Sometimes people ask my why I haven't dived into oil industry communications and one response out of a variety of reasons, is that I feel that it's an industry dicated more by PR than actual action.
While I realize this isn't always the case, the CAPP commercial certainly demonstrates an organization clearly attempting to communicate to concerned publics well after a slew of damaging media coverage directly (National Geographic) and indirectly (other news agencies covering the fact that National Geographic covered the Alberta oilsands).
In the realm of public perception, how can something like CAPP's efforts looking nothing but as a reactive PR policy supported by an industry who's concern for the environmental stewardship of northern Alberta only becomes apparent when the negative publicity makes it possibly expensive not to do so....
While I totally acknowledge that CAPP has long existed before this whole controversy, the organization's communications effort regarding what concrete actions the industry was taking, certainly needed to happen a lot sooner than now...maybe it's just my uninformed opionion, but the CAPP commercial leaves me with the impression that the industry wasn't doing enough, until its publics told it loudly that it needed to...and where there's smoke, there's fire: something smells like a major failure in action or public relations by the oil industry in all of this...
