from Exxon Mobile for touting dangerous and poisonous corporate pillaging of our land. There are no words harsh enough to decry this sham so I won’t go there. Suffice to say Exxon Mobile and this idiot, Oswald are not foolong anyone with at least two brain cells in their head. The whole intelligent world knows what hydrofracking is all about, and some day we will hopefully ban it everywhere. Here’s a big ol’ middle finger! at ya Eric “Dumbass” Oswald; and two of ‘em for you Exxon Mobile!!
I’m so happy to have found this column because I was so outraged by the TV spot that I had to vent. What an IDIOT, I want to smack that lying smile off his face. I don’t need to add more to what already been said.
I am very sad because I HATE that this man has MY name!! The only difference is that he spelled his first name the wrong way – just like he’s spreading the WRONG information about fracking!! I should sue him for harming my good name!!
Just this commercial about 15 minutes ago. Just saw the second one, now pushing the Tar Sands. Jackass actually says Tar Sands has the ‘potential’ to create hundreds of thousands of jobs. Hundreds of thousands? Holy fracking shit, does the president know this?! Problem solved, booming economy here we come! Oh, wait. It’s just another fracking lie to promote their Ponzi scheme.
Its Labor Day, Sept 5th, 2011 now – would you believe their still trying to seduce with that crock of bs ad? I think I saw it on last nite toward the end of ESPN2′s Baseball broadcast of the Tigers demolition of the White Sox. Besides the Gasland site, another good site for info on the whole fracking problem is at http://www.ewg.org/. FYI, during the 2010 Traverse City Film Fest – Gasland screened and during the director’s live talk some folks from NW lower Michigan brought up their horrifying experiences with fracking. Unfortunately, there are considerable deposits apparently awaiting extraction and the potential and likely disaster here.