Marketing Magazine: Shell holds global digital review

by Gareth Jones
Marketing 23-May-07, 12:00

LONDON – Shell is kicking off a review of its multimillion pound global digital account, which is currently with Digitas London.

The fuel company is in the process of inviting a number of UK-based agencies to pitch for the business, which is understood to comprise web development, online advertising and eCRM.

The move comes just months after Shell worked with Digitas London and JWT on the launch of a global corporate social responsibility initiative highlighting its green credentials.

The integrated campaign focuses on Shell’s technical innovations and the work it is doing to reduce environmental damage. The activity is intended to rival the green credentials of BP, which has already allied itself with environmental concerns (Marketing 31 January).

Shell also works on a project-by-project basis with digital agency Digit and interactive TV specialist Weapon7, which recently launched a red button campaign featuring a nine minute movie called ‘Eureka’. The movie shows how Shell is innovating and solving problems associated with energy and the environment while exploring for oil

Comments:

John Donovan – 23/05/2007

Whoever wins the Shell account will be handed a poisoned chalice. The track record of Royal Dutch Shell in terms of integrity and the environment is very difficult to defend: the sale of tainted gasoline in the USA and Canada, participation in price fixing cartels, the tragic explosion at a Shell Oil refinery in Norco in which six people lost their lives, Clean Air Act violations, repeated environmental infringements in Louisiana, a pipeline rupture in Washington State which resulted in an explosion and more deaths, repeated multimillion dollar fines for groundwater contamination, more fines for unauthorised venting and flaring of gas. Details can be found on Wikipedia at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_surrounding_Royal_Dutch_Shell

Shell has also been guilty of causing hellish pollution in Nigeria for decades, engaging in corruption with successive Nigerian regimes to plunder billions in oil revenues while leaving the local population to live in abject poverty. The following link is to a leaked Shell confidential internal report in which Shell admits that its operations in the Niger Delta have fuelled corruption and violence.

http://www.shellnews.net/2004%20Documents/peaceandsecurity/peaceandsecurityinthenigerdeltawebpage.htm

The agency which wins the account will be faced with the world’s most successful gripe site which received over 3 million hits and 2 million page views in April 2007. To add insult to injury, it operates under the dotcom domain name of the unified company: Royal Dutch Shell Plc. Shell International attempted to seize the domain name in 2005 but lost the case.

Posted by John Donovan, co-owner of the website: http://royaldutchshellplc.com/

This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, and shellnews.net, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.