FANS AND CRITICS OF ANYTHING ARE CONSTANTLY FINDING NEW WAYS TO USE THE WEB.

SOCIAL GREASE
O
ver the past few weeks, I’ve been
following a brilliant Twitter feed
called BPGlobalPR. It’s one of
the most clever, entertaining and
ruthless pieces of comedy I’ve ever come
across. The continuing Deepwater Horizon oil
spill disaster is perhaps not the best backdrop
against which comedy should be made, and
the authors understand this full well. They’re
targeting the British Petroleum management;
creatively criticizing their behavior,
statements, actions and inactions since the
tragedy began.
The Web obviously loves it: BPGlobalPR
today has over 160,000 followers. It's also
spawned BPTerry, a fake BP PR official
who’s as callous, self-centered, and oblivious
as a drunken fratboy. Both accounts have
seen thousands of retweets. Mainstream
media and Web watchers alike have been
trying to pin the still-anonymous operators
down for interviews, but they only respond
in character, making snappy jokes and
continuing the whole façade of being
legitimate PR workers.
The timing has been just perfect. There’s
nothing BP can do at this stage to keep up a
good public image. Images of oil-soaked birds
are all over the news, and oil is washing
up on shorelines, making the gravity of the
situation sink in for millions of people. And
the tweets have just been brilliant! Sample
these: “We pray for a forgetful nation and
more money every day!”, “The President
had a chart outlining his battle plan, but @
bpTerry ate it”, and the deliciously unhelpful
“If you want to help clean up, drive your
cars fast and often. Let's melt those glaciers
and dilute this mess!”
The pranksters do have practical
intentions though. They’re selling T-shirts
SMS us!
Story code: NJC to 51818
with a highly tongue-in-cheek BP logo
rendered in black with one corner “leaking”
like an oil slick. They claim they’ve
already donated US$ 20,000 to non-profit
organizations involved in the cleanup effort.
It’s brilliant: using satire to be funny,
engaging, and thought-provoking at the
same time by tapping into all the resentment
aimed at BP right now.
BPGlobalPR is a beautiful example of
a peaceful, worldwide, attention-grabbing
campaign that people will remember and
keep coming back to. There are also dozens
of Facebook pages and some truly inspired
YouTube videos, though most are just angry
rants or jokes at BP’s expense which don’t
HOW HAS BP BEEN USING
SOCIAL MEDIA TO BOLSTER
ITS IMAGE? QUITE BADLY,
IT WOULD SEEM.
necessarily contribute to the cleanup effort.
And how has BP itself been using social
media to bolster its image and communicate
with the public about its efforts to clean
up the mess? Quite badly, it would seem.
Its website shows abysmally fake looking
cleanup crews at work and downplays any
news of ecological damage. Responses all
over the Web reflect that no one is buying
it. BP hasn’t leveraged Facebook, Twitter,
YouTube or any social platform, but it’s
getting badly savaged on all of them. There
are so many lessons for businesses to learn
here that this situation will probably be
studied and discussed for years to come.