AIG, which has the stigma of a $182.5 billion bailout, kicked off a YouTube-led PR offensive highlighting its efforts to shore up finances and pay back taxpayers.
“I believe one day AIG will be the icon of everything that’s right about our free economic system and the free world,” says CEO Robert Benmosche. “And I think we’ll have a different image of AIG down the road.”
The Associated Press, which first reported the video PR play by AIG, said the company believes it “now deserves a kinder view from the American public.”
“… [P]erhaps no other company came to represent [the financial] crisis more than AIG,” text claims in one video from AIG, which says it made a promise to the Federal Reserve and Treasury to pay back funds “in full.”
The Treasury’s stake in AIG has been reduced from 92% to about 60%.
AIG produced three sets of videos on “rebuilding,” its employees, and community service.
Christina Pretto, who joined AIG in 2009 from Citigroup, is senior VP of corporate communications for AIG. She has not yet been reached about the campaign.
AIG, eliciting some criticism, worked with several PR firms in the wake of the crisis, including Burson-Marsteller, Kekst and Company, Hill+Knowlton Strategies and Sard Verbinnen & Co. But the company did not use outside counsel when it pitched investors in 2011 on a $9B stock offering.