Shell Canada’s Disguised Advertising Techniques for Tar Sands

Can’t Hide the Truth

Ottawa — Sierra Club Canada filed a complaint with Advertising Standards Canada today alleging Shell Canada and Canwest have violated the Canadian Code of Advertising Standards.  Over the last three weeks, Canwest has run a series of full page features described as, “A six-week Canwest special information feature on climate change, in partnership with Shell Canada.” Sierra Club Canada was at first confused by the one-sided nature of the “information” and contacted the Ottawa Citizen only to find out the “features” were in fact full-page advertisements.

“As a former reporter and ad sales person I was confused by these Shell ads. I could not tell they were ads. They looked and read like editorial content,” said John Bennett, Executive Director of Sierra Club Canada.

Provision 2 of the Advertising Standards Code, ‘Disguised Advertising Techniques,’ states: “No advertisement shall be presented in a format or style which conceals its commercial intent.” Over the last three weeks full page feature articles have appeared in Canwest papers
including the National Post, Ottawa Citizen, Montreal Gazette, Edmonton Journal, Vancouver Sun and the Calgary Herald. The features are laid out and by-lined in a similar fashion to the rest of the publications and described as “information features.” No attempt has been made to point out to the reader that these “information features” are paid advertisements. One such feature elaborated on the virtues of Shell’s oil sands operations and how Shell was working to develop “cleaner fuels that contribute to improving air quality.”

Sierra Club Canada learned this series was an advertisement only after it complained to the Ottawa Citizen over the unbalanced presentation of an established controversial issue which would be a violation of the Code of Conduct of the Ontario Press Council. Ottawa Citizen publisher, James Orban, confirmed this was an advertising feature in
an email saying, “I believe most Citizen readers would realize the page(s) are advertisements for Shell Canada.”

Upon confirming the series of full page features were in fact advertising, Sierra Club Canada drafted a complaint to Advertising Standards Canada. The complaint calls upon Advertising Standards Canada to apply whatever sanctions it has as a voluntary regulator to
Shell Canada and Canwest. It reads in part, “It is not plausible that no one at a major newspaper chain and a multi-national corporation noticed there was no disclaimer on these ‘information feature(s)’ indicating them to be paid advertisements.”

“The role fossil fuels play in causing climate change is an important and complex issue. Newspapers and oil companies have an ethical if not legal responsibility to present their points of view in an honest straight forward manner,” said Bennett.