Anatomy of a PR war, examining BP's use of/failure to use Twitter, YouTube and crowdsourcing. Includes successful examples on how the situation could have been mitigated.

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

2. Summary
The Event
BP and Crowdsourcing
The Analysis
Crisis Management Examples
Conclusion

3. 20 April 2010
The Deepwater Horizon Explosion occurs, killing 11 workers.
The affected well freely gushes oil into the sea.

4. 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 of
what is happening ... as users create their own version.

5. BP on
For BP, Twitter presented an ideal way to deliver
timely updates on reparation, resources, apologies
and warnings to users in the area.

6. ...................................................................................................
Subscriptions to the official @BP_America account doubled in 15 days,
hitting 4476 followers as of 4 May, an average rise of 80-200 new
followers daily.
@BP_America increased
activity threefold (totaling 9
tweets per day).

7. ...................................................................................................
Users grew dissatisfied with BP’s updates.
“The tweets are overwhelmingly one-way
announcements with only a few
@replies (less than 1% of the total, that is, only
two). Perhaps not surprisingly, the account
retweets @oil_spill_2010.”
- The Moderate Voice blog
@Oil_Spill_2010 began as an anonymous effort to provide useful
information on the spill. Today it is updated by the Joint Information
Center Staff.
BP’s frequent retweets of this account suggests @Oil_Spill_2010 was
better equipped to serve users.
This behavior suggested BP had something to hide.

8. ...................................................................................................
Twitter rebellion begins. Fake accounts and an ironic
#bpcares hashtag spread vitriole about BP’s social mishandling.
Left image credit:TheModerateVoice.com

9. ...................................................................................................
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

10. ...................................................................................................
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.

11. ...................................................................................................
27 May: Fans of @BPGlobalPR grow bored with @BP_America.
They hack it.
“
BP catches the hack. Moments later, @BP_America goes back to
tweeting “progress” on clean-up efforts. ”

12. BP on
In May, BP began broadcasting aggressively on
YouTube - the perfect medium for sharing live
efforts, letting affected Gulf inhabitants tell
stories, and providing safety tips.

13. .......................................................................................................
BP kicks off a “satellite media tour” on 27 May. Videos that
follow include community outreach interviews, environment and
wildlife checkups, status updates.

14. .......................................................................................................
Response is not positive.
Of the few comments, no
one says anything nice.
Users are displeased by these
inauthentic gestures of
transparency. The videos feel
heavily-produced, with emotion
and negative truths left out.

15. .......................................................................................................
BP spoofs start flooding YouTube.
Also popular are videos of animals
that are sick, or covered in oil.

16. .......................................................................................................
30 May: After a long silence, Tony Hayward appears on TV.
His message to mankind: “I’d like my life back.”

17. .......................................................................................................
3 June: BP rolls out first TV ad with Hayward and a more
scripted appearance. It is seen as “backpedaling” and an attempt to
displace blame.

18. .......................................................................................................
Mid-June: after his repeated attempts to reach them, BP takes
advice from ... Kevin Costner!

19. .......................................................................................................
The spoof video that follows compares BP’s treatment of the oil spill to its
hypothetical 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.

20. BP and Crowdsourcing
The power of the crowd presented a special
opportunity. Everyone was connected, concerned
and eager to help solve BP’s problem. It had a world
of volunteers, intellectual resources and creative
minds at its disposal. If only they had listened.
Photo credit: James Cridland

21. ...........................................................................................
May’s end: crowdsourced competitions to
ironically rebrand BP appear on the ‘net.

22. ...........................................................................................
Contributions are in the thousands. All are negative. Bloggers showcase the best ones.

23. ...........................................................................................
Profiting from the trend, Mark Skwarek and Joseph Hocking build a mobile
app that uses augmented reality to let you “rebrand” BP’s logo in the real
world.
It is featured in Wired as a model for inventive use of AR.

24. ...........................................................................................
But it isn’t all bad. In June, InnoCentive informs BP of its plans to
launch 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.

25. ...........................................................................................
BP refuses to look at the solutions. InnoCentive blogs about it.
“
”

26. ...........................................................................................
But what if somebody did have a solution?
➡
The best place to share it was on a phone number buried in
BP’s contact list. Users could record a message on a machine.
A decided fail.

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

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

29. 10 June: Actor Edward James Olmos manages to get where others
can’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.

30. BP fights back ... with ads and a human sacrifice.
In June it spends $3.59 million on Google ads, making it one of
Google’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.

31. 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’s
really making people angry. Every day you get up and see these
full-page ads in every newspaper and the TV ads. It’s really
ticking 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

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

33. 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.

34. BP: The Analysis

35. 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:

36. 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

37. 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.

38. 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.

39. 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.

40. 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.

41. 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

42. 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.