Yesterday, a firestorm erupted on the Internet. This particular fight concerned Chevron and the Yes Men, the activist/culture jamming/tongue-in-cheek pranksters.
Early morning on Monday, October 18, 2010, Chevron announced its new “We Agree” advertising campaign. They did so via a press release posted on their corporate site. You may read the press release here. A short time later, the Yes Men issued an ersatz satirical press release, disguised as a Chevron document and taking the ideas behind the “We Agree” campaign to the Nth degree with spoofing turned up to 11. You can read that ersatz press release here. But the Yes Men didn’t let up with this one press release.
Hours later, after word of the lampooning hit the media, the Yes Men, like Al Qaeda which is known by its trademark one-two punch, released a second ersatz press release also disguised as an official Chevron document. The second release portrayed Chevron officials as commenting on the first Yes Men press release. You may read that second press release here. And to add in a third jab, the Yes Men included a sentence and a link at the end of the second press release saying that Advertising Age was taken in by the ruse. The link in that sentence takes you to an ersatz Advertising Age page, which you may visit via the link at the bottom of the second ersatz press release or just go to the Ad Age spoof via this link. So, as of late yesterday, the Yes Men committed a “triple punk.”
But will their protest claims against Chevron be what people remember? Or will it be the “triple punking” that sticks in people’s minds? Or will it be the original message of the Chevron “We Agree” campaign.
I’m voting that its the Chevron message that has the legs in this throwdown between activist and corporation. Why?
Because the Yes Men may have, indeed, punked their own message. Their triple play campaign has drawn so much attention to the original “We Agree” campaign that in the long run probably more people will attend to the Chevron campaign, which is bound to last longer, than to the Yes Men triple play, which is bound to be of a much shorter duration. So in the end, the Yes Men may make the Chevron campaign more successful than it would have been if the Yes Men hadn’t indulged in the tomfoolery.
