#bpcares

BP Global PR logo for Twitter

BP, the giant energy company, really got some dirt on their hands. A new oil spill in the sea is no surprise. Lots of them happened before: there is a major spill in Nigeria almost every year, but what to do when it is in the backyard of a nation as big as the US?

Well, some public relations would do the trick. It seems like the energy company is the one being tricked. Few weeks after the beginning of the oil spill, a fake twitter account, named BPGlobal PR, has been voicing funny tweets about the spill, such as:

“Please do NOT take or clean any oil you find on the beach. That is the property of British Petroleum and we WILL sue you.”

“Cleaning up oil spills is expensive. Buying judges so we can keep drilling? Relatively cheap.”

No surprise, BP – the real one – has asked Twitter to cancel the account, or to disclaim who is the person or organization, just to avoid confusion with what they’re doing. Yeah, right.

The real BP’s chief executive, Tony Hayward, is really concerned with the situation. Prior to unveil second-quarter financial figures, he has been to a yacht competition, “to stress down”, or buying terms as “oil spill”, “volunteer”, “claims” from search engine providers on the Internet, to draw attention of the public to their recovery in US.

That’s a lot done. They believe helping people to locate themselves on the Internet, is one of their cleaning efforts at the Gulf of Mexico. It would be good to be more proactive on the cleanup, than improving visits at the real BP’s homepage.

Let the public find information naturally, on their own way, will lead, presumably, the Internet users to the real BP’s website site.

Real BP’s amount of money and time spent in building a PR strategy may flounder, just like the leased Horizon rig, now at the bottom of the ocean, precisely, 5000 ft (1500m) below.

I don’t even think this post will be read by Internet users anymore. #bpcares