Mired in the mother of all crises, BP has had to endure stinging criticism. But it is the beleagured CEO Tony Hayward who has attracted the greatest ire: Neil Gibbons reports 

There’s been an oil spill. You may have heard about it.

BP’s torment has dominated the front pages for two months, with every new day bringing a fresh twist of the knife. Eleven workers dead, wildlife covered in sludge, a share price drop of 49% (perhaps more when you read this), a feral press pack administering a daily shoeing, public vilification of the CEO, and even the President of the United States using the crisis for political grandstanding. That’s some crisis.

First, the news. On April 20, an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig killed eleven crewmen. The resulting fire could not be extinguished and, on April 22, the rig sank, leaving its well gushing and causing the largest offshore oil spill in US history.

The spill has given rise to a reputational crisis of unprecedented scale and ferocity. But more than anything, it has been a crisis characterised by the leadership of the organisation – CEO Tony Hayward has become a lightning rod for the world’s fury, accused not merely of a lack of personal empathy and tact but of personifying the sluggishness, aloofness and lack of contrition that, critics say, have been the hallmarks of BP’s response.

In fairness, Hayward has maintained a high level of visibility throughout the crisis, flying out to the US two days after the accident, and only returning to the UK for 36 hours to pack more bags. He has promised to remain in the US until the spill is fixed.

And BP and its advisers Brunswick (neither of whom chose to comment) have orchestrated a vigorous PR offensive – an appropriate term given its bellicose language. The terms BP has used are deliberately militaristic: an “armada” of 200 vessels skimming the water, planes “bombing the hell out of” the spill with dispersant”, 15,000 “armed” fishermen.

But while Hayward recently claimed not to have read any newspapers or watched the news since he flew out to the US – “I do not want my judgment to be clouded by what is being written about me” – he can’t have failed to pick up on the scorn being heaped on him in the media.

“The strategy of putting the CEO centre stage is clearly the right one,” says Richard Griffiths, head of strategic media at Ketchum Pleon. “That said, Tony Hayward is fast learning about the risks of striking an inappropriate tone in public. While he has rightly sought to directly engage with media with a series of broadcast and print interviews, he prompted disbelief by telling Gulf coast residents: “I would like my life back”. This was clearly an unfortunate follow-up and somewhat negated his apology for the disaster.”

This, says Griffiths, reinforces the importance of practising key messages before speaking. “It’s not just his tone but his demeanour that’s causing comment.”

So visibility alone isn’t enough. “Hayward has made it personal, which is good,” says Kerem Yazgan, partner and senior executive in the corporate affairs team at PR firm Prime. “He is out there in the field, without jacket and tie, and it almost looks like he is part of the team that works with the actual efforts. But the question is if he has not made it too personal, and he has become too operative. Saying ‘I’d like my life back’ almost implies that his own life is more important than solving this crisis.”

Critics have seized on that gaffe. “Tony Hayward comes across as not only totally over his head but as a whiner who cares more about getting rest than solving the problem,” says a Shel Horowitz, a PR and marketing consultant specialising in ethical messaging in the US. “This, I believe, is one of several factors that have shredded the company’s market cap since the incident”.

More damaging was Hayward’s attempt to understate the significance of the spill. “The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean,” he told The Guardian. “The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume.”

To many crisis communicators, this is as bad as it gets. “When Hayward uttered that, hours and hours of preparation went out the door,” says Lou Hoffman, CEO of the Hoffman Agency.

Wizened PROs shake their heads, but what BP needs to do is actually very straightforward, says Horowitz: “Admit responsibility without any shilly-shallying. Had the company done this immediately, no one would be faulting their PR.”

But Hayward has leant the opposite way, saying that the disaster “was not BP’s accident”. BP has repeatedly stressed that the rig was leased and operated by the drilling firm Transocean.

“I cringe when BP’s CEO and its interminable COO go on TV and explain to people what they will do now when they haven’t taken responsibility for the spill,” says Richard Laermer, CEO of RLM PR in New York. “They need someone who shrugs and says we fucked up. I know that would work. I see it and help people do just that (often kicking and screaming) daily.”

But not everyone is that disparaging. “The communications controlled by a company during a crisis - not the media coverage - can be revealing,” says Lou Hoffman. “After all, if you can’t get the communications under your control right, you have zero chance of winning over others to carry your story forward.

“Here, BP actually comes off as competent. The copy in their advertisement both acknowledges the debacle and takes responsibility. Compare that with a similar ad from Toyota during their recall crisis in which the first sentence says: ‘For more than 50 years, Toyota has provided you with safe, reliable, quality vehicles and first-rate service.’ Horrible. Using the lead sentence to take a walk down nostalgia lane is in contrast to BP’s straight-forward language.”

Hayward remains a divisive figure. Not helped by the fact that he tends to be unfavourably compared – at least in the media – to his predecessor Lord Browne, who was a thoughtful communicator, media-savvy and diplomatic.

Hayward is said to be less guarded in his comments. Shortly after being appointed CEO, he told employees BP’s operational performance was “terrible” - a comment which hit BP’s shares when reported, prompting negative comparisons with Browne.

And whereas Browne backed investments in green energy, pushing the “Beyond Petroleum” brand, Hayward takes a more sceptical approach to renewables. Indeed, it has been this shift in emphasis that some attribute to BP’s massive reputational hit.

Would the company’s reputation have been insulated by a firmer stand on CSR? Soon after taking over in 2007, Hayward told an audience of business students at Stanford University that he thought too many people at the company were “trying to save the world”. It spelt a renewed focus on the core values of oil and gas as the chief source of profit.

Since then, environmentalists have been horrified to see Browne’s statements about BP becoming an “energy company” fall by the wayside. Today, BP’s alternative energy division and solar business have all but disappeared.

Greenpeace UK’s executive director John Sauven points out that this year the company has allocated less than a billion dollars to its entire low carbon portfolio, now mainly comprised of biofuels. In contrast, the company is planning to spend 20 times this amount extracting oil and gas from increasingly unconventional sources including the tar sands of Canada.

“What BP will never admit, among their glossy corporate brochures and extensive environmental assessments, is that its entire business model is predicated on an ever increasing demand for oil, decades into the future,” he says.

Criticism of BP’s leadership doesn’t stop at Hayward. Observers of the company’s response have been perplexed by the relative anonymity of the group’s new chairman. For almost two months, shareholders have been grumbling that chairman Carl-Henrik Svanberg – on a salary of some £750,000 - has all but disappeared.

In response, a spokesperson for BP has felt the need to point out Svanberg that has been out to the crisis control centre in Houston, is being kept up-to-date with what is happening out there and is “very supportive” of his chief executive. Yet there are no plans for him to say anything publicly.

As with his CEO, Svanberg’s demeanour differs markedly from that of his predecessor Peter Sutherland - a feisty, outspoken character who was anything but bashful when it came to public pronouncements.

The trickle-down effect of uncommunicative leadership is aggrieved stakeholders. NGOs have made their feelings clear – shortly after the crisis broke, two Greenpeace activists scaled the BP building in London by way of protest. They hoisted a flag depicting BP’s logo smothered in oil and emblazoned with the words ‘British Polluters’ from a balcony above the entrance of the company’s UK headquarters in St James’s Square.

Greenpeace also waded in via social media. It asked the general public to rebrand BP by redesigning the company’s corporate logo. The “rebrand BP” contest quickly began to trend on Twitter and caused a stir among Greenpeace’s Facebook following of almost half a million.

Public relations professionals, whether critical or appreciative of BP’s response, agree on one thing. In its future communications, it needs a firm hand on the comms tiller.

“Here’s the million-quid question,” says Hoffman. “Does someone from BP’s communications function have a seat at the crisis management table? If the answer is no, it’s unlikely BP will ever get this right.”

Lessons from Tylenol

In October 1982, Tylenol, the leading pain-killer in the US at the time, sparked a crisis: seven people in Chicago were reported dead after taking it. The product had been removed from the shelves, infected with cyanide and returned to stores. Tylenol, which had enjoyed a 37% market share, saw its share slump to 7%.

Manufacturer Johnson & Johnson acted quickly. Although it knew it wasn’t to blame, it assumed responsibility for public safety and recalled all of its capsules from the market. And when, in February 1986, a woman was reported dead from poisoned Tylenol capsules, Johnson & Johnson permanently removed Tylenol from the market.

“Compare that to the BP fiasco,” says Gary Patterson of risk management experts FiscalDoctor. “Part of Johnson & Johnson’s success in dealing with the crisis was the result of a well-thought-out contingency plan, superb execution, and taking immediate responsibility. The public’s approval of the company’s action was expressed through its increased market share. This is a far cry from the negative impact on the BP brand, as well as the entire oil industry.”

Richard Laermer agrees: “Tylenol did it so well. They took reporters and TV producers into a lab w scientists within a day of those poor people dying and proved it couldn’t have been their people. And then they helped the families, investigated publicly, changed the caps, and were so loud about how they would, due to the tragedy, become an industry leader.”

Anti-social?

So belated was BP’s attempt to crank up its Twitter presence that a fake Twitter account, BPGlobalPR – purporting to be BP’s PR team – attracted over 160,000 followers. This dwarfs the number following BP’s genuine account – BP_America.

BP has also attracted criticism for its buying up of search engine terms – such as “oil spill” – with the likes of Google, Bing and Yahoo! and linking them to a site that proclaims its clean up efforts.

“They were slow on the uptake and buying keywords was sloppy and uncalled for,” says Richard Laermer. “They also ignored bloggers at first and that’s always going to bite you in the ass.”

But elsewhere, BP has shown commendable digital nous. BP’s US press office now directs callers to a recently launched website – deepwaterresponse.com – where visitors can join a mailing list or submit an inquiry via email. The site also provides links to a number of social media outlets for updates, including Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube.

So belated was BP’s attempt to crank up its Twitter presence that a fake Twitter account, BPGlobalPR – purporting to be BP’s PR team – attracted over 160,000 followers. This dwarfs the number following BP’s genuine account – BP_America.

BP has also attracted criticism for its buying up of search engine terms – such as “oil spill” – with the likes of Google, Bing and Yahoo! and linking them to a site that proclaims its clean up efforts.

“They were slow on the uptake and buying keywords was sloppy and uncalled for,” says Richard Laermer. “They also ignored bloggers at first and that’s always going to bite you in the ass.”

But elsewhere, BP has shown commendable digital nous. BP’s US press office now directs callers to a recently launched website – deepwaterresponse.com – where visitors can join a mailing list or submit an inquiry via email. The site also provides links to a number of social media outlets for updates, including Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube.