Legends Everywhere Are Kindly Taking The Time To ‘Fix’ The Mining Industry’s “Coal Is Amazing” TV Ad
PR campaigns trying to make coal sexy. Not even once.
The mining industry has a pretty long history of deeply misguided PR campaigns designed to give coal a makeover from “world-warming dinosaur skeleton” to “happy fun gas rock”. Dalrymple Bay Coal Terminal’s official mascot, Hector the Lump of Coal, is a Big Mining version of Prime Possum, complete with a TV show where he teaches kids the importance of washing their hands, accepting others, and supporting Queensland’s largest coal export terminal.
“Hi kids! Renewable energy is eco-socialism! Hyu-hyuk!”
Over the weekend, the Minerals Council of Australia released its newest attempt to sex up the thing Santa leaves you when you’re bad — the #coalisamazing campaign, complete with this slick video lingering lovingly over the contours of a lump of fossilised carbon and a seemingly complete absence of self-awareness.
It took about two hours for that campaign to blow up in the MCA’s face, with people on social media going to some lengths to point out the various nasty sides of coal the ad somehow neglects to mention, and making some not-at-all snarky suggestions for follow-ups.
In that vein, more than a few people have taken the original video as their cue and tweaked it to give a slightly different take on everyone’s favourite asthma-causing rock. Comedy group A Rational Fear came up with this effort:
Environmentally-friendly superannuation company Future Super, meanwhile, sent someone out on the streets of Canberra to hand out free lumps of coal and explain why if we run out of it, we can always dig up some more.
The highlight of that video, for me, is the middle-aged bloke giving the man in the suit the double-barreled middle fingers at 0:34.
Outstanding.
And a YouTube channel called Coal is Dead, with only a single video to its name thus far, put together this facts-laden little number which deserves more than the 17 views it’s raked in so far.