Page 135 - Carbon Capitalism and Communication Confronting Climate Crisis

124 D. McKNIGHT AND M. HOBBS

Collectively these advertisements, which ran from early 2011 to
mid-2012, were powerful communicative tactics that effectively built the
myth that the mining industry was central to the Australian economy and
way of life. They were also widely seen by the public. In a corporate video
highlighting the work of his agency, Neil Lawrence stated that nearly 17
million Australians (out of a national population of 22.5 million) had seen
the televised versions of his advertisements, on average eight times, with a
further 8.9 million also being exposed to the print media versions (Pearse
et al. 2013, p. 102). Many others saw the advertisement in cinemas or
online. According to Lawrence’s market research on the campaign’s
effectiveness, these advertisements made people ‘feel good about mining’
and ‘want to get a job in mining’. Moreover, much like his early campaigns
‘Kevin 07’ and ‘Keep Mining Strong’, fellow-advertising executives praised
the ‘Mining: Our Story’ advertisements for their creativity, visuals and
emotional impacts. However, this would be Neil Lawrence’s last campaign
for the Minerals Council of Australia, as he was killed in a scuba diving
accident while on holiday in the Maldives in 2015 (Zwartz 2016).
The charm offensive of the mining industry does of course consist of
other tactics than advocacy advertisements. As Pearse et al. (2013) have
documented, the mining industry has also been employing
community-targeted public relations in the form on sponsorships, grants,
education resources and other financial largesse, which are often celebrated
in Corporate Social Involvement brochures. Some of these activities
include aid relief for families affected by floods, funding helicopter rescue
services and healthcare facilities at regional hospitals, sponsorships for
cultural programs such as wine and food fairs, film festivals and agricultural
shows, producing education resources on the mining industry for schools,
providing money for conservation programs for threatened species and
environmental restoration and community support grants for services
offering affordable housing. In addition to these benevolent efforts, which
further bolster community support for coal mining, industry bodies also
provide financial support for researchers and think tanks such as the
Melbourne-based Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), which has been sup-
porting the mining sector with research and reports that promote doubt
about climate change (Pearse et al. 2013, p. 150).
The final aspect of mining industry’s charm offensive in recent years has
been their financial donations to individual politicians and political parties
(Murphy 2016; Slezak 2016). While contradictory disclosure laws and
loopholes make it difficult to identify all political donations provided by the