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"You've heard a lot of Halliburton [7] lately. Criticism is okay. We can take it." Thus opens a new television ad, part of the oil and gas services company's first public PR campaign. With the slogan "Proud To Serve Our Troops [8]," Halliburton hopes to overcome negative "war profiteer" charges stemming from reports of kickbacks, overcharging for gas and food in Iraq, and no-bid government contracts. "Halliburton gets beaten up every day by people who don't have the facts," said company spokesperson Wendy Hall. The PR campaign seems to echo talking points in a leaked 2003 company memo [9], in which CEO David Lesar asked employees to write letters stressing that "Halliburton makes our troops more comfortable in a difficult environment."
Links:
[1] http://dev.prwatch.org/users/6/diane-farsetta
[2] http://dev.prwatch.org/topics/marketing/advertising
[3] http://dev.prwatch.org/topics/public-relations/crisis-management
[4] http://dev.prwatch.org/topics/war-peace/iraq
[5] http://dev.prwatch.org/topics/corporations
[6] http://www.addtoany.com/share_save?linkurl=http%3A%2F%2Fdev.prwatch.org%2Fspin%2F2004%2F02%2F2410%2Fhard-sell&linkname=A%20Hard%20Sell
[7] http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Halliburton
[8] http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=businessNews&storyID=4211600&pageNumber=0
[9] http://www.misleader.org/daily_mislead/read.asp?fn=df10242003.html
[10] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17593-2004Feb5.html