CorpComms Magazine

The reverberations of the disaster aboard the Deepwater Horizon rig are still being felt, not least by the families of those who lost their lives.  For communication professionals the question is how could an organisation that employed some of the best experts and advisers get it so wrong.  The answer is two-fold: firstly, the seeds were sown long before the blowout on the rig; and, secondly, sometimes communications professionals are quick to overplay their ability to manage dramatic incidents.  In fact, many are quick to claim credit when things go well but even quicker to apportion blame when it doesn't.  Whilst there are many things that BP could undoubtedly have done better, the magnitude of the disaster and the context in which it happened meant that it was never going to be easy to dilute the bad news and to make it a triumph.

Let's look at the background. I've never been much of a fan of outsourcing which seems to me more like abrogation than delegation. I don't know how much outsourcing was to blame in the BP case, but it seemed that the chain of command was stretched too far. The operation was so complex that no one knew who was actually responsible and who was best placed to put it right.

The communicators certainly cannot be blamed for the back luck that saw the disaster occurring at the lowest point for Obama. Had it happened at the high point of one of the oil-friendly Bush's administrations the context would have been hugely different.

The organisation was still in transition from the management style of the Browne era to that of the sleeves-rolled-up Hayward.  The leadership was still deciding whom to listen to and whom to trust. The right people were in the wrong place and wrong people were in the right place.

The handling of the disaster also seemed to be made more complex by the ambiguity of the roles of the chairman and the chief executive.  The advisers tried hard to create a proper division of labour after the event but it seemed clear that there was no real understanding beforehand.

In a crisis it is essential to have both local knowledge and local friends, both of which can only be established by creating and developing strong local roots.  For whatever reason, BP seemed to have had no substantial PR and public affairs resources in the US.  All their excellent reputation investment seemed focused in the UK and it is debatable how many people from Mississippi actually made it to the British Museum.

But that's all context. The real mistake that the BP communicators made was that this was a digital crisis and they seemed more comfortable with the analogue media.  The disaster was so huge that the command and control method of media relations was outdated.  This was a time not for persuading the media but engaging with critics - a lesson that organisations and governments who still believe that you can control the message need to learn quickly.

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