Case Study: Reputation Damage from an Unprepared Social Media Strategy

A company that has not implemented a strategy for managing social media risks is vulnerable to attacks to its brand and its financial bottom line. In the summer of 2010, the petroleum giant British Petroleum (BP) faced a crisis of extraordinary proportions as oil continued to gush into the Gulf of Mexico after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. During the 107 days the company struggled to stem the flow of oil into the sea, BP mounted a public relations campaign to address concerns over the crisis. Company spokespeople touted the company’s cleanup efforts and the $20 billion recovery fund for the region. However, BP could hardly do anything to contain negative mentions online as countless numbers of people posted their concerns on Twitter and on blogs and organized themselves into protest groups on Facebook. In addition to their worries about the effect of the oil slick on the environment and on local fishing and tourism jobs, people were turned off by BP’s apparent lack of transparency. The company’s CEO, Tony Hayward, came under increasing fire online for remarks that were widely perceived as perfunctory, careless, and sometimes callous.

The company closely controlled media access to the oil spill areas and prohibited cleanup crews from wearing protective gear. Whereas BP’s own social media outlets had less than 18,000 followers, irate citizens created a Twitter account (BPglobalPR) that had more than 150,000 followers within weeks. The Twitter account, named @BPglobalPR, raised over $10,000 for the Gulf through the sale of t-shirts and other merchandise.

What Went Wrong?

BP’s usage and response to the social media community illustrates a number of areas in which the company did not have a process in place for addressing threats to the company and brand. Arguably, the explosion of BP’s oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico was an unforeseen event that no one could have predicted. The company’s own operational procedures should have prevented the blowout, but that is outside the scope or purpose of this book.

The social media reaction to a blowout or any large oil incident could have been anticipated by the organization well in advance, however. Clearly, people will react publicly to any such incident by posting their concerns and their outrage online. BP could have planned for the eventuality of such incidents by safeguarding the organization against social media fallout and specific attacks to the company’s reputation and assets.

In terms of human resources, the company could have employed online community managers to oversee their social media presence. Instead, the company barely had a presence and responded through messages prepared by the PR department. As a result, the company’s official Twitter account, @BP_America, has only 18,000 followers as of the writing of this book, whereas the fake account that spoofed BP’s efforts, @BPGlobalPR, grew quickly to have many times more followers, about 179,000 at last count.

In terms of utilization of the company’s assets, BP’s green logo was “remixed” by people online to reflect the oil’s impact on the environment. The @BPGlobalPR account, for example, uses an all-black logo with a drop of oil dripping from it. Numerous other remixes were posted to Flickr and Facebook, and some of them were sold as t-shirts. The company had no plan for safeguarding its trademarks and logos or understanding of how these may be misused in the case of an industrial accident.

In terms of monetary considerations, the very large number of negative mentions about BP resulted in a lot of bad press that ultimately impacted the company’s valuation. As the oil flowed into the Gulf, public outrage grew and investor confidence waned. BP’s valuation decreased so much as to make it a possible target for acquisition by a competing oil giant.

In terms of operations, some of BP’s actions were highly criticized in social media and the press. There were reports of BP allegedly preventing reporters and photographers from coming too close to the oil spill or from flying overhead. Other reports told of cleanup workers without adequate protection or masks, so photographs of them would not look too negative. Some of BP’s critical business decisions, which the company failed to adequately explain, were also highly criticized. These included the use of dispersants, which also pose an environmental hazard, not implementing blowout preventers, and not having a relief well ready. Even if the blowout itself was not foreseeable, the reaction to the news about what the company could have done before or after was entirely foreseeable.

In terms of reputation, the vast majority of online mentions about the company were negative. This spilled over to the press, which reported on the reaction of people online. People get upset about industrial accidents; knowing this, the company could have done more to build rapport with frank acknowledgments and more open lines of communication with concerned consumers online.

In these five key operational areas—human resources, utilization of assets, monetary spending, operations, and reputation—BP could have implemented a number of strategies that we will clearly define throughout the book.