BP, the oil spill, and Twitter

While BP battles the ever increasingly disastrous oil spill in the Gulf, their PR department is trying to conduct a brand cleanup through traditional and online media. You may have seen the TV ads featuring Darryl Willis, the VP of Resources at BP America, featuring him as a Louisiana-born “volunteer” eager to help citizens file their claims. (Apparently  CEO Tony Hayward wasn’t quite cutting it, and so a new “face” for the company was chosen.) But BP is also embracing new media methods such as Search Engine Marketing and Twitter. In this article, we take a look at how BP and its detractors are using Twitter to connect with the world.

You may have heard about or come across the darkly funny (and fake) BP Twitter accounts that have been popping up since the April 20th, 2010 disaster occurred and hijacking and proliferating the #bpcareshashtag…

• BPGlobalPR is by far the most infamous (and actually ranks ABOVE the real BP account -which is verified- in a people search for “BP”) posting such tweets as: “We have begun the process of collecting our crude oil in biodegradable spill-proof containers: pelicans. #bpcares” and “Cleaning up oil spills is expensive. Buying judges so we can keep drilling? Relatively cheap. http://ow.ly/21W3b” .
• Then there is BPCares with regularly entertaining tongue-in-cheek commentary including: “There are rumors that people are upset with #BP. We would like to dissolve those rumors at this time. #bpcares” and “We will remove the oil from the ocean once we find a use for it. #bpcares”.
• BPcleanUpCrew is in the same vein, and there is even an account dedicated to poking fun at CEO Tony Hayward - Real_BP_CEO sharing things like, “For the record we did not hide information about the oil leak. We never bothered to gather the information in the first place.” and “Had a rough week so to cheer myself up I bought a Ferrari”.
• But not all of the BP accounts run by people other than BP are satirical. There are several protest accounts as well, including: BoycottBP, BeyondBP, and Boycott_bp_oil.

As it stands now, fake account BPGlobalPR has 175,533 followers, dwarfing the official BP Twitter account, BP_America, who has 15,713.

So how is BP responding to all of the “Twitter BP” competition? While many companies (and celebrities) might shut down a false twitter account (as it is a violation of Twitter’s terms of service), BP (knowing that the last thing they need is negative press for spending time and resources prosecuting a twitter user instead of focusing on oil cleanup) seems to be letting the whole thing slide. A BP spokesman simply commented, “It’s a shame, but obviously people are entitled to their views,” adding that the company is taking the spill “very seriously.”  Toby Odone, a spokesman at BP, told Ad Age: “I’m not aware of whether BP has made any calls to have it taken down or addressed. People are entitled to their views on what we’re doing and we have to live with those. We are doing the best we can to deal with the current situation and to try to stop the oil from flowing and to then clean it up… We’re looking at it and it seems to have a different logo on it now [formerly @BPGlobalPR used the standard BP logo, but then changed to a Black and White version] … People are frustrated at what’s happening, as are we, and that’s just their way of expressing it.”

To follow BP’s official Twitter news outlets, you can view: BP_America and Oil_Spill_2010. BP and others are using the hashtag#oilspill which you can also use to follow updates from anyone utilizing the tag (though at the moment, the top tweets containing #oilspill are all about dead birds…).

Suggested Reading:

BP’s internet response: the good, the bad, the ugly

Don’t Blame BP for Advertising on Google

The Oil Spill and BP’s Marketing Response

Tags: BP, case study, Corrie Davidson, Google, Marketing, oil spill, pr, public relations, search engine marketing, Social Media, twitter

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010 at 2:14 pm and is filed under Business Strategy, Marketing, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.