(This week, PR News editors Phil Hall and Aaron Jenkins exchange objectivist insights on an oil executive's retirement gift while filling their gas tank.)
PHIL: You know you have a major PR problem when the only people rushing to your defense are those sons of fun from the Ayn Rand Institute. In commenting on the
$400 million retirement package being rewarded to retiring Exxon Mobil CEO Lee Raymond, Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, issued this unsolicited
press statement: "During the 12 years (Raymond) ran Exxon, it became the largest oil company in the world and its stock price went up 500 percent. The $400 million Raymond will
get for his 12 years at the helm of Exxon represents about one percent of the $36 billion in profits Exxon made only last year...Any CEO who achieves as much as Raymond should be
as properly rewarded."
AARON: That absurd public defense only douses more fuel into the raging fire of consumers' disgust over jacked-up gas prices and Exxon Mobil's $36.1 billion annual
profit in 2005 - the biggest annual profit on record for a U.S. firm. But politicians with our pump peeves (and election year) in mind are attempting solutions. Sen. Byron Dorgan
(D-ND) wants Exxon Mobil to stand before for a congressional hearing. President Bush, reaffirming our oil addiction as a matter of national security, emphasizes more alternative
fueling research and a rollback in government assistance for oil companies. But with Exxon Mobil's boastful profits and the government's mere bluster, what are consumers supposed
to think?
PHIL: I know what they're thinking, and our publisher won't let us run that language verbatim! But oddly absent from all of this are the PR folks in the oil companies.
Or at least their work is absent - I don't recall seeing a convincing (let alone coherent) crisis communications response to the anger over the excessive fuel prices. Did I miss
anything or have you seen anything resembling an oil company PR defense?
AARON: It harks back to the rock-star swagger of the Enron execs years ago - a giant persona to match their giant bank accounts. But being and feeling like a
monopolistic oil company does not mean immunity to PR accountability. In this divisive age where fuel energy and the environment are inclusive, oil companies should set the bar.
After all, Ayn Rand said it best: Productive achievement should be one's noblest activity.
PHIL: Yeah, but would Ayn Rand happily pay close to $4.00 per gallon for gas? Even the queen of objectivism might object to that!