# The Panic: How Mobil Oil Changed Advertising Forever

An episode of [Drilled](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1439735906), 18 Jul 2023, 33 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/tracking.swap.fm/track/SxlTEPDY7xDg35RXkASs/pdrl.fm/3e5572/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/9a7ab5ee-ce11-48ff-a544-b3ec00ea9b1e/59a605d6-827b-40f4-8eb2-b3ec00efe21a/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=7f82f371-6316-4ea6-a108-b3ec00ea9b2d

In the 1970s, Mobil Oil invented the advertorial and was aggressively pursuing an entirely new type of marketing, branding the company as a person itself with a unique personality and opinions that demanded attention. When public backlash threatened to undermine their approach, they launched a campaign that would change the course of United States culture, policy, advertising, and history. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:01] Speaker 1: Everyone has a story I can learn from to be
[0:04] Speaker 1: fearless like her, to have the confidence to achieve my dreams.
[0:09] Speaker 2: To know this ad that you're hearing. It starts out
[0:12] Speaker 2: with a little girl dressed in an Amelia Earhart outfit.
[0:17] Speaker 2: Then it pans to a montage of women playing golf professionals. Clearly,
[0:24] Speaker 2: nearly one hundred thousand girls are participating in lpga Usta
[0:29] Speaker 2: Girls Golf. It's about so much more than golf. It
[0:35] Speaker 2: sure is golf Lady, because this ad was paid for
[0:38] Speaker 2: by Chevron, who sponsored the program. And it's not just
[0:41] Speaker 2: Chevron either. Take a listen to this recent Conico Phillips ad,
[0:46] Speaker 2: which sounds like it's actually advertising an education nonprofit.
[0:52] Speaker 3: Who's gonna hold you back.
[0:55] Speaker 1: I always wanted to be a teacher. It was just
[0:57] Speaker 1: something that came natural to me.
[1:01] Speaker 4: If I knew I wanted to be a teacher when
[1:04] Speaker 4: I was a middle schooler, and now I'm a teacher
[1:07] Speaker 4: here at my old middle school.
[1:11] Speaker 2: Ads like these and the activities behind them, from sponsoring
[1:15] Speaker 2: sports events and teams to funding education initiatives or supporting
[1:19] Speaker 2: women in stem have become so common that you might
[1:23] Speaker 2: be wondering why I'd bother calling attention to them at all.
[1:27] Speaker 2: But it's important to talk about why companies, and especially
[1:31] Speaker 2: oil companies, spend so much money on stuff that is
[1:35] Speaker 2: entirely unrelated to their core business and why you almost
[1:39] Speaker 2: never see an ad that's about what they actually do.
[1:44] Speaker 2: It's not so much about being a good corporate citizen
[1:47] Speaker 2: as it is about seeming like a citizen period, someone
[1:52] Speaker 2: with ideas and policy positions, morals, ethics, a philosophy, a reputation,
[1:59] Speaker 2: and most of importantly, a personality that's mostly due to
[2:05] Speaker 2: a guy. Longtime listeners of this podcast might recognize one
[2:09] Speaker 2: of my long running obsessions.
[2:11] Speaker 1: Herb Schmirtz.
[2:13] Speaker 2: Here's what ol Herb had to say about the idea
[2:15] Speaker 2: of companies doing philanthropy for philanthropy's sake.
[2:19] Speaker 3: It shows a sophistication and awareness on the part of
[2:24] Speaker 3: corporations that they can tie their business interests to other
[2:30] Speaker 3: interests in the cultural and educational and philanthropic area and
[2:35] Speaker 3: yet be able to show to whomever's interested, whether it
[2:38] Speaker 3: be shareholders or whatever, that there is a bottom line
[2:43] Speaker 3: payout for the giver.
[2:47] Speaker 2: Herbschmirtz was a fascinating dude. He worked in military intelligence
[2:51] Speaker 2: and as a labor lawyer, sorting out disputes, mostly on
[2:55] Speaker 2: behalf of the government. In the nineteen sixties, he actually
[2:58] Speaker 2: helped to end a major life Shorman strike. Here's LBJ
[3:03] Speaker 2: and his labor secretary talking about it and.
[3:06] Speaker 5: Wants order longshowman. That's the serious one, and I should
[3:11] Speaker 5: I should sit down and bring you or give you
[3:15] Speaker 5: a complete memorandum on that that one is not in
[3:17] Speaker 5: good shape. The dock when is just not in good shape?
[3:23] Speaker 5: What can we do beforeward through it? And it's very
[3:26] Speaker 5: likely to bring it out. I had them in this
[3:28] Speaker 5: last week. And the trouble is that the that the company,
[3:31] Speaker 5: the employers want to settle it in Congress and the
[3:36] Speaker 5: union want to sell it in the White House. About
[3:37] Speaker 5: what it comes down to.
[3:39] Speaker 2: Schmertz also helped run JFK's presidential campaign. Eventually he ran
[3:45] Speaker 2: Bobby Kennedy's campaign too and Ted's. In between running campaigns
[3:51] Speaker 2: for the Kennedys, Herb Schmertz had another job, VP of
[3:55] Speaker 2: Public Affairs for Mobile Oil. Mobile initially hired Schmertz as
[4:01] Speaker 2: a labor lawyer, but when he returned to work after
[4:04] Speaker 2: taking a leave of absence to work on Bobby Kennedy's campaign,
[4:08] Speaker 2: the company thought, hmmm, maybe someone so tight with the
[4:12] Speaker 2: Democrats would be more helpful in their public affairs office.
[4:16] Speaker 2: Schmertz thought the rough and tumbled tactics he'd learned of
[4:20] Speaker 2: running campaigns in DC could be helpful to Mobil too,
[4:23] Speaker 2: and so he got a promotion. It helped that the
[4:27] Speaker 2: company's CEO at the time, a guy named Rolly Warner,
[4:30] Speaker 2: had a lot in common with Schmertz. They were both
[4:33] Speaker 2: Ivy League educated but good at talking to normal people,
[4:37] Speaker 2: and they both thought it was important for Mobil to
[4:39] Speaker 2: stand up for itself more often. In the early nineteen seventies,
[4:43] Speaker 2: with an oil crisis brewing and Americans pissed off about
[4:47] Speaker 2: waiting in line for hours to get gas, the two
[4:50] Speaker 2: hatched a plan to take charge of Mobile's public image.
[4:58] Speaker 3: You have to find unconveyed no ways to communicate to
[5:01] Speaker 3: the public. It's not a question of convincing the press
[5:04] Speaker 3: of anything. It's a question of convincing the public. And
[5:07] Speaker 3: to do the job properly, you have to really go
[5:10] Speaker 3: around the press, or beyond the press, or against the
[5:13] Speaker 3: press to get a story out so that the public
[5:16] Speaker 3: focus is on it, not the press. If you're just
[5:18] Speaker 3: going to limit yourself to getting the press to focus
[5:20] Speaker 3: on You're not doing the entire job.
[5:23] Speaker 2: At the time, issue advertising, this thing of an oil
[5:26] Speaker 2: company doing an ad about diversity or environmental initiatives, it
[5:31] Speaker 2: was relatively new. Schmertz eventually called it affinity of purpose marketing,
[5:37] Speaker 2: not great branding, but he explained why in a speech.
[5:42] Speaker 3: The term affinity of purpose marketing is a term that
[5:45] Speaker 3: I developed because the American Express has caused related marketing.
[5:52] Speaker 3: But it basically says the same thing.
[5:55] Speaker 2: Affinity of purpose marketing cause related marketing. Today this is
[5:59] Speaker 2: basically just marketing, But back then it was pretty revolutionary,
[6:04] Speaker 2: especially in the oil industry. Schmertz thought the company needed
[6:08] Speaker 2: to focus on ideas and issues rather than just selling
[6:12] Speaker 2: gas at stations, and to do that it needed more
[6:16] Speaker 2: than just the ideas themselves. Mobile needed a personality. Here
[6:20] Speaker 2: he is a leader in life, describing that personality, well,
[6:25] Speaker 2: it was multifaceted.
[6:27] Speaker 6: It was a personality where we believed very strongly about
[6:31] Speaker 6: the importance of public policiation. Secondly, we believed fervently that
[6:36] Speaker 6: as a sort of a custodian of a large corporation
[6:40] Speaker 6: and as custodians of vast resources and employment and everything else.
[6:45] Speaker 6: That we were not doing our job if we did
[6:47] Speaker 6: not participate in the marketplace of ideas. Third part of
[6:51] Speaker 6: our personality was we believed in that a democracy is
[6:55] Speaker 6: composed of a group of free institutions. We believed in
[6:59] Speaker 6: free market, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, academic freedom,
[7:04] Speaker 6: freedom to organize and participate in union activities.
[7:08] Speaker 3: Government intrusion into the marketplace of ideas would limit our
[7:12] Speaker 3: freedom of speech and distort the selection of our leaders.
[7:16] Speaker 2: Wow, if Mobil was a person, they'd be kind of
[7:20] Speaker 2: a Dick Ben Shapiro as a company. Anyway. You'll note
[7:25] Speaker 2: too that a lot of these so called personality traits
[7:29] Speaker 2: are more like policy positions. But over time, Schmertz started
[7:33] Speaker 2: to do various things to build out a sense of
[7:36] Speaker 2: who Mobile was, and he very intentionally did things that
[7:41] Speaker 2: no other oil exec had really thought about doing. At
[7:44] Speaker 2: one point he described his approach to this as being
[7:46] Speaker 2: like a political campaign for a company. He sponsored a
[7:50] Speaker 2: bunch of art exhibitions, for example, and started a literary prize,
[7:54] Speaker 2: the Pegasus Prize, in nineteen seventy seven, to honor works
[7:59] Speaker 2: from country whose literature is rarely translated into English. For Mobile.
[8:04] Speaker 2: It also helped to strengthen the company's relationships with various
[8:08] Speaker 2: Middle Eastern countries where it was hoping to drill for oil.
[8:13] Speaker 2: Schmertz also hired writers to write weekly opinion pieces that
[8:16] Speaker 2: he edited and paid to run them in The New
[8:19] Speaker 2: York Times, and of course, he sponsored Masterpiece theater.
[8:26] Speaker 5: The Bust of Base Theatre is brought to you by Mobile,
[8:30] Speaker 5: proviting the fuel but helps public television.
[8:32] Speaker 2: Run Hirschmertz wrote a whole book about his tactics. It's
[8:38] Speaker 2: called Goodbye to the Low Profile. In Spanish, it went
[8:41] Speaker 2: by the much better title Elsilenzio noesentable. Silence isn't Profitable.
[8:48] Speaker 2: In it, Schmertz implores his fellow PR guys to stop
[8:52] Speaker 2: being nice to the press, to stop being quiet about
[8:55] Speaker 2: it when they think that the press is being unfair
[8:57] Speaker 2: to them, and to start shouting their ideas from every
[9:00] Speaker 2: corner of the public square that they can access. Schmertz
[9:05] Speaker 2: gives a fascinating window into his whole process in this book.
[9:09] Speaker 2: At one point he talks about commissioning a survey to
[9:12] Speaker 2: gauge the public's opinion of Mobile before and after the
[9:15] Speaker 2: launch of his big issue advertising push, and he remembers
[9:19] Speaker 2: fondly how the survey taker said to him, Mobile must
[9:23] Speaker 2: be the thinking man's oil company. Did the survey taker
[9:28] Speaker 2: actually say that, We'll never know. The point is that
[9:32] Speaker 2: was Herb's goal, classing up Mobile and making it the
[9:35] Speaker 2: literary gentleman of oil companies. But while there is a
[9:39] Speaker 2: lot of evidence to suggest that Herb really liked to
[9:43] Speaker 2: hobknob with the creative elite, that wasn't the goal. It
[9:47] Speaker 2: was just a fun side benefit. The point was humanizing Mobile,
[9:51] Speaker 2: making him seem smart and trustworthy. Oh yeah, Mobil is
[9:56] Speaker 2: definitely a hymn I bother making an oil company seem
[10:02] Speaker 2: like a smart, trustworthy dude, so that when he came
[10:05] Speaker 2: at you with ideas.
[10:06] Speaker 1: Like, hey, why don't we be more off for drooling.
[10:10] Speaker 2: You might be more likely to think it's not a
[10:13] Speaker 2: terrible idea.
[10:16] Speaker 7: According to the US Geological Survey, there may be sixty
[10:20] Speaker 7: billion barrels of oil or more beneath our continental shelves.
[10:24] Speaker 7: Some people say we should be drilling for that oil
[10:26] Speaker 7: and gas. Others say we shouldn't because of the possible
[10:30] Speaker 7: environmental risks. We'd like to know what you think, write Mobile,
[10:34] Speaker 7: Pole Room six four nine one fifty East forty second Street,
[10:38] Speaker 7: New York, one one seven. We'd like to hear from
[10:42] Speaker 7: all of you.
[10:44] Speaker 2: So, Okay, this is interesting history, right, but why are
[10:47] Speaker 2: we talking about it today? Well, at a certain point,
[10:50] Speaker 2: Schmertz and Warner ran into an obstacle. They wanted to
[10:55] Speaker 2: take the advertorial program that they've been running with The
[10:58] Speaker 2: New York Times and do it on TV.
[11:00] Speaker 1: Two.
[11:02] Speaker 2: Schmertz commissioned a few videos, and they went to the
[11:05] Speaker 2: big three TV broadcasters, ABC, CBS, and NBC. Remember this
[11:11] Speaker 2: was before cable was widespread and long before streaming. The
[11:16] Speaker 2: three big broadcasters were a major source of information and
[11:21] Speaker 2: entertainment for the American public.
[11:23] Speaker 1: Two of the.
[11:23] Speaker 2: Three, ABC and CBS turned the ad buy down flat.
[11:28] Speaker 2: They said it would violate their ethics clauses and that
[11:31] Speaker 2: it might run a foul of the fairness doctrine, which
[11:34] Speaker 2: required broadcasters to present both sides of controversial issues. They
[11:39] Speaker 2: told Schmertz that when it came to covering important political issues,
[11:44] Speaker 2: they left that to their journalists. Running these new fangled
[11:48] Speaker 2: ads of mobiles felt like broadcasting propaganda and they weren't
[11:52] Speaker 2: into it. Let's all pause for a moment and appreciate
[11:58] Speaker 2: in America in which met corporations had a shred of
[12:02] Speaker 2: dignity for Mobile, though this was an all hands on
[12:08] Speaker 2: deck moment. If the TV guys said this was propaganda.
[12:12] Speaker 2: What if the New York Times started to feel weird
[12:15] Speaker 2: about running it every single week. What if PBS decided
[12:19] Speaker 2: its partnership with Mobile was no longer kosher. What if
[12:23] Speaker 2: all that work on developing a personality, getting their ideas
[12:27] Speaker 2: into the public square was just a waste of time.
[12:30] Speaker 2: In the end, they couldn't have it, and so they
[12:34] Speaker 2: developed a strategy that would protect their new human version
[12:38] Speaker 2: of Mobile. And that is a problem we are still
[12:42] Speaker 2: very much dealing with today. That's the story we're going
[12:45] Speaker 2: to get into in this drilled mini series. Welcome to Yeah,
[12:50] Speaker 2: Why Not herb? A three part mini series on the
[12:54] Speaker 2: oil guy who popularized corporate personhood and how it's become
[12:59] Speaker 2: one of the biggest problems facing climate action today. Part one,
[13:04] Speaker 2: The Panic After this quick break.
[13:18] Speaker 4: Mister Olsen, are you taking the position that there is
[13:23] Speaker 4: no difference in the First Amendment rights of an individual?
[13:28] Speaker 4: The corporation, after all, is not endowed by its creator
[13:33] Speaker 4: with inalienable rights, So is there any distinction that Congress
[13:41] Speaker 4: could draw between corporations and natural human beings full purposes
[13:48] Speaker 4: of campaign finance.
[13:50] Speaker 8: What the Court has said in the First Amendment context
[13:53] Speaker 8: New York Times versus Sullivan, Gross Chain versus Associated Press,
[13:58] Speaker 8: and over and over again a corporations are persons entitled
[14:02] Speaker 8: to protection under the First Amendment.
[14:05] Speaker 2: That's the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg talking to Ted Olsen,
[14:09] Speaker 2: former Solicitor General of the United States, a founding member
[14:12] Speaker 2: of the Federalist Society and a partner in the corporate
[14:16] Speaker 2: law firm Gibson Dunn, which represents Chevron along with several
[14:20] Speaker 2: other companies in the fossil fuel business. To the extent
[14:24] Speaker 2: that Americans think about the idea of corporate free speech
[14:27] Speaker 2: at all, it tends to hinge on this one Supreme
[14:31] Speaker 2: Court case from twenty ten, Citizens United versus the Federal
[14:35] Speaker 2: Election Committee. It was a weird case. Basically, a tea
[14:39] Speaker 2: party Republican group called Citizens United made a movie about
[14:43] Speaker 2: Hillary Clinton, and they thought it was a documentary, but
[14:47] Speaker 2: it was very obviously not. It was a bit of
[14:49] Speaker 2: campaign marketing. It was called Hillary the Movie.
[14:54] Speaker 1: She is steeped in controversy, steeped in sleeves. That's why
[15:00] Speaker 1: they don't want us to look at our record.
[15:02] Speaker 2: Obviously, this was not a movie that was going to
[15:04] Speaker 2: get a theatrical release, but Citizens United had arranged to
[15:08] Speaker 2: release it as a video on demand offering on a
[15:11] Speaker 2: few cable channels right before the Democratic primaries in January
[15:15] Speaker 2: two thousand and eight, but it was classified as electioneering communication,
[15:21] Speaker 2: which had been made illegal by the Federal Election Commission.
[15:24] Speaker 2: The producers fed a lawsuit in the U. S. District
[15:27] Speaker 2: Court for DC, trying to get a ruling that would
[15:29] Speaker 2: allow them to show the film and various promotional ads
[15:32] Speaker 2: for it. The District court judges ruled that there was
[15:35] Speaker 2: quote no reasonable interpretation of the movie other than as
[15:39] Speaker 2: an appeal to vote against Senator Clinton, so it clearly
[15:43] Speaker 2: qualified as electioneering communication. The producers appealed to the Supreme Court,
[15:49] Speaker 2: which took the case up. For some reason, it was
[15:53] Speaker 2: a weird decision to begin with for them to even
[15:55] Speaker 2: hear this case, because by the time they could hear it,
[15:58] Speaker 2: the election would have been passed and the whole argument
[16:01] Speaker 2: would be a mood point. When it ruled in twenty ten,
[16:04] Speaker 2: the Supreme Court upheld the District court on the fact
[16:07] Speaker 2: that the film was in fact electioneering communication. But it
[16:12] Speaker 2: applied what's called the strict scrutiny test to the First
[16:16] Speaker 2: Amendment and concluded that because the money for this film
[16:21] Speaker 2: wasn't being paid directly to a candidate for a campaign,
[16:25] Speaker 2: it wasn't illegal under the FEC's laws. Just to make
[16:29] Speaker 2: it clear, the Justices emphasize in their ruling that corporations
[16:33] Speaker 2: and labor unions can spend as much as they want
[16:36] Speaker 2: to convince people to vote for or against a candidate,
[16:39] Speaker 2: and they don't have to disclose who's paying for what
[16:43] Speaker 2: or to what end.
[16:45] Speaker 9: It basically says that from now on, corporations can spend directly.
[16:50] Speaker 1: From their treasuries.
[16:53] Speaker 9: And that opens up this, I mean incalculable pool of money.
[16:59] Speaker 2: This is Robert her a professor at the Journalism School
[17:02] Speaker 2: at the University of Oklahoma. I went looking for Professor
[17:06] Speaker 2: Kerr because he wrote two very detailed academic books about
[17:10] Speaker 2: what he calls the corporate free speech movement, and one
[17:14] Speaker 2: of them focuses entirely on mobile Oil's role in it,
[17:18] Speaker 2: which we're going to get to in a minute. But first,
[17:21] Speaker 2: more on the impact of Citizens United.
[17:25] Speaker 9: All the business corporations in the world can now spend
[17:30] Speaker 9: freely from their stockholders' money. Really, Over the years, because
[17:34] Speaker 9: I wrote so much about it, people often ask me
[17:36] Speaker 9: to participate in different kinds of discussions, and a lot
[17:40] Speaker 9: of people first will say, well, I think corporations should
[17:45] Speaker 9: have a right to speak, and that's a broadly held view.
[17:47] Speaker 9: Corporations should have a right to speak. And then when
[17:52] Speaker 9: I'll say, okay, but do you think they should have
[17:54] Speaker 9: a right If you've invested in a corporation, should they
[17:56] Speaker 9: have a right to spend your investment for political purposes?
[18:01] Speaker 9: And they almost always say no. Almost everybody, whether they
[18:05] Speaker 9: call themselves liberal or conservative, they almost always agree, well, no,
[18:09] Speaker 9: I invested that because I wanted to make a profit.
[18:12] Speaker 1: I don't want the.
[18:13] Speaker 9: Corporation deciding which political side, because when people think about it,
[18:17] Speaker 9: they realize, you know, wherever their personal political views lie,
[18:24] Speaker 9: if a corporation can spend the stockholders' money, they might
[18:27] Speaker 9: spend it for someone you support, but they could very
[18:30] Speaker 9: well spend it for someone you don't.
[18:32] Speaker 2: What a lot of people don't know is that there
[18:35] Speaker 2: was a key case that came a few decades before
[18:39] Speaker 2: Citizens United that was really the first domino to fall
[18:43] Speaker 2: on corporate free speech.
[18:46] Speaker 10: There was a pretty big effort to get a Supreme
[18:50] Speaker 10: Court ruling that basically supported corporate speech and the right
[18:54] Speaker 10: of corporations to do advertising of their not just product aising,
[19:00] Speaker 10: but of their you know, positions.
[19:04] Speaker 2: That's Brown University environmental sociologist doctor Robert Brule. The ruling
[19:09] Speaker 2: he's referring to was a case called First National Bank
[19:11] Speaker 2: of Boston versus Ballatti. It was brought by a bank
[19:15] Speaker 2: that wanted to be able to advertise in favor of
[19:18] Speaker 2: a ballot referendum that it had also backed financially. It
[19:23] Speaker 2: violated a state law in Massachusetts that prohibited corporations from
[19:27] Speaker 2: this sort of political funding, but the bank decided to
[19:31] Speaker 2: challenge that law in a case that went all the
[19:33] Speaker 2: way to the Supreme Court and won. It was the
[19:37] Speaker 2: first time the Court had stepped in to define corporate
[19:41] Speaker 2: First Amendment rights.
[19:45] Speaker 10: I don't think people really appreciate how big of a
[19:49] Speaker 10: deal that was in shifting the rules of speech in
[19:54] Speaker 10: the public space that now suddenly corporations could use their budget,
[20:00] Speaker 10: which are enormously larger than individuals, to advocate their position
[20:08] Speaker 10: in the public space. And as a sociologist, I would
[20:12] Speaker 10: say that what this did was it allowed for a
[20:16] Speaker 10: systematic distortion of the public space. Is that it gives
[20:21] Speaker 10: corporations basically a loudspeaker to amplify their voice above everybody else's.
[20:29] Speaker 10: And in a media environment where there's many, many competing voices,
[20:34] Speaker 10: the ability to get your message out repeatedly, over and
[20:39] Speaker 10: over and over again an opposition to other voices is
[20:46] Speaker 10: enormously influential in getting your viewpoint to be part of
[20:50] Speaker 10: the public discussion and eventually become part of the taken
[20:54] Speaker 10: for granted worldview.
[20:58] Speaker 2: And here's where we bring it back to Mobile Oil
[21:00] Speaker 2: and our old pal Herb Schmirtz.
[21:03] Speaker 10: And Mobile was one of the leading corporations to fight
[21:06] Speaker 10: for that legal right.
[21:10] Speaker 2: That's why Robert Kerr wound up writing a whole book
[21:12] Speaker 2: about Mobile's role in shaping free speech, a book he
[21:15] Speaker 2: actually interviewed Herbsmirtz for.
[21:17] Speaker 9: He was very pleasant, you know, a little bit argumentative,
[21:20] Speaker 9: but not much. He said that looking back, he thought
[21:24] Speaker 9: the Mobile op eds demonstrated that corporations can participate in
[21:28] Speaker 9: the dialogue and that Mobile had achieved leadership.
[21:32] Speaker 1: And that's basically true.
[21:33] Speaker 9: They did nobody, no one else utilized The New York
[21:38] Speaker 9: Times op ed page the way Mobile did.
[21:41] Speaker 2: I don't think he meant it this way, but wooh,
[21:43] Speaker 2: sick burn on the New York Times embarrassing. Anyway, Mobile
[21:49] Speaker 2: didn't just shape public discourse by using the media as
[21:52] Speaker 2: a tool. It also got involved in shaping the legal
[21:57] Speaker 2: structures that would allow them to have more influence, to
[22:01] Speaker 2: be the loudest voice in the room.
[22:04] Speaker 9: He got into Bolotti some I don't think in his mind,
[22:11] Speaker 9: at least many years later, he wasn't looking back like, yeah,
[22:13] Speaker 9: we won that and that change history. He was on
[22:17] Speaker 9: the side that won and it did change history. And
[22:19] Speaker 9: of course that's the thing I can talk about endlessly.
[22:22] Speaker 9: But he said the reason they got into it at
[22:27] Speaker 9: first was that they saw the energy crisis of the
[22:31] Speaker 9: nineteen seventies coming, and it was a big deal anyone
[22:34] Speaker 9: who was alive then as I was, I mean, it
[22:36] Speaker 9: dominated not just media discussions but popular discussions. And you know,
[22:44] Speaker 9: man on the street, everybody was for years and years
[22:47] Speaker 9: was talking about the price of gasoline going up, the
[22:50] Speaker 9: long lines at the gas stations, and you know, sometimes
[22:54] Speaker 9: the gas stations closed because they had no gasoline. And
[22:57] Speaker 9: he said that Mobile felt that media in general were
[23:01] Speaker 9: getting it wrong and that they had to come in
[23:04] Speaker 9: and correct things.
[23:06] Speaker 2: That's why mobile got into what they called issue advertising
[23:10] Speaker 2: or affinity of purpose marketing. But they started to look
[23:13] Speaker 2: for ways the law could protect that type of marketing
[23:16] Speaker 2: because of one big threat to it in the early
[23:19] Speaker 2: nineteen seventies. Here's Schmertz talking about that threat in a
[23:24] Speaker 2: promotional video he made for the National Association of Manufacturers
[23:27] Speaker 2: to circulate to executives at other big corporations.
[23:31] Speaker 11: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,
[23:35] Speaker 11: or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom
[23:39] Speaker 11: of speech or of the press, while the right of
[23:42] Speaker 11: the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the Government
[23:45] Speaker 11: for a redress of grievances. That was the first Amendment.
[23:50] Speaker 11: And you may not be aware of it, but there
[23:52] Speaker 11: are two constraints imposed by television networks that we contend
[23:57] Speaker 11: are not consistent with these First Amendments, right, And I'd
[24:00] Speaker 11: like to discuss these constraints with you.
[24:03] Speaker 2: Yep, it was the TV thing I mentioned before. In
[24:07] Speaker 2: the early nineteen seventies, high on the success of his
[24:10] Speaker 2: Weekly New York Times advertorials, Schmertz tried to take a
[24:14] Speaker 2: video version to the three big networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC.
[24:19] Speaker 2: AC and CBS turned it down flat. NBC accepted a
[24:22] Speaker 2: couple of the ads, but asked for major edits. It
[24:26] Speaker 2: was a huge threat to this plan that he and
[24:29] Speaker 2: Mobile CEO Rolly Warner had cooked up to try to
[24:32] Speaker 2: mitigate the impact of the energy crisis on Mobile's reputation
[24:37] Speaker 2: and profits. But Schmertz sold it as a huge threat
[24:41] Speaker 2: to all businesses and to the American way of life.
[24:47] Speaker 11: The first constraint, what you may not be aware of,
[24:50] Speaker 11: is that the television networks take the position that controversial
[24:54] Speaker 11: issues of public importance should only be presented in formats
[24:59] Speaker 11: determined by broad cash journalists. They contend that the public's
[25:02] Speaker 11: interest will best be served by this limitation. The second
[25:06] Speaker 11: constraint involves the ability to purchase time to present what
[25:11] Speaker 11: we contend is issue or opinion advertising. The networks take
[25:15] Speaker 11: the position that they will not sell commercial time to
[25:19] Speaker 11: advertisers to present what they define as controversial issues of
[25:25] Speaker 11: public importance. Now, some of the things that they have
[25:29] Speaker 11: considered controversial are offshore drilling, oil company profits. The energy
[25:34] Speaker 11: crisis itself has been considered a controversial relationship by one
[25:37] Speaker 11: state station. Now When you put these two constraints together,
[25:42] Speaker 11: the result is that the American people are not getting
[25:44] Speaker 11: adequate information to make up their minds on a very
[25:48] Speaker 11: crucial issue, namely, the energy crisis and the development of
[25:51] Speaker 11: adequate energy for the United States.
[25:54] Speaker 2: Schmertz and Warner immediately started talking to business groups like
[25:58] Speaker 2: the National Association Manufacturer Is, the Chamber of Commerce, and
[26:01] Speaker 2: various economics clubs about this looming threat against American business
[26:07] Speaker 2: and with it, democracy itself. They wrote op eds, They
[26:11] Speaker 2: went on the radio. They highlighted the problem in their
[26:14] Speaker 2: weekly New York Times spot. They argue that TV was
[26:17] Speaker 2: doing a superficial job at best of covering the energy crisis,
[26:21] Speaker 2: and that by rejecting mobiles ads, they were robbing the
[26:25] Speaker 2: American public of crucial information.
[26:28] Speaker 11: And the result is that you get really superficial coverage,
[26:33] Speaker 11: a visually attractive story, not one that really relates to
[26:37] Speaker 11: what caused the shortage, what caused the crisis, and where
[26:40] Speaker 11: do we.
[26:40] Speaker 7: Go from here?
[26:42] Speaker 11: Now, that would be all right if we were allowed
[26:46] Speaker 11: to run the commercials that we think the people are
[26:49] Speaker 11: entitled to receive and the information that we would like
[26:52] Speaker 11: to impart to the American people, And indeed if others
[26:54] Speaker 11: were allowed to present their views, so that the American
[26:57] Speaker 11: people received a very wide spectrum of views and could
[27:01] Speaker 11: get all the information and then make up their mind
[27:03] Speaker 11: on these important natures. But we're not allowed to do that,
[27:06] Speaker 11: as I said, Television networks say that they will not
[27:10] Speaker 11: accept commercials that.
[27:11] Speaker 1: Deal with controversial issues.
[27:13] Speaker 11: So that means, as I said, that the issues that
[27:16] Speaker 11: we want to present only can be presented in formats
[27:20] Speaker 11: determined by broadcast journalists. We can't say it the way
[27:23] Speaker 11: we'd like to say it. And you, the American people,
[27:26] Speaker 11: really are not getting an adequate opportunity to get satisfactory information.
[27:32] Speaker 2: We still hear arguments like this today. So let me
[27:35] Speaker 2: just emphasize here that the First Amendment protects speech, it
[27:39] Speaker 2: does not guarantee reach. Nowhere in the Constitution is every
[27:45] Speaker 2: American promised a primetime TV slot. Here's an example of
[27:50] Speaker 2: one of the ads that Mobile wanted to run.
[27:53] Speaker 5: Well, I thought I'd never see this. This country is
[27:57] Speaker 5: big and huge and it can do just about it anything,
[28:00] Speaker 5: and let something like this happen. It's unbelievable.
[28:03] Speaker 4: I find it very disillusioning to find that government seems
[28:08] Speaker 4: to be as naive as all of us.
[28:11] Speaker 10: I don't know.
[28:11] Speaker 5: It could be the oil company not being prepared for
[28:13] Speaker 5: all the gas that we.
[28:16] Speaker 11: Need, the people themselves, everybody.
[28:18] Speaker 7: It's just we went crazy. Last twenty years has been nuts,
[28:23] Speaker 7: you know, with cars, and I don't know what we
[28:25] Speaker 7: could do about.
[28:25] Speaker 5: It about the shortage.
[28:28] Speaker 7: I think people are trying to use less gas themselves.
[28:31] Speaker 3: I feel we can be very much self sufficient if
[28:35] Speaker 3: we just tap our own resources. I don't feel that
[28:38] Speaker 3: our own resources have been tapped enough.
[28:40] Speaker 2: Well.
[28:41] Speaker 3: Like I said, it was beautiful before, this is ridiculous.
[28:44] Speaker 4: A standing line to get gas.
[28:46] Speaker 5: We agree, and we're looking for oil everywhere we can,
[28:50] Speaker 5: as fast as we can.
[28:53] Speaker 11: This commercial was made during the period of long gas lines,
[28:56] Speaker 11: and this version was rejected by all three networks because
[29:00] Speaker 11: they contended a dealt with a controversial issue.
[29:03] Speaker 2: Keep in mind, this was a pre bloody At the time.
[29:06] Speaker 2: The networks relied in part on the fairness doctrine to
[29:10] Speaker 2: justify rejecting ads from mobile It didn't necessarily prohibit the
[29:15] Speaker 2: networks from taking these kinds of commercials, but it did
[29:19] Speaker 2: give them cover to reject things they just thought were
[29:22] Speaker 2: not appropriate.
[29:24] Speaker 11: Now we've been running ads on the opposite the editorial
[29:28] Speaker 11: page of The New York Times for about three and
[29:30] Speaker 11: a half years. These, in effect, have been paid editorials
[29:34] Speaker 11: where we have had an opportunity to present our views,
[29:37] Speaker 11: views different, indeed frequently from the editorial policy of the
[29:41] Speaker 11: New York Times. That hasn't caused the Times any problem.
[29:43] Speaker 11: They've been delighted to receive these ads, and indeed they've
[29:48] Speaker 11: been delighted to increase the spectrum of views.
[29:51] Speaker 1: The networks, on.
[29:51] Speaker 11: The other hand, have gone just the opposite direction. They
[29:55] Speaker 11: have said that they will not develop a structure to
[30:00] Speaker 11: accommodate a wide spectrum of views and have relied on
[30:03] Speaker 11: the fairness doctrine and have said only broadcast journalists will
[30:07] Speaker 11: present views.
[30:08] Speaker 2: That difference, of course, was mostly to do with the
[30:12] Speaker 2: fairness doctrine which applied to broadcast networks like ABC, NBC
[30:16] Speaker 2: and CBS, but not two newspapers like The New York Times,
[30:21] Speaker 2: which schmertz knew, of course, but acknowledging that fact would
[30:25] Speaker 2: not have served his argument that the TV networks were
[30:28] Speaker 2: being uniquely unfair to mobile.
[30:31] Speaker 9: I asked him did he sell Mobile on this, and
[30:34] Speaker 9: he insisted no, it was the other way around. That
[30:36] Speaker 9: management came to him Raley Warner, who was the CEO
[30:40] Speaker 9: back then, had a pretty good interview with him. A
[30:43] Speaker 9: lot of things he said were consistent with what Schmert said,
[30:46] Speaker 9: and he did say that, yes, I was angry about
[30:49] Speaker 9: the way the media were getting everything wrong and I.
[30:52] Speaker 1: Wanted us to be a bigger voice.
[30:54] Speaker 2: What it did, Warner confirm what Schmert said about Ballotti.
[30:58] Speaker 9: You know that he sort of.
[31:01] Speaker 2: Put that on Schmertz's radar.
[31:04] Speaker 9: Yes, I think they saw it as just sort of
[31:07] Speaker 9: a organic piece of what they were doing with trying
[31:13] Speaker 9: to speak out more in general, because they really got
[31:16] Speaker 9: active about seventy two with their op eds, and then
[31:20] Speaker 9: Bellotti probably came on the radar when it was first
[31:23] Speaker 9: kicking around the Lower Court, so they would have picked
[31:25] Speaker 9: up on it even though it didn't involve the petroleum
[31:28] Speaker 9: industry in any way. They just saw it as chance
[31:30] Speaker 9: of expand First Amendment rights for corporations.
[31:36] Speaker 2: And they didn't stop there next time. How Mobile turned
[31:40] Speaker 2: the tide on corporate personhood, why Exon kept that work
[31:44] Speaker 2: going once the two merged, and how it all played
[31:47] Speaker 2: out in Nike's sweatshops in the nineties. Drilled is an
[31:55] Speaker 2: original Critical Frequency production. This season is produced and sound
[31:59] Speaker 2: designed by Mark Saltz Austwick. Our sound engineer is Peter Duff.
[32:03] Speaker 2: Additional reporting by Julia Manipela, fact checking by Woodan Yan.
[32:08] Speaker 2: Our first Amendment attorney is James Wheaton. Marketing is handled
[32:12] Speaker 2: by Maggie Taylor. Our artwork is by Matt Fleming. The
[32:16] Speaker 2: show is written and reported by me Amy Westervelt. Primary
[32:20] Speaker 2: documents and additional information related to this series are available
[32:24] Speaker 2: on our website at drilled dot Media. You can also
[32:27] Speaker 2: sign up for our weekly newsletter there.
[32:30] Speaker 1: If you'd like to.
[32:30] Speaker 2: Support our work, you can upgrade to a paid subscription
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[32:53] Speaker 2: Thanks for listening and supporting us. We'll see you next time.

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