BP - Beyond Pinheadedness

I try not to editorialize very much, but this one begs to be written. A recent BP motto: Beyond Petroleum. Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy. What has happened has put them beyond petroleum into environmental disaster, economic chaos and what is sure to be a huge hit to shareholder equity. The lawsuits are begining to pour in and even people in Kentucky are suing due to reduced property values. Yes, the gulf oil spilling (it can't be called a "spill" because it's still going) is beyond petroleum straight on to buffoonery. Let's take the public relations (PR) angle.

Many PR practitioners have three phases to a public event that must be addressed. Phase 1: BEFORE it happens, you identify your major threats and create crisis communications strategies and procedures for each (playbooks, if you will). Phase 2: It's happened and you deal with it moment by moment according to the playbooks and you call in outside help to keep you honest and rational. Phase 3: You assess the current state of affairs, continue to update folks as needed and begin work to tackle all the issues that remain in order to either regain the previous esteem held for you by the public (if you had any), or begin a new effort to rebuild public image in the face of a totally egregious affair (think dead coal miners and MSHA fines already on your desk).

There's something called the "golden hour" in many professions (it's often more than one hour). In PR it refers to the time from the onset in which you address the situation with the public. Those first critical moments when you start on phase two of your crisis communications decide how public opinion - and the CEO's future - will play out. BP has blown it every second of the way: Hiding info, like video from the ocean floor; having company thugs in boats chasing folks away from places where there is oil (the Coast Guard was involved in those, too); giving accurate damage reports as it's happening; working with state and federal officials in any way possible, and; being totally transparent. Fail! On every count, fail!

Did these fools learn nothing from Ford and Firestone a decade ago? Were they asleep during the entire Exxon Valdez affair? They have their own Chernobyl to deal with now and I have every confidence that the CEO, Tony Hayward, and his PR people will be sacked. Here's a passage from a leaked memo from Hayward:

"Yesterday we announced further grants, totalling $70 million, to Florida, Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi to help mitigate the economic impact of the oil spill. The total cost of the response to date, including these grants, amounts to about $625 million, including the cost of the spill response, containment, relief well drilling, previous grants to the Gulf states, settlements and federal costs. The financial scale of our response is just one illustration of the serious way in which we are stepping up to our responsibility to clean up the spill and mitigate its impacts."

$70 million? Really? They should have already committed at least one billion dollars to a fund that should be co-managed by the states, the feds and BP based on the loss of income, property damage, tax revenue losses, clean up fees, handling fees, etc. How many shrimpers and fishermen will lose their boats and income to this? How many resorts will close? From the first week, people were canceling their Florida reservations and going up the east coast. If a hurricane comes through, it will decimate marsh lands, wetlands and all other sensitive coastal areas when the oil is showered on hundreds of square miles.

Okay, I'm done ... writing. I'm nowhere near done seething. I'm not going to start on lax government standards, the Obama administration being over a year late on their scientific platform (this is related), politicians like Mary Landrieu doing a total about face on the safety of drilling, and on and on. We're pissing away our future for a few coins. Shame on BP and shame on us all.