Pinpointing BP's many pitfalls.

PositionOil Production - British Petroleum Company PLC

"The way British Petroleum has handled the oil spill should serve as the standard to avoid for any company facing such a disaster in the future;' declares Maribeth Kuzmeski, the founder of Red Zone Marketing and author of The Connectors: How the World's Most Successful Businesspeople Build Relationships and Win Clients for Life. "Obviously, it would have been best for the company to have prevented the spill, but once the damage was done, the company could have mitigated some of the backlash it received."

in a disaster, you expect public opinion to be at its worst immediately after the event, Kuzmeski points out. With the BP spill, backlash has gotten increasingly worse--and it is not just BP's image that has suffered. Poor communication has affected the public's view of the government negatively.

"People are looking to the President for solutions and, until his national address, they had been mostly disappointed," says Kuzmeski of Barack Obama. "Neither BP nor the U.S. government has been able to successfully connect with the public since the spill began.

"At different stages of the event, it has been revealed that BP wasn't being completely truthful about the spill," continues Kuzmeski. "At one point, it wasn't allowing the media to get close to the site, and it turns out the company had a higher quality video feed much earlier than previously revealed. By not being fully transparent and disclosing what they know, BP officials have affected their believability. As it stands today, I think a lot of people are wondering if they can trust any communication the company puts out there."

In fact, "BP executives have almost seemed annoyed that people are questioning them. The company's spokespeople, including its CEO, Tony Hayward, often come...

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