BP’s Public Relations Nightmare

When a company finds itself in the middle of a public relations nightmare, the words and language that they choose to use suddenly become extremely critical. Finding itself in exactly this situation recently is BP, who has ultimate responsibility for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

The Chief Executive of BP, Tony Hayward, would appear not to be too skilled in PR, having made a number of ill advised statements in the previous few weeks. Last week he found himself having to answer questions from US Congress, which brought further criticism as congressmen accused him of dodging the questions.

Further, he has made some plain and simple gaffes, leading to the White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel to say in an interview with ABC News "I think we can all conclude that Tony Hayward is not going to have a second career in PR consulting."

Some of these gaffes have included "The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume" and "We're sorry for the massive disruption it's caused their lives. There's no one who wants this over more than I do. I would like my life back", particularly harsh as eleven people lost their lives on the rig.

Some PR experts have suggested that BP are pushing Tony Hayward into the media spotlight to take attention away from the company itself, perhaps he is unaware that this is what they may be doing, or maybe he has become too blasé about the whole issue.

If that is the case, he certainly has not helped himself by taking to his yacht off of the Isle of Wight last weekend. BP says that this is his first day off in several months. Perhaps Mr Hayward feels that he is entitled to a day off. That may well be the case, but along with his very well paid job comes a certain amount of responsibility, part of which is maintaining the reputation of the company, and if that means working non stop during such a crisis as BP now finds itself in, then surely that is a small price to pay for an annual salary of four million pounds?