Tuesday, September 8, 2015

#coalisamazing #noitsnot


One of the most recent hashtag backfires on Twitter is none other than #coalisamazing. The hashtag originates from a “pro-coal” video recently released by the minerals council of Australia, as an attempt to shift negative public opinion on the matter and show that coal is “an amazing thing”.  


In the video it is mentioned how this “Little Black Rock” –also the name of the campaign- can create light as well as jobs and is accompanied by a website, which talks about new technologies and facilities meant to offset some of the industry's contributions to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. However, as pointed out by the Guardian, such facilities do not yet exist in Australia.

Coal has been known to have a negative impact to the environment, but also  influence radically economical and political matters. Thus, as expected, Twitter users, rushed to highjack  and ridicule the campaign’s slogan:




The campaign has also been criticized by environmental groups as a desperate attempt to “bolster coal in the face of the falling cost of renewable energy alternatives and looming international action to limit gas emissions. “ The industry’s lobbying body, however, said it was committed to an “informative and rational discussion about coal”.  

According to Mashable, the campaign is considered one of the biggest PR fails of the year, but I guess that can be expected when you are trying to promote a controversial product a nd are not very humble about it. What do you think?

-Ifigeneia Papadogkona


2 comments:

  1. I agree the campaign was a huge backfire. I think coal is entitled to do lobby to improve their image, but there were other ways to go around it. This campaign may show some "amazing" things about coal -for me, the best thing about it is how better the barbecues end up when using coal- but in my opinion, none of them makes up for the damage they do for the environment. However, I'm not saying that "no more coal power plants should be built"... I just don't think probable that more developed countries will be more inclined to choose this kind of technology. Nowadays, its difficult that developed countries like Australia and others pick coal powered energy over other more-clean alternatives. The only benefit of coal is that is cheap... so in my opinion, lobbying for coal in Australia is a waste of money.

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  2. This is a great example of a PR fail. I think this also highlights the "dangers" social media brings with it. Had this been a TV campaign without the hashtag, this might not have backfired the way it did. Commenting and ridiculing is easily done on twitter and the tweets and their message spread fast.

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