BP’s Irish boss Bernard Looney in parody billboard ad over £10 million earnings package
The ads by Global Witness parodied the adult site OnlyFans
Bernard Looney, the Kerry man who is chief executive of BP, has been targeted by environmental activists in a series of rebranded billboards for the adult website OnlyFans. The billboards appear to show Looney shirtless.
Global Witness bought three advertising slots around London to comment on the pay package of Looney, whose earnings more than doubled from £4.5 million (€5.2 million) to £10 million (€11.5 million) last year.
Nearly a fifth of the company’s shareholders voted against the pay package at a turbulent annual meeting in April, with campaigners denouncing the decision saying many ordinary families cannot afford to pay their energy bills.
Global Witness said its ‘OilyFans’ replacement of the previous adverts was a light-hearted jest about a serious topic.
“BP’s CEO saw his pay packet bulge, whilst the rest of us were plunged into a deep and damaging cost-of-living crisis - that’s something we really aren’t fans of,” Alice Harrison, fossil fuels campaign leader at Global Witness, said.
“Although light-hearted in nature, our action today is intended to highlight the very serious issue of an energy system that pays out to polluters and penalises ordinary people.
“The £10 million Bernard Looney took home last year would take the average UK worker 300 years to earn. This means, in a year when parents were sending their kids to school hungry and pensioners were riding the bus all day to stay warm, Bernard Looney was laughing all the way to the bank.”
The original billboards showed model Eliza Rose Watson in underwear advertising her OnlyFans account page.
Watson paid for four posters in Harrow, Tottenham, Lambeth and Edgware, but earlier this month the British Advertising Standards Authority said it was reviewing complaints which claimed that the images were inappropriate for children.
Global Witness has taken over three of these, on Bruce Grove in Tottenham, Norwood High Street in Lambeth, and Deansbrook Road in Edgware.
BP has been contacted for comment.
