I was just realizing how I have been blogging about how great social media is and how it increases awareness, allows for 2-way discussion, and strengthens brands and images-but wait, does it? Don’t get me wrong, social media is such an important aspect of a company but what if that company is dealing with a bad reputation? Then how does social media affect them? I’m sure you can guess I am referring to BP and the oil spill since I have been talking about environmental organizations.
Richard Telofski recently wrote a blog post titled, Why Social Media Will Never Let BP Sleep on the website Triple Pundit. He notes that social media wasn’t around during the 1989 Exon spill so they did not receive so much spotlight as BP is currently. We have addressed that BP hasn’t done the best job of being transparent and genuine, but combine this with angry feedback and bloggers: BP most likely will not recover from this corporate identity nightmare. There are so many varying opinions, lies, and unanswered questions that is making this situation a tough one to gauge and BP is certainly facing the criticism.
An interesting creative outlet for those upset by BP’s action are encouraged to “rebrand” BP by creating a new logo. Greenpeace is holding the contest in which anybody can submit their new truthful depiction of the company through Flickr. The contest ends at the end of the month, and soon people will associate BP’s brand with dead wildlife and ruined ecosystems; may the BP logo rest in peace.
Do you think BP will ever be able to recover their reputation and identity? Have environmental groups taken their social media tools too far? Do you think BP will secure their spot on this list of brands most likely to disappear by 2011…
How funny that we both chose to write about BP’s image recovery. I think that due to the nature of social media, so much information about this spill and the handling of it that it has done significant damage to their reputation.
Among environmental activities BP has never really received glowing reviews however I think a drastic rebranding along the lines of Philip Morris’ change to Altria will be necessary once BP has concluded its activities in the Gulf of Mexico.
By: James Carter on 07/11/2010
at 3:10 pm
That is a very amusing video. I think BP has their work cut out for them if they want to try and maintain a healthy reputation or at least salvage the one they already have. It’s important that companies like BP have a crisis communications plan before a crisis actually begins so that they have a better plan of action for when the terrible publicity and angry bloggers come knocking at the BP front door. Social media is definitely risky, especially in a crisis situation, however if a company tries to be transparent and real amongst the criticism, I think they will come out alive in the end.
By: Renee Doussard on 07/17/2010
at 1:34 am