The “creative confrontation” of Herbert Schmertz: Public relations sense making and the corporate persona

Abstract

Beginning in the early 1970s, Mobil Oil's public relations, under the direction of Herbert Schmertz, attempted to demonstrate to Americans that the company acted like a person who worked to benefit society. With an approach he called “creative confrontation,” Schmertz offered an adversarial stance toward the news media, coupled with inventive methods of supporting the arts. Creative confrontation sought the public's support by revealing that the corporation was an entity that understood the needs of the public and worked to uphold American values like free expression and progress. This work, in examining a distinctive and sustained effort to communicate the corporate personality, offers lingering implications for how public relations, through the conveyance of the corporate persona, can more widely conceptualize and execute its sense-making role in society.