“BP’s handling of the spill from a crisis management perspective will go down in history as one of the great examples of how to make a situation worse by bad communications,” said Michael Gordon, of New York-based crisis PR firm Group Gordon Strategic Communications.
“It was a combination of a lack of transparency, a lack of straight talking and a lack of sensitivity to the victims. When you’re managing an environmental disaster of this magnitude you not only have to manage the problem but also manage all the stakeholders.”
As this quote from a Reuters article states, BP flat out ignored the rules of Crisis Management 101 and is now experiencing the consequences on a very large scale. Facing backlash from shareholders, victims, business owners, the government and just about everyone else on the planet, BP is at risk of having its reputation ruined so thoroughly that it never again operates under that name — assuming it even survives as a company.
The BCM Blogging Team
https://www.bernsteincrisismanagement.com/