Tag Archives: corporate social responsibility

1999 Shell Report “Listening and Responding – The Profits and Principles Advertising Campaign”

Following a far-reaching bribery scandal in Nigeria, the Brent Spar debacle, and the death of activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, Shell launched an advertising campaign called “Profits & Principles.” One of many internal and hard-to-find documents unearthed by Jelmer Mommers of De Correspondent, this aspirational campaign marked a public goal that “the inwardly focused Shell must become a thing of the past.” The […]

1998 Shell Internal TINA Group Scenarios 1998-2020 Report

In 1995 Royal Dutch/Shell Group (“Shell”) initiated a scenario planning process to examine how the company should respond to the forces of globalization, liberalization, and technology. The resulting internal reports, first published in 1998, have now been unearthed by Jelmer Mommers of De Correspondent. Named “TINA” for “There is no alternative” the scenarios anticipate changes […]

1987 Mobil VP Herbert Schmertz speech at Fairfield University

On April 15, 1987 Mobil Vice President, Herbert Schmertz, gave a speech at Fairfield University in Connecticut titled, “Patronage that Pays.” The speech applauds Mobil’s “affinity-of-purpose” marketing strategy, a strategy to “align the company with some worthy endeavor that most of our target audience would happily endorse.” Schmertz describes Mobil’s patronage of PBS’s Masterpiece Theater as […]

1984 Speech on Mobil’s “Environmental Perspective”

This document is a speech regarding Mobil’s environmental commitment, given by employee J.P. McCullough on April 24, 1984. The speech begins by noting that Mobil is in its “4th” generation of commitment to the environment, and goes on to describe the causes that influenced that commitment. McCullough says Mobil began its commitment to the environment as early […]