Jo Slik, the director of advertising for the newly-named company, held a news conference in London, its de facto headquarters (which has not affected its ability to avoid UK taxes through tax havens).
She parlayed a message from the company's president: "The new United (Colours of) Hydrocarbons had grown sick of hiding its rapacious behaviour behind the faux environmental image of a clean shell."
"We will use the old shell image for our renewables section and instead use the above image for our traditional polluting and raiding of the earth's plenty, e.g. oil. It's a shell spoiled by oil stains. In fact, it's swimming in crude oil. As are we. Thank you."
The pliant media had one question only, and wouldn't-you-know-it, it wasn't very critical: "I would have thought that in using 'colours' in your advertising name, that you could have used the refracting colours seen when a thin layer of oil is found on water, say... when people draw polluted water from a well, because their government refuses to use oil money to build proper water pipes, right?"
The answer was, "Very interesting. Would you like a job in our advertising department?" at which point the now-former journalist ran up on stage and fell prostrate at the rep's feet.
Image is so important in these days when advertising, media and government have melded into one great imperialist cash-grab. It was indeed the UK's former Chancellor/chancer G. Gordon (Liddy) Brown who noted that the war in Iraq was good for 'his' economy; it's the oil stupid! He said this years ago in front of a member of the media who was holding a video camera (!!) and yet it was quickly ignored, lest it wake the people from their stupor, caused by working 80-hour weeks to pay the bills.
Present at the UH conference was a critic, the shadow oil minister from an Iraqi Shia minority party, who quipped, "they could have added the deep deep red of dried Iraqi blood to the shell" The mask-wearing Niger-delta rebel representative added that his people's blood was also of a similar hue. He had in fact seen much of it being spilled by government soldiers at the behest of Shell,....uuuuh, I mean United Hydrocarbons.
[picture adapted from fotosearch.com]
