Been A While & BP

Frankly there hasn't been much of interest to me, other than the BP oil-spill issue.

BP started out on the wrong foot by blaming its partner, Haliburton for not putting in the right shut-off valve. I suppose sorta like me blaming Toyota for the gas pedal problem as I slam into a line of nuns and little children. Everybody is going to get sued, and nobody really at this point cares who is to blame.

But blame is naturally what everyone wants to do in a crisis. But it does from a PR perspective beg the question of 'Why is it the 'BP' problem anyway?

From the outset, this issue could have been called the 'Gulf Oil Disaster', which would have at least put some of the blame on Gulf Oil in the mind's of information recipients. But allowing BP's emblem to be festooned on every piece of copy, and video reportage is well...dumb.

Everyone remembers Exxon Valdez which killed some birds and fish.

Yet no one remembers the name of the company behind the 'Bohpal Disaster', that killed six thousand people outright, and left tens of thousands of others lingering for years of awful pain. Union Carbide didn't even see a dip in stock shares because it was on crisis management from day one.

The lesson: if possible always put an issue tag with a location on the crisis, rather than fight your way through it with your corporate emblem flying high.

BP chose the later, and now is paying a pretty price for having done so. As well, BP by comparison, appears to still not accept it has a crisis. "We're doing our best", doesn't cut it.

And then refusing to let Congress see video of the oil AFTER a so-called partial fix only adds to the image of incompetence.

Conclusion:
BP is going to have to go through a major re-branding, and will go through decades of litigation to pay for all the collateral damage created by this mess..