Like oil and water...

6|30|2010

One of the sure signs of summer in my neighborhood is all the youth groups standing in front of the BP station at the center of town waving signs to wash cars to raise money for their baseball, soccer or cheering team. I feel sorry for the owners of these stations, who are good, solid members of our community.  They didn’t cause the problems in the Gulf, but they’re definitely paying for it on the front line, and I do understand why. When we’re not happy with our elected officials, we can vote them out of office. When we believe we’ve been wronged by a company or a brand, we can choose to take our business elsewhere. The American people have responded accordingly across the country and now BP is working to bail out the impact of our boycott on their distributors.

Many people, companies and universities are now weighing in, and I’ve no doubt that stopping the oil from continuing to pump into the gulf is not an easy problem to solve. If it were, the scarlet billows of oil on the water would be nowhere near as extensive as they are today. The scariest take-away from all the hearings with BP, as well as other oil company execs, is that there’s little assurance that this can’t or won’t end or happen again soon.

So, sitting at the forefront of what’s being called the greatest manmade environmental disaster, how does the BP brand survive all this well-deserved scrutiny? From my point of view, this is an ideal situation where action speaks louder than words. At this point, it’s probably best to divert from paid media to some more appropriate crisis response activities; and they’re not easy nor without deep expense. So, here’s the response I would have liked to have seen from BP that, in the long run, may have kept me from thinking twice about filling up at a yellow and green gas station.

1. The media is already more than engaged in coverage of this event. Make all the appropriate executives as accessible as possible and respond with honesty, integrity and sincerely – including when you’re meeting with a Congressional committee or maybe even the President of the United States. Rather than be summoned, proactively provide critical information on a timely basis – hourly, daily, whatever is appropriate at any given time.
2. Put egos, competitive conflicts and profits aside and immediately call a summit of all the top executives and engineers at all the major oil companies and work together to not only resolve the oil leak as quickly as possible, but also start to address what needs to be done for the future, too.
3. Take over hotels in key locations and offer to pay for all the expenses to send as many of your employees from around the world to the gulf to help with the clean-up. I’m sure they are as frustrated as the rest of us and many of them would be willing to go. (Heck, I’ll go -- pay for my expenses, too.)
4. Go there yourself. Get down there now. Set up a temporary HQ office and run the company from the shores of the Gulf and live, eat, breathe and feel first-hand what the people most affected by this situation are feeling. End each workday by heading to the beach, shovel in hand, and scooping up some tarballs into plastic bags.

The best test of leaders and companies is how appropriately and true to their brand they remain in responding to bad times as well as good. The long-term negative impact of the oil spill for the gulf region is indescribable. The same can be said for the BP brand. It’s going to take a long time to bring both back.

Photo credit:  FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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