When a crisis impacts your company, it's tempting to use advertising to get out your side of the story.
With advertising, so the reasoning goes, you control the image, the message and the timing. Even if world opinion is against you, advertising allows you tell your side of the story unfettered by impertinent questions from the mainstream media, who aren't your friends anyway.
Even though ads seldom persuade detractors, advertising, will give your most ardent supporters -- shareholders, senior managers, employees and contractors -- some degree of comfort and valid talking points to help defend your company.
Then comes the BP mess in the Gulf of Mexico.
Sure lots of Americans depend on BP for employment. BP stock values and dividends fund the pension plans of those we depend on and admire -- cops, teachers and fire fighters. BP ads should be able to win some points with these folks. After all, no one likes to see their pension investments lose 30% of market value because of a corporate screw up.
Notwithstanding, is there a public servant alive who can see oil soaked pelicans on CNN or the front page of The New York Times and can then switch gears to feel better about BP after watching its CEO apologize in a paid ad? This is cognitive dissonance personified.
There have been other monumental cases of corporate malfeasance in the past -- Union Carbide's 1984 gas leak in Bhopal, India, made news in early June when, after 25-plus years, several managers were sentenced on convictions relating to the deaths of residents and workers in India (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8725140.stm).
To be sure the BP disaster will rank right up there with Bhopal as well as Hooker Chemical's Love Canal, Three Mile Island, Pacific Gas & Electric made famous by Erin Brockovich, and A Civil Action focused a sharp eye on toxic waste from W.R. Grace that polluted Woburn's water supply.
But the mess BP created in the Gulf puts a new spin on spin. It seems never ending and people are further maddened by the fact that the only people who can solve the problem are the people who caused it. It's a little hiring the embezzler to unravel his financial treachery after he is caught and then finding out he is still ripping off the company.
In the aftermath, what did BP CEO Tony Hayward do wrong? His, "I want my life back," comment was the death knell to an already flawed strategy.
Doling out $5,000 checks to fishermen and shrimpers at the very beginning and asking them to sign financial waivers backfired. Expectations were badly managed and the gusher never ceases while BP has been minimizing the quantity of the oil and its impact all along.
In frustration BP turned to advertising "The Gulf spill is a tragedy that never should have happened," Tony Hayward says with furrowed brow in commercials that began airing recently on national television.
President Barack Obama shot back at BP, for spending money advertising and announcing a dividend distribution. "What I don't want to hear is when they're spending that kind of money on their shareholders and spending that kind of money on TV advertising that they're nickeling and diming fishermen or small businesses here in the Gulf who are having a hard time," quoted The New York Daily News.
What could BP have done right.
While criticism mounted over President Obama's inability to muster sufficient empathy and indignation, Admiral Thad Allen, US Coast Guard Commandant, emerged as the take-charge guy. Bit-by-bit the public grew comfortable with this 61-year-old Coast Guard officer and who doesn't love the Coast Guard anyway. Allen built trust. He is straight-talking, stuck to the facts and didn't sugarcoat anything. He told Americans we are going to be here for a long time. And, when it comes to impressions -- TV is after all a medium of impressions -- he looks the part, appearing one day in summer uniform, another in his flight suit. He's everywhere too -- on a helicopter, delivering briefings, making the Sunday talk show rounds. That's who you want in charge when disaster strikes.
In contrast, BP's CEO just looks silly appearing in his hardhat with the corporate sunburst-daisy logo. Some CEOs just have it and media exposure turns them into folk heroes. Lee Iacocca, Steve Jobs, Jack Welch, Bill Gates, are all very different personalities ranging from everyone's dad, to mild-mannered, to tough guy to intellectual-geek. But every one of these CEOs can get in front of a camera and deliver a message with conviction, credibility and incredible impact across a broad spectrum of audiences. Hayward is wrong for the job.
Houston we have a problem
In BPs case, America needed the guy with the white short sleeve shirt and pocket protector. The kind of guy who could actually do something when the Apollo 13 crew radioed, "Houston we have a problem." We also wanted content -- how many gallons, how long, where are the boats, where are the booms being deployed. And he needed to be seen on TV as involved -- directing the activities from a command post, out on the rig when each new attempt to stop the gusher was made, delivering press briefings at 4 PM every single day.
BP blew it.
The lesson
Get the right spokesperson right away -- a few CEOs can pull it off, Tony Hayward -- even though he is a geologist -- could not. His advisors didn't recognize this until it was too late. BP needed to create a new leader and fast, but it never happened.
Maximize exposure and access -- set up a schedule and stick to it. Invite reporters in. Imbed them on the oilrigs and with the cleanup crews. Set up a firm schedule and give a daily briefing. Bring in other technical experts to respond to reporters' questions. Get surrogates on the ground to deal with local leaders and provide local press access, for as House Speaker Tip O'Neil once so famously said, "All politics is local."
Get the facts and get them out -- if you deliver bad news honestly, the press will be more accepting of the good news when you can eventually deliver it. Lie and reporters will tell the public how hard they had to work to uncover the truth. Much better to have that airtime spent telling people your side of the story -- what you are doing right.
End with a brightener -- No matter how grim the news, try to end every press encounter with something positive. Be warned, the positive information has to be relevant and in keeping with the severity of the situation. BP needs to keep making it clear that it is in it for the long haul, that it is focusing new resources on the problem, that the company is gaining the cooperation of leaders in the oil industry and that it is encouraging new safety standards. And...that it is getting the checks out to the people who have suffered both financially and emotionally.
