A CRISIS DRIVEN WORLD

International Summer University Program 2013 Copenhagen Business School

Crisis Communication and Social Media - A Simulation Game Learning Experience

British Petroleum

How to handle a crisis in a modern world - a reflective account of the BP oil spill in relation to our own experiences and learning outcomes as responsible crisis communicators.

Table of contents •  Timeline

•  Crisis type

•  Key stakes, issues & challenges

•  Crisis plan

•  Social media

•  Reputation

•  Media conference

•  Stakeholder Q&A

•  Media sum up

•  Learnings

How do you understand BP oil spill crisis?

The BP oil spill crisis is a crisis that could have

been prevented if a blowout stopper had been

installed.

Coombs (Cornelissen, 2011) defines four types

of crisis as seen to the right: faux pas, accidents, terrorism and transgressions. The crises can then

be classified into being intentional/unintentional and external/internal.

This BP crises emerged as an “accidents” that happened during normal internal organisational

operations, and there was no bad intentions behind it.

BP's key stakes, issues, challenges and

priorities

The pollution of the ocean is first

of all an environmental challenge,

but also several minor issues

evolved e.g. all the consequences

for wild animal on land as well as

in the sea, and furthermore the

business for restaurants,

fishermen and shops nearby the

leak. Other difficulties could also

be corporate challenges such as

rebuilding trust and their

reputation.

Was there a crisis plan, and could the crisis have been prevented?

The crisis developed faster than BP had ever

thought.

The crisis however could have been prevented if

the blowout stopper had been installed.

BP oil did not have a crisis plan, and the CEO

(Tony Hayward ) handled the situation in a way

that made it only worse for BP as a company.

Furthermore, it could be argued that BP did not

have the strongest pre-reputations and therefore

did not get the benefit of the doubt, or the

opportunity to get the "halo" effect. (Coombs &

Holladay, 2006)

Image: European Space AgencyMap of the length of time oil was in the Gulf. The lightest orange indicates 1-3 weeks coverage; the darkest is 16-18 weeks.

FACEBOOK AGAINST BP •  Facebook page against BP oil:

www.facebook.com/BPOILSPILLNEWS?fref=ts •  Has existed since start 2013. Post articles and

videos about the aftermath of the crisis very often •  Refers to another page against BP Oil:

www.AgainstBP.com - for people to discover more about the bad things BP oil do and spread people to other pages like this.

•  304 likes.

BP'S OWN FACEBOOK PAGE

•  Joined Facebook 29 June 2009

•  487,694 likes

•  Not able to see their first post after the oil spill

•  Daily updates about their work with the oil

o  How much were collected

Social media facts

BP used several platforms to communicate with stakeholders and the public. Both

Facebook and Twitter were used everyday to communicate during and after the oil spill.

The reason for this was that BP found it important to answer all people posting questions

and statements on the Facebook page. Whether the posts are negative or positive, we

answer them most of them in order to make people feel equal threatened.

Social media

Furthermore people affected by the oil spill crisis

could go to the BP website and apply for

compensation. This is in order to help people

get back on track as soon as possible with as

little loss a possible.

Reputation

Since BP did not react fast enough to the crisis, and the CEO at the

time expressed himself in a very unfortunately way, if affected the

reputation in a negative way. But on the other side, we as the Social

Media stakeholder realised that by using the different platforms it

was possible to reach a broader proportion of our stakeholders and

get the proper information communicated.

Media conference To the Q&A session we were prepared but we

still received questions that we did not

expected and were prepared for. We hoped

that our preparation for the Q&A session

made us appear confident, but still regretful

for the disaster that we caused.

We were able to respond to almost every

unexpected questions, but we also had to

respond with: "We are not familiar with this

but we will investigate it and get back to

you", to some of the unexpected questions

from the stakeholders.

Questions to stakeholders Mexican Gulf: What do you expect BP to do

further? They have done much to collect oil and invested in projects to prevent crisis and figure out the impact on the environment.

BBC: What did you do to cover BP's effort to handle the crisis and their impact on the environment? Don't you think that you have an impact on letting BP move on, and not covering only the bad things of the case?

Hoffington Post: Do you think that you covered the crisis neutrally? Green Peace: What do you expect from BP to do after the crisis? White House: Are you planning on working with BP about making plans plans concerning the environment? Don't you think it would be a good idea to cooperate with BP for a greener future?

Media training sum up Through the media training the mexican gulf stakeholder had troubles answering

how they think BP should have done better, and what they could done further. They

sort of expected BP to save the world, and to save the industries damaged by the

crisis. But else we think that we got satisfactory answers to our questions.

We tried to push especially BBC, and the Hoffington Post, since they are the media

covering the crisis. They are a part of getting over the crisis, and therefore an

important stakeholder.

Question: "Hello BP America. We are a group from Copenhagen Business School who are studying Crisis Communication and Social Media. How do you Harmonize your goals about a greener future with White House initiatives? See link from the White House: http://www.whitehouse.gov/energy/securing-american-energy. Thank you!"

BP oil was not ready with a crisis plan which of course places them in a bad situation when facing a crisis. But as we today have experienced a huge development in the use of social media the crisis will spread and develop much faster compared to crisis that happened just 10 years ago. Of course the social media, the other way around, also gives BP oil the opportunity to reach their stakeholders and post statements, but still it creates a huge forum where people can criticize BP and thereby create a lot of negative word of mouth.

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References •  Anthonissen, P. (ed.) 2008 Crisis Communication: Practical PR Strategies for Reputation Management

and Company Survival, Kogan Page. (200 pages)

•  Umer, R., Sellnow, T., and Seeger, M. 2010. Effective Crisis Communication: Moving from Crisis to Opportunity. Sage Publications (260 pages).

•  White, C. 2011, Social Media, Crisis Communication and Emergency Management: Leveraging Web 2.0 Technologies. CRC Press (330 pages) - Exercises included.

•  Smith, D. and Elliott, D. 2006. Crisis Management. Systems and Structures for Prevention and Recovery. Routledge.

•  Coombs and Holladay, 2006. Unpacking the halo effect. Reputation and crisis management. Journal of Communication Management.

•  Cornelissen, J. (2011). Corporate communication: Theory and Practice. 3rd ed. London: Sage.

Line Jensen Intercultural marketing

communications

Emilie Rohde Intercultural marketing

communications

Isabella Poulsen English & organizational

communication

Jacob Lassen Intercultural marketing

communications