High-powered public relations and crises management teams come to the rescue of BP. 

Tony Hayward, the cherub-cheeked chairman of PB (British Petroleum) has the unenviable task of being the talking head for BP’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill. He comes across as the concerned, empathetic executive trying to make things right, and of course, denying any responsibility for the spill – it was the incompetent contractors. However, Hayward magnanimously goes on says that British Petroleum will pay for cleaning-up the mess. 

Hayward is simply the public face of BP – a robotic mouthpiece attached to a crises management team. He ceased to bare any resemblance to a human being the moment the crises began to unfold. 

Watching and reading interviews with Hayward, the one thing an old investigative environmental journalist sees behind the empathetic words and boyish expressions is an invisible army of cynical lawyers, crises management, and public relations specialists frenetically crafting his canned responses to media questions. 

The crises management team has already reviewed questions the news media asked about previous man-made disasters and fabricated logical sounding answers. They craft every word that Hayward and his BP associates spit out to the media to elicit as much public sympathy and understanding of “BP’s unfortunate plight” as possible. 

Not only do they create the words and Hayward’s public image, but simultaneously there are batteries of people tracking every news story along with what’s said on bogs and social networking sites, and in turn, pump out positive spins to counter anything negative they encounter. The aim is to get people on their side, and if a blogger is popular enough, attempt to buy them off with favours. 

The PR battle and manipulating public opinion regarding BP’s battered public image is every bit as intense as the battle to quell the oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico. 

What we are talking about is “Crises Management” and that’s in the domain of public relations experts. Large corporations like BP retain a multinational public relations firm specialising not only creating their ‘green corporate image,’ but also disarm the media and manipulate information on Internet social networking sites such Twitter and Facebook in crises situations. They even attempt to manipulate Internet search engines to knock negative information or bogs off the first pages. 

Large public relations firms are completely without scruples and completely mercenary. Their only loyalty is to the corporation paying for services. 

Typically, proactive crisis management activities include forecasting potential crises and creating media strategies to deal with them – it’s like soothsaying and rehearsing responses to the media before the foreseeable crises happens. 

The PR agency responsible for BP’s “Green – Nice Corporation” image in the early part of this century says on their site in the crises management section: 

Crises can unfold with blistering speed. Responding to a crisis requires an organization's leadership to remain focused and effective. 

Ogilvy PR is an expert in crisis management. From the CDC [US Centers for Disease Control] to corporate clients, we help organizations anticipate the types of situations they're likely to encounter and hone the skills they need to contain a crisis and implement an effective response. 

Al Tortorella, Managing Director, Crisis Management at Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide says: 

What are some of the challenges clients face, and how does Ogilvy address them? 

Every crisis situation is unique and must be managed accordingly. However, there are certain core principles underpinning successful crisis management, and we use them every day to contain the difficulties our clients face when they are under attack. 

Our experience has led us to identify some key areas that companies under stress should be cognizant of. They are:

·         an understanding of the media interest in the story,

·         a precise definition of the real problem and determining strategy accordingly,

·         a managing of the flow of information,

·         an assumption that the situation will escalate and get worse,

·         a managing of all the affected constituencies, and,

·         a measuring of results in real time. 

Much of what we do involves anticipating the types of crises that a company is likely to encounter so we can help develop useful frameworks. 

Further, the skills needed to implement a crisis response can be amplified and honed through simulations that put management through the paces of a realistic crisis situation. 

When it comes to crises management, the PR agency will try almost any tactic they can get away with to take the heat off their client. In the case of BP, it appears that one tactic called ‘viral marketing’ has come into play using rumours and conspiracy theories to deflect the spotlight from the corporation onto innocuous third parties. 

While PR agency personnel may not have created the rumours, it is to their benefit to spread and perpetuate them on behalf of their client who is not directly responsible for the PR agencies actions. 

One of the better sound bites is “Obama’s Katrina” which is something the Obama administration was forced to counter before it got out of control by publishing a timeline on the Internet.

The ‘Katrina’ sound bite suggests that if President Obama had responded sooner, the oil spill would not be as serious and the real fault falls on the US government’s slowness in responding, not BP. 

The major objective of crises management is to take control of the information disseminated to the media and make the news media dependent on the company public relations department for any news. 

Thus far, to some extent, it seems as if tried and true crises management strategies are beginning to work for BP.