Shaming Shell

An estimated 240,000 barrels of crude oil are spilled into the Niger Delta’s waterways every year - leaving millions of people without clean water. Shell’s board were unresponsive to calls asking them to help clean up the decades of pollution they had caused. If they wouldn’t listen to Amnesty International then, Amnesty International thought, maybe they would listen to their own shareholders. We were briefed to create a campaign to coincide with Shell’s AGM at the Barbican. It was to appear as full page in the FT and talk directly to shareholders. The £5k needed to place the ad was crowdfunded from supporters, whose names appeared on it. A consequence of crowdfunding was that the campaign entered the public domain two weeks before it’s intended date and Shell got wind of it. So when, the evening before publication, the FT refused to publish we weren’t exactly surprised. It was actually good news. First of all, the crowdfunding had brought in nearly £20k so we’d already booked full pages in the Standard and Metro and had enough funds to have an Ad-van circle the Barbican. But better still was the online furore that followed when we explained to the supporters why the FT had pulled the ad. And it worked. Shortly after Shell pledged 2 billion towards cleaning up the Niger Delta. A victory of sorts though the operation will take around 30 years.