Greenpeace volunteers who scaled the Polar Pioneer.
Greenpeacers we called "attractivists." Vincenzo Floramo/Greenpeace

Back in April, I wrote about Greenpeace "attractivists" who had boarded the Polar Pioneer while it was still traveling across the Pacific Ocean to Seattle. A few people in the environmentalist community took issue with that, but I stand by the value in pointing out various marketing techniques surrounding environmental issues. (A Greenpeace campaigner I interviewed at the time said that aesthetics were not a factor in their activist-selection process. Okay, Greenpeace.)

Well, two can play that game. Shell has attractivists, too:

This ad popped up on a Daily Beast story about Rachel Dolezal (the Spokane NAACP president who may have lied about her race). It stars a guy who, despite his pleated pants, I think we can agree is aesthetically pleasing.

He also has a passion for science. You can participate in that passion, too, with Shell, for Shell, under the hashtag #makethefuture on Twitter.

This isn't the first time Shell has used an attractivist to spread the company's message. Several years ago, Shell helped create a 10-minute romantic film to advertise its Gas-to-Liquids (GTL) program. (Seriously.) The film describes this program as one that stemmed from a desire to cut down on urban air pollution, despite the financial risks involved. It also stars a cheeky, good-looking chemist who starts working for the GTL program to "make a difference from the inside." Anyway, he gets the girl, blah blah. It has great production value. You can watch it here.

At the time, Paddy Briggs, a blogger and former brand manager for Shell, criticized "Clearing the Air" for exaggerating the benefits of a technology he considered "at best, tiny in its impact for the foreseeable future." Briggs wasn't making an ethical case that Shell should develop cleaner fuels; he was arguing that Shell's motives almost certainly stemmed from a duty and desire to maximize the investments of its shareholders. Painting that as anything else, Briggs argued, was disingenuous and bad marketing. Seven years later, the Energy Information Administration's 2015 outlook says that GTL growth between now and 2040 could take off, but only in a high oil price scenario. "Market conditions (primarily liquid fuel prices) do not support GTL investments in the other cases," the EIA report reads.

In the new ad, our attractivist says, "Do you like science? I do." Then: "Want to save the world? Cool." He then goes into an energetic lecture on biofuels, which could mean, "no energy crisis, no climate change, no destroying the world."

Well, no. We're already going to experience at least some consequences of climate change based on the greenhouse gases we've already emitted. The latest IPCC report affirms that climate change is already happening. And I'd make the argument that it's at least a little disingenuous to be advertising "no climate change" and "no destroying the world" when Shell's spending billions of dollars to invest in Arctic exploration, a risky venture for Arctic ecosystems that are already being affected by climate change. Maybe the ad would have more punch if Shell was pivoting more of its portfolio to renewables—and our political climate and individual choices supported that move.

But that is beside the point. The point is attractivists. What do you guys think?