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Wednesday, June 11, 2014

"Burnish" their image? More likely tarnish it.

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Two Widely Despised Billionaires Have Released A Commercial To Polish Their Image
By Katie Richards, June 10, 2014

Koch Industries, the privately owned company founded by brothers Charles and David Koch, made its first national TV ad campaign. The ad will air on Wednesday.

The Kochs are best-known for their funding of conservative groups and Republican political candidates. They have separately attracted a great deal of ire for their support of fringe movements like climate change denial. The Kochs have reportedly given more money to climate change denial efforts than ExxonMobil has.

Now, the Kochs want to burnish the image of the corporation that created their fortune. The 60-second ad does not show or mention the brothers. Instead, it shows images of hardworking Koch employees and everyday people interacting with products made by Koch industries, from toilet paper to jeans. There's a strong-use of generic Americana imagery, such as cowboys, welders, and blue-collar workers in hard hats. They all seem to love their jobs. (The Kochs have opposed union rights for such workers.)

Advertising Age says the campaign was created, in part, to help recruit new employees, according to Koch’s chief communications and marketing officer Steve Lombardo.

The company, which employs over 60,000 people in the U.S., converts resources into products and services used everyday including oil, fertilizer, and paper. The ad ends with the narrator telling viewers to, “Find out more at kochcareers.com.”  

Here's Koch's ad.
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