PR Hindsight: Does “BP” stand for Bungled Publicity?

This article is part of an occasional series where Sterling Communications examines PR efforts that have missed the mark, and posits how things could have been done differently.

Before I joined Sterling Communications in 1998, I spent four years with a crisis management consulting firm in Washington, D.C. Many of our clients were oil and chemical companies, and in fact, as my swan song, I worked on an emergency planning “tabletop” exercise with BP, related to the Alaska pipeline. So I was very interested to hear NPR’s lengthy report today, “BP: A Textbook Example of How Not to Handle PR” from reporter Elizabeth Shogren.

Two things jumped out at me when I heard the story while putting on my makeup:

1) As part of a downsizing effort, BP had reduced the budget for — and ultimately, the staff of — its Public & Government Affairs (PG&A) office. So when the crunch came, it had to rely on outside crisis communications experts.

Now, I’m all for using experts for hire; I’d be out of a job otherwise.

However, the lesson here is that for a company of BP’s size, and in the type of business it conducts with the high potential for emergencies of public importance, it should keep people on hand who can direct high-level crisis communications. When a crisis hits, there’s no time to waste on bringing people up to speed. A company should still bring in outside experts to supplement internal resources and to provide a jaundiced eye. But those outside voices need to integrate with internal ones, as no just-hired outside consultant will know the company issues and personalities from the get-go as well as an insider.

2) BP didn’t have much of a presence in social media prior to the crisis, not even a YouTube channel. It had no dedicated social media staff at all, per NPR, and it took a month before a social media expert (again, an outside consultant) was able to take the reins.

Like many companies, BP probably thought of social media as for mindless chatter. The company missed that social media can be a highly effective broadcast tool as well as a vehicle for two-way discussions with customers. Again, a company of BP’s size and influence needs to have its social communications channels well established – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Wikipedia at a minimum — so that when a crisis hits, it can immediately use those channels to distribute its message, directly to interested parties. BP lost valuable time in setting up those channels, organizing its social media teams, and developing followers. (Even today, more people follow the fake (sarcastic) BP Twitter account than the real one.)

I encourage you to listen to the full story. It’s not all criticism; BP did (eventually) make some good decisions on the communications front. But just as the Tylenol recall of 1982 is still held up as one of the classic case studies in successful reputation management, the BP oil spill of 2010 will forever be a chapter in how not to do crisis communications.

N.B. The irony of NPR reporting on BP's lack of crisis communications skills is not lost on me!

Photo credit: Fibonacci Blue via flickr

Comments

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