Lego s Partnership With Oil Interests And The Destruction...

On July 8th, 2014, Greenpeace released a video criticizing LEGO’s partnership with oil giant Shell. The video, which has become a rallying point for environmental groups, sought to force LEGO to end its partnership with Shell due to Shell’s plans to implement offshore drilling in the Arctic. Fearing that the drilling would lead to a massive oil spill which could destroy the Arctic ecosystem, Greenpeace used the video to garner worldwide attention to the issue. Painting the relationship between LEGO and Shell as promoting oil interests and the destruction of the Artic gave Greenpeace an environmental issue that the rest of the world could identify with. Keeping the Arctic and its ecosystem intact is in the interests of people globally, which made the video advertisement even more potent. Factual Assertions Evaluating Greenpeace’s ad for factual claims proves to be a tricky affair. Since the medium used is LEGOs, their ability to portray real-life situations is a little distorted. While this does not take away from the effectiveness of the ad, it makes it harder to determine what is actually factual. The most obvious factual claim in the ad would be the partnership that has existed between Shell and LEGO. This relationship has been in place through a series of co-branding deals since the 1960s. LEGO and Shell agreed to create a set of toys that carries the Shell logo and would be sold at gasoline stations worldwide. The intended effect was to put LEGOs in the hands of more