When BP spells "Bad Press"

A very important part of PR is crisis management: knowing how to deal with the fallout from a major disaster or scandal. The PR people at BP are, no doubt, working night and day to try to get information out about the devastating oil spill. From what I have seen all the correct steps seem to have been taken, the response has been swift and transparent with constant website updates, press conferences and news releases. One tool that BP decided to employ to keep stakeholders in the loop was a real time video of the oil gushing into the ocean. See it here: http://www.livestream.com/oilspill

How smart was this decision? The thought of thousands of litres of oil damaging the environment is sickening enough, but to actually see it happening in real time is infuriating. Streaming video is without a doubt a powerful tool if used correctly, but this video is nothing but evidence of the harm big oil companies can do to our environment and a display of BPs ineptitude.

If BP wanted to show stakeholders what was going on, perhaps they could have gone for a streaming video of the hundreds of vessels on site trying to clean up the mess. Instead all we see is oil pumping into the ocean. A bad PR decision by a company whose credibility right now is lower than that ocean floor leak.

Can We See Through Transparency?

The smart money in today's economy seems to be on transparency. In a post-Enron, post-recession world where information is no longer tightly controlled by organizations, many PR professionals are espousing the merits of telling it like it is.

There really does seem to have been a genuine and concerted shift towards accountability and transparency over the last few years. Consumers are becoming more and more aware of corporate ideologies and values and seem to want to align themselves with those organizations that best represent their personal ideologies and values.

Will this shift become the norm? Will values and ideologies trump price at the cash register? Will a socially responsible yet under-performing stock be preferred over a high-yield morally questionable one?
I don't know. All I do know is that I know where I'm going to put my money.

Social Media that Blends

Will it Blend is a web 2.0 phenomenon. I had heard of the site and the concept behind it but had never actually seen a Will it Blend video. I had assumed it was another Diet Coke and
Mentos type viral video and never paid it much heed.

But the article I read today explained how Will it Blend was actually an ingenious marketing campaign launched by a little-known appliance company called Blendtec.

What strikes me as clever about this campaign is how it embraced the culture of the web and social media to show people doing odd things that satisfy an almost childlike curiosity - that answers those random questions that all start with the words: "what happens if ...?"

Another thing that stands out about this campaign is the absence of any branding in the name. Had the campaign been called Blending with Blendtec, I doubt the videos would have gone viral.

What was interesting too, apropos of my last post, was the affiliated 'friends of Blendtec' and the very unconventional product placement on Will it Blend? The latest being the iPad.

"I love my new iPad, it does a ton of new things, but will it blend? That is the question." asks host Tom Dickson. Is Apple paying for their product to be trashed and blended into a fine powder? Could it be so? It certainly looks that way. Proving once again that social media is re-writing the rules of Marketing Communications and Public Relations.