The BP oil spill or Deep Water
Horizon spill of 2010 was arguably the worst man made environmental disaster of
the last decade if not all of human history. The spill happened when a BP oil rig in
the gulf of Mexico exploded, leaking 4.9 million barrels of oil into the gulf
over a period of 87 days. This eventually affected about 16,000 miles of
coastline. In the first 6 months since the spill over 8000 animals were found
dead from the oil, many were on the endangered species list. The oil continued
to affect the yearly appearance of shrimp and fish in the gulf even to the
current day, though the impact has been lessened by 2014. Many people thinking
back to this event probably see the images of black ocean water and sludgy
beaches or maybe even the images of poor animals covered in oil confused and
scared. In the end this wasn't something BP oil will be living down anytime
soon. In fact, at the time many people didn't think the company would be able
to live through the event at all. Putting the monetary price of cleaning up
their mess aside, how did BP oil still retain enough good press to keep people
from boycotting it and ending it right after that terrible event? The answer to
that is today’s subject, Public Relations people. Specifically what important
points I would choose to emphasize for BP in this crisis had I been called in
as a PR person.
Public
relations people work on a company’s public image to keep it in good standings
with their clients. In which case one would think the BP oil spill was probably
a near impossible event save the BP oil company from. Even so, it has recovered,
or at least survived the spill so they must have had some pretty good PR
people. Having seen the extent of damage and read up on the responsibilities of
PR people I think I know a few main topics that I think I would have targeted
with ads to save BP in the eyes of their clients. First off I would have looked
for anything and everything that could be said about what BP oil was doing to
fix the oil spill right after it happened, as this would insure the public knew
that the company was concerned for the environment and peoples well being and
was doing everything in its power to fix it. For this we'd probably use a lot of photography and video of images like the one below. Secondly I’d find what the source
of the explosion that caused the spill was and try to make it sound as much
like an accident as possible, unless it was very obviously not an accident, in
which case we’d need to create a very sincere apology for the world and explain
that this outcome was not something the company foresaw.
In the
weeks following the beginning of the oil spill I’d set up extensive add
campaigns show casing everything the company was doing, from trying to cap the
spill to their cleanup efforts using images like those below. Emphasis would have to be put on every bit of
progress made to make sure the public knew that the company was working on the
problem. This process would have been crucial at all times during the spill considering
the length of time the oil spill was going on for before it was capped.
Quick
reminder for readers, none of this is what was necessarily done by BP during
the spill crisis, this is only the general plan I think I would use if I was BP’s
head PR person during the crisis. Of course I never looked up what they
actually did since I feel that would have defeated the purpose of this
assignment that I was writing this for. The facts at the beginning are sound
though and I will post the link to where I received them below.
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