In response to Han Dong’s ethics post titled “Report blames poor management decisions by BP, others for oil spill” , I would like to address recent developments and approach the issue from a marketing perspective.
A year has past since the catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and since then BP has attempted to rebuild its carefully constructed image as a company taking major strides towards sustainability. In the past BP has prided itself on its innovation in “riding the green wave”, but the oil spill nearly completely destroyed this image of their brand overnight. BP has however, managed to crawl out of this public relations nightmare and on October 21 2011, the federal government granted BP to continue drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.
In an age where the public is becomingly increasingly conscious about environmental issues, BP is literally treading dangerous waters in its attempt to continue drilling and the decision to allow this activity has been met with outcry from victims of the disaster.
Still in terms of public relations bungles, BP seems to be recovering. In fact Netflix (where its decision to implement Qwikster caused stock prices to drop drastically) fared comparatively worse.
Although “green” still permeates people’s minds, and infractions on the environment can impact a company hard, BP is recovering- albeit slowly.
Sources:
Green to gold : how smart companies use environmental strategy to innovate, create value, and build competitive advantage. D.C. Esty and A.S. Winston. Yale University Press, 2006