I love that little clip, mainly for the satire, but also as a perspective on how to not handle stressful situations. (Really, cutting off your hair and throwing it at the problem solves absolutely nothing, in any and every situation)
However, this clip also shows insight into how public relations should be handled, and the lack of it during the oil spill of 2010.
As James Herring put it in a Time Business Article
“It’s left people in the p.r. industry scratching their heads.”
Public Relations (PR) is one of the key factors of the promotional mix, greater so with a company as large as BP. BP’s PR team reacted very much in the same way as the people in the above clip – by hoping the problem would blow over, and not considering the severity of their (lack of) actions. As PublicRelationsBlogger points out,
“What should have happened? Well, from a … PR stance, the exact opposite”
PublicRelationsBlogger continues to define the main areas that the public relations for BP seemed to have missed – simply to accept the blame, apologise sincerely and act immediately.
A New York Times e-article goes one step further, equating the mistakes of BP to those of Exxon, showing how though BP started out on with a different approach, they still fell into the same traps as Exxon. Yet due to social media, has found their accident to be far more exacerbated in the public eye.
a comic to sum it up
