The Boone Pickens Energy Plan as a PR Campaign
This paper analyzes the T. Boone Pickens Energy Plan as a large-scale, non-partisan public relations campaign launched during the 2008 presidential election. It examines the campaign's dual objectives — raising public awareness of energy independence and spurring grassroots action — alongside the potential conflict of interest posed by Pickens' financial stake in natural gas and alternative energy through BP Capital Management. The paper evaluates the strategies employed, including television advertising, an interactive website, town hall meetings, and media interviews, and assesses the campaign's effectiveness at both the grassroots and governmental levels. It concludes that while the campaign succeeded in shifting public discourse, it fell short in translating awareness into concrete governmental action.
- Introduction: The Pickens Plan and Its Dual Purpose: Overview of the campaign and Pickens' dual motivations
- Campaign Objectives: Awareness and Grassroots Action: Two core goals: raise awareness and mobilize voters
- Strategies and Media Outreach: TV ads, website, town halls, and debate tie-ins
- Effectiveness and Timing: How timing and oil prices boosted campaign resonance
- Conflict of Interest and Spin: Financial ties to BP Capital and how spin managed them
- Results at the Grassroots and Governmental Levels: Signups and candidate meetings, but limited concrete action
- Conclusion: Legacy and Implications for Lobbying: Campaign's lasting impact on public lobbying in Washington
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper consistently maintains a dual analytical lens — evaluating the campaign both as a genuine public interest effort and as a creative lobbying vehicle — which adds analytical depth without taking a one-sided stance.
- It moves logically from campaign objectives, to strategies, to outcomes, providing a coherent evaluative arc that mirrors a professional PR audit.
- The paper grounds its claims in specific, concrete details (e.g., $58 million budget, 1,000,000 signups, $500 billion estimated cost) that lend credibility to its assessments.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates applied evaluative analysis — it does not merely describe the Pickens Plan but assesses it against the standard criteria of a public relations campaign (awareness, engagement, and action). This technique of using a recognized framework to structure critique is a hallmark of effective communications and marketing analysis.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens by introducing the campaign and its potential motivations, then clarifies its two primary objectives. It proceeds to describe the multi-channel strategies employed before evaluating campaign effectiveness through timing, spin management, and actual outcomes. It closes with a verdict on both interpretations of the campaign — public interest effort and lobbying exercise — and speculates on its broader implications for political lobbying in the United States.
Introduction: The Pickens Plan and Its Dual Purpose
The Boone Pickens Energy Plan is one of the largest non-partisan public relations campaigns of the 2008 election cycle. The Plan promotes the use of natural gas and the development of alternative energy resources to help reduce America's dependence on foreign oil (Pickens, 2008). The plan's architect and driving force, T. Boone Pickens, is not a celebrity outside of business circles, nor is the campaign primarily about him personally. Pickens runs a hedge fund, BP Capital Management, with significant ownership stakes in firms involved in natural gas and alternative energy (Lazarus, 2008).
This background hints at a dual-purpose element of the Pickens Energy Plan. On one hand, the campaign can be viewed simply as an aging billionaire using his considerable wealth to help bring about a better future for his country. The need for energy independence is widely understood, and under this interpretation, Pickens is merely positioning himself as its champion. On the other hand, the campaign could be viewed as an attempt to influence government policy in a direction favorable to BP Capital Management. In that respect, the Pickens Plan could be seen as a creative form of lobbying — using the forces of government to make decisions that benefit the group doing the lobbying. It is only the motivations that remain undetermined.
Those two longer-term objectives, however, are downstream from the campaign as it was constituted. Many steps would need to be taken before BP Capital had the opportunity to profit, or before America could become energy independent. While Pickens himself may have had such objectives in mind, the Pickens Plan as publicly presented had a much shorter-term focus.
Campaign Objectives: Awareness and Grassroots Action
The goal of the Pickens Plan is twofold. The first objective is to raise awareness of the issue of energy independence. During an election year, many issues rise and fall from prominence over the course of a campaign. The Pickens Plan was designed to keep energy independence near the top of the public agenda by placing the issue on the minds of voters.
The second objective was to move beyond awareness and spur voters into action. The Pickens Plan sought to mobilize voters to be vocal about the issue. The intent was to build a grassroots movement in support of the plan, putting pressure on the presidential candidates to discuss energy independence more substantively and to formulate concrete policy proposals. This pressure would in turn raise the profile of the issue in government. The presumption was that such a grassroots movement could result in government taking steps to promote alternative energies — typically in the form of trade barriers and/or subsidies.
Works Cited
Pickens, T. Boone. 2008. "Pickens Plan." PickensPlan.com. Accessed October 28, 2008 at http://www.pickensplan.com/about/
Lazarus, David. 2008. "T. Boone Pickens could gain from his energy plan, but so might we." Los Angeles Times. Accessed October 28, 2008 at http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-lazarus9-2008jul09,0,7890733.column
Rose, Charlie. 2008. "Pickens: My energy plan is the only plan." CBS News/60 Minutes. Accessed October 28, 2008 at http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/10/23/60minutes/main4541322.shtml?source=mostpop_story
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