Chesapeake Energy works hard to sell Barnett Shale's benefits

Apparently, it’s not enough for Chesapeake Energy to conquer the Barnett Shale. It’s trying to win our hearts and minds, too.

The question is why?

The Oklahoma City natural gas company is blanketing North Texas with its message about clean fuel and local prosperity. Everywhere, it seems, Chesapeake and spokesman Tommy Lee Jones are promoting urban gas drilling as an economic savior.

Chesapeake has already spent more than $10 million on media buys alone, appearing regularly in newspapers and on TV, radio, billboards, even the sides of buses. Call it crisis management before a crisis.

"We’re trying to reach people and educate them, and there’s only so much material in a two-minute TV report or a 12-inch newspaper story," said Julie Wilson, a local Chesapeake executive who once ran her own ad agency in Fort Worth.

I see the saturation campaign as a savvy way to soften up the public and build up good will. Chesapeake wants to steer the discussion on the Barnett Shale to good jobs, "free money" and a great economy, rather than noise, pipelines, truck traffic or possible accidents.

What makes the campaign so unusual is that Chesapeake doesn’t even sell a consumer product. You can’t request Chesapeake gas from a utility, and its image ads don’t help win leases from homeowners, because the highest bid almost always carries the day.

Wilson joined Chesapeake two years ago and serves as vice president of corporate development. She has never run a campaign that was so comprehensive or scattershot, probably because most clients are stingy with their marketing dollars.

Chesapeake can afford to stretch, given that its net income totaled $4.4 billion in the past three years. Even so, how many corporate campaigns let the opposition voice its fears, unscripted and unedited?

In one broadcast about drilling in the Barnett Shale, a resident says on camera: "It scares the hell out of me. Twenty years from now, what’s Fort Worth going to look like?"

Others in the report allay those fears, of course, but it still takes guts for Chesapeake to provide a forum for its critics. Or maybe that’s just smart.

"It’s a lot more persuasive when you show both sides of the argument," said George Low, a former ad man who teaches integrated marketing communications at Texas Christian University.

Chesapeake has ample incentive to pump up the local support. It spent more than $500 million to secure gas leases in North Texas last year and expects to eventually invest $2.5 billion as the drilling activity intensifies.

In effect, the company is acting preemptively, hoping to head off any knee-jerk reactions that might follow future disruptions. Generally, companies react after a crisis, not before, and none of Chesapeake’s competitors in North Texas have jumped on the PR bandwagon.

Chesapeake and its chief executive, Aubrey McClendon, have a history of funding aggressive public-opinion campaigns. Last year, Chesapeake was part of a group that opposed the construction of coal plants in Texas and ran striking ads of children with grimy faces, under the headline, "Coal is filthy."

McClendon was a key backer of the Swift Boat campaign that challenged John Kerry’s military record in 2004. He also bought national ads to defend the Duke lacrosse team when its members were accused of rape.

Wilson says the CEO is a big supporter of the North Texas effort, which she describes as "educational outreach." (She concedes that some company executives are dubious about the payoff.) Her goal is to get much of the general public to consider the big picture — the benefits of gas drilling for Fort Worth and the country — rather than focus on the negative aspects.

"A lot of people are concerned that the gas industry will hurt our quality of life," she said, "but we believe it’s exactly the opposite."

It’s a great time to make the pitch. Gas drilling is creating jobs and helping retail sales during a tough time, giving Fort Worth a counterweight against the slowing economy. Nationwide, soaring prices for gasoline are leading to calls for more offshore drilling for oil.

Texas has always been receptive to the energy industry, and Chesapeake touts one survey that shows 75 percent of residents favoring continued gas drilling in Johnson and Tarrant counties. The company doesn’t know how its campaign affected those attitudes.

Often, Chesapeake lets others do the bragging. From mayors to the leaders of churches, school districts, Dallas/Fort Worth Airport and more, supporters praise the "free money" from the Barnett Shale and the positive impact on parks and roads.

"Chesapeake is building a moat around itself by having all these people defend it," said Steve Edwards, who teaches advertising at Southern Methodist University.

Chesapeake funded a TV report, Citizens of the Shale, that’s more documentary than infomercial, and then bought dozens of time slots on Dallas-Fort Worth stations. It plans more news programs this fall and a blog to counter opponents on the Internet, and it recently hired former journalists to flesh out its reports.

Last week it began distributing a 72-page magazine titled, appropriately enough, The Barnett Shale. On the first page, McClendon urges readers to "help us all embrace the opportunity of a lifetime."

Besides the constant drumbeat, the campaign often has a skillful soft sell. Actor Jones, a native Texan, never plugs Chesapeake by name. Instead, he touts Texas values, Fort Worth history and a natural gas boom that’s here to stay.

"The Barnett Shale is a national treasure that will benefit all Texans for generations," Jones says.

That’s almost too much to resist, whether it’s true or not. And isn’t that the point?