http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3byt7xMSCA&feature=player_embedded
From a purely pragmatic standpoint, I have to admit, this is a great commercial. For the first thirty seconds you can barely tell that it's advertising anything. Those beautiful shots! Those smiling faces! This could be the intro to Planet Earth! The copy is clever. The music is soothing. The pace of the editing is slow, which makes it feel like a thought provoking short film. Then right at the end...Dow chemical, a simple logo and then the commercial is over. They don't pitch their services or contributions endlessly. They just leave you with a good taste in your mouth, a taste you associate with Dow. You think Dow, you think conscientious and thoughtful. A job well done.
So how about Dow and the human element in the real world? Here are some facts that tarnish that carefully applied gloss:
-Dow! Creator of Agent Orange!
- "Union Carbide, a Dow subsidiary, was responsible for the world’s worst industrial disaster in Bhopal, India. Dow Chemical has never taken responsibility for or cleaned up the poisonous gas disaster in Bhopal, which killed 8,000 people within two weeks and caused the deaths of an additional 8,000 people in the years since due to gas-related diseases"(http://webecoist.com/2009/03/22/greenwash-worlds-worst-greenwashers/).
- "Dow Chemical refuses to clean up the dioxin contamination in the Tittabawasee and Saginaw Rivers in Michigan, claiming that scientific proof does not exist that dioxins are harmful to humans. Dow has been dumping these chemicals in the rivers for more than a century"(http://webecoist.com/2009/03/22/greenwash-worlds-worst-greenwashers/).
I notice this photo didn't make it into their commercial!
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