BP vs The Internet

BP vs. The Internet Anatomy of a PR War by Angela Natividad

SummaryThe EventBP and CrowdsourcingThe AnalysisCrisis Management ExamplesConclusion

20 April 2010The Deepwater Horizon Explosion occurs, killing 11 workers. The affected well freely gushes oil into the sea.

A BP press release promises to “mobilize” resources. By 30 April, 10 days later, its response is branded “inadequate.”What follows are BP’s attempts to control the story ofwhat is happening ... as users create their own version.

BP onFor BP, Twitter presented an ideal way to delivertimely updates on reparation, resources, apologiesand warnings to users in the area.

...................................................................................................Subscriptions to the ofﬁcial @BP_America account doubled in 15 days,hitting 4476 followers as of 4 May, an average rise of 80-200 newfollowers daily. @BP_America increased activity threefold (totaling 9 tweets per day).

................................................................................................... Users grew dissatisﬁed with BP’s updates.“The tweets are overwhelmingly one-wayannouncements with only a few@replies (less than 1% of the total, that is, onlytwo). Perhaps not surprisingly, the accountretweets @oil_spill_2010.” - The Moderate Voice blog@Oil_Spill_2010 began as an anonymous effort to provide usefulinformation on the spill. Today it is updated by the Joint InformationCenter Staff.BP’s frequent retweets of this account suggests @Oil_Spill_2010 wasbetter equipped to serve users.This behavior suggested BP had something to hide.

................................................................................................... Twitter rebellion begins. Fake accounts and an ironic #bpcares hashtag spread vitriole about BP’s social mishandling.Left image credit:TheModerateVoice.com

................................................................................................... The most popular spoof account launches 19 May: In eight days, @BPGlobalPR has 60,000 followers vs. @BP_America’s 7200. It also launches a T-shirt line! Proceeds go to charity.Left image credit:TheModerateVoice.com

...................................................................................................24 May: BP tells AdAge it doesn’t care about @BPGlobalPR. BP’s spokesperson isn’t sure if the company has taken action or not. He’s also not a Twitter user.

................................................................................................... 27 May: Fans of @BPGlobalPR grow bored with @BP_America. They hack it. “BP catches the hack. Moments later, @BP_America goes back totweeting “progress” on clean-up efforts. ”

BP onIn May, BP began broadcasting aggressively onYouTube - the perfect medium for sharing liveefforts, letting affected Gulf inhabitants tellstories, and providing safety tips.

.......................................................................................................BP kicks off a “satellite media tour” on 27 May. Videos thatfollow include community outreach interviews, environment andwildlife checkups, status updates.

....................................................................................................... Response is not positive. Of the few comments, no one says anything nice.Users are displeased by theseinauthentic gestures oftransparency. The videos feelheavily-produced, with emotionand negative truths left out.

....................................................................................................... BP spoofs start ﬂooding YouTube.Also popular are videos of animalsthat are sick, or covered in oil.

.......................................................................................................30 May: After a long silence, Tony Hayward appears on TV. His message to mankind: “I’d like my life back.”

.......................................................................................................3 June: BP rolls out ﬁrst TV ad with Hayward and a morescripted appearance. It is seen as “backpedaling” and an attempt todisplace blame.

.......................................................................................................Mid-June: after his repeated attempts to reach them, BP takesadvice from ... Kevin Costner!

.......................................................................................................The spoof video that follows compares BP’s treatment of the oil spill to itshypothetical treatment of a coffee spill. Kevin Costner also comes to the rescue. “BP Spills Coffee” hosted 11 million views from June-September. BP’s YouTube page of 100+ videos saw 4.6 million views total.

BP and CrowdsourcingThe power of the crowd presented a specialopportunity. Everyone was connected, concernedand eager to help solve BP’s problem. It had a worldof volunteers, intellectual resources and creativeminds at its disposal. If only they had listened. Photo credit: James Cridland

...........................................................................................May’s end: crowdsourced competitions to ironically rebrand BP appear on the ‘net.

...........................................................................................Contributions are in the thousands. All are negative. Bloggers showcase the best ones.

...........................................................................................Proﬁting from the trend, Mark Skwarek and Joseph Hocking build a mobileapp that uses augmented reality to let you “rebrand” BP’s logo in the realworld. It is featured in Wired as a model for inventive use of AR.

...........................................................................................But it isn’t all bad. In June, InnoCentive informs BP of its plans tolaunch a contest seeking solutions for the oil leak. InnoCentive helps R&D departments solve problems via crowdsourcing. Its network includes 200,000 engineers worldwide. It offers BP the solutions it receives for free.

...........................................................................................BP refuses to look at the solutions. InnoCentive blogs about it. “ ”

........................................................................................... But what if somebody did have a solution? ➡The best place to share it was on a phone number buried inBP’s contact list. Users could record a message on a machine.A decided fail.

June-July: Failed attempts to seal the damaged well, and equally poor attemptsto sooth the public, aggravate users further. Scandals circulate.

Among reporters seeking access to the beach, and being refused, is CNN’sAnderson Cooper. He gives damning analysis of BP’s failure to betransparent, comparing it with a revocation of First Amendment rights.

10 June: Actor Edward James Olmos manages to get where otherscan’t, and launches a short ﬁlm. The ﬁlm includes interviews with affected people on the Gulf of Mexico. It depicts humanity in devastation and fear.

BP ﬁghts back ... with ads and a human sacriﬁce.In June it spends $3.59 million on Google ads, making it one ofGoogle’s top clients. In total, $93 million is spent on TV, newspaper and other ads “to counter images of the mounting disaster” between April and July, according to The LA Times. On June 21, it replaces Tony Hayward with Robert Dudley.

Response to the ad spend is generally negative.“It feels like BP is overdoing it” with its advertising, said Rep.Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), who asked for the spending figure. “It’sreally making people angry. Every day you get up and see thesefull-page ads in every newspaper and the TV ads. It’s reallyticking people off.” “While BP’s advertising campaign ramped up, businesses and the gulf communities struggled to deal with the costs of the disaster,” Castor said. “While BP certainly has the right to advertise, its approach has been insensitive to the taxpayers and business owners harmed by the Deepwater Horizon blowout.” — The LA Times Image credit:Trucknroll

By August, BP station owners consider rebranding stores. Story: Marketwatch

19 September: the well is close to being sealed for good, but BP’s communications remain much the same.Unreliable live feeds. Twitter points to Facebook, which points to... ...an outsourced claims service, more PR videos.

BP: The Analysis

BP: The Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The cost of not getting it right Loss of stock value estimated at $70 billion as of June 2010. BP plummets from Interbrand’s Top 100 brands. Company dividend estimated to be 65% lower in 2011. This does not include reparation, legal fees (including punitive damages), $25-30 million for each state tourism board affected, a 10% rise in upstream production costs (totaling an estimated $280 million per year) and the $20 billion claims fund.Production cost ﬁgures, Reuters:

BP: The Analysis ...................................................................................................... Online strategy-wise, BP’s bases were covered: Gulf of Mexico Response subsite YouTube channel FlickR and Facebook presence Twitter page Visibility in top 1000 Google search terms related to “oil spill” What went wrong? BP didn’t provide what people needed: a sincere apology, a sense it understood the horror of what it did, and a conviction to make things right. What follows: a few examples of what those three things look like. Image credit: BP America

BP: Crisis Management Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Example 1: Domino’s Pizza, Service in Bad Taste 2009: 2 Domino’s workers ﬁlmed themselves abusing food before serving it. CEO Patrick Doyle apologised quickly on YouTube: no music, no scripted feel, no fancy camera angles. In 2010 he was featured in Domino’s Pizza Turnaround, an campaign to change how the company’s pizza is made. Because their embarrassment was obvious and efforts to change were sincere, the turnaround was well-received.

BP: Crisis Management Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Example 2: Southwest Airlines, Too Pretty to Fly 2008: Two girls ejected from a Southwest flight contacted media, saying they were “banned for life” for being “too pretty to fly.” Southwest quickly released a video explaining the situation: no one can be banned for life, and the girls were ejected for dangerous behavior in-flight. The calm, simple and honest approach changed the media’s spin on the story.

BP: Crisis Management Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Example 3: Johnson & Johnson, The Tylenol Murders 1982: Seven Chicagoans died after swallowing Tylenol capsules ﬁlled with cyanide. Someone was stealing bottles from stores, poisoning them and putting them back. Tylenol parent Johnson & Johnson became the largest advocate for consumers discovering the threat. In a week, it issued a nationwide recall of Tylenol products. When it learned only capsules were affected, it replaced them with tablets for free.

BP: Crisis Management Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Johnson & Johnson, The Tylenol Murders (cont.) Warnings were given to distributors and hospitals. The public was offered a $100,000 reward for details leading to arrest of a suspect. Bottles with tamper-proof packaging were developed and packaged with discounts. The Washington Post commended J&J for “effectively [demonstrating] how a major business ought to handle a disaster." Market share of Tylenol fell from 35% to 8%, then rebounded in 12 months. Several years later Tylenol was the top over-the-counter analgesic in the US, due in part to J&J’s swift response to a threat to customers.

BP: Crisis Management Examples .............................................................................. What these successes have in common ✓Super-fast response ✓A candid, human feel ✓Efforts to put people ﬁrst, brand image second

BP: Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . BP’s Mistake: Underestimating the speed of an internet that deﬁned the narrative. BP believed that if it were present on all the right social media, it wouldn’t truly have to change its formal, slow and unapologetic PR approach. The Truth: When something bad happens, people don’t need your press releases and slick videos. They must know you recognize the consequences of your actions, and that you will be the ﬁrst resource they can turn to for help resolving it. You don’t need social media for that. But it helps. A lot.

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BP vs The Internet

by Angela Natividad on Dec 12, 2010

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BP vs The Internet — Presentation Transcript