Spin Control?

I spend a lot of time in this space ragging on companies for their poor customer service, and talking about how the lowest-status and lowest-paid members of the organization are holding not on individual transactions but your company’s entire reputation in their hands whenever they take a customer service call. And I probably will do so again, tomorrow or next week, since it’s a staple of the less-than-stellar management practices that this blog was created to discuss. But today I think we should acknowledge that sometimes the reverse problem exists; sometimes the company’s image ends up getting tarnished by its most power and best-compensated employee, either through arrogance, rage, oblivious and tone-deaf disregard for the conditions of the moment, or simple stupidity. And in all of these categories, it’s going to be hard to top what Tony Hayward of BP has been saying lately…

You’ve probably already heard or seen some of it on your local news, but you can check out the Newsweek story online if you want to. Some of it has been completely understandable, if inappropriate to the situation, such as saying “I want my life back” on the Today Show. In all fairness, if any one of us suddenly found ourselves the CEO of the most hated company in the country (possibly the world) we’d probably want our original life back, too – or at least enough anonymity to be able to walk around without being identified all the time. Similarly, suggesting that there might be additional causes for the nine clean-up workers who fell ill isn’t unreasonable. If thousands of people working with identical materials in identical conditions all feel fine, but nine members of the same crew are ill, it might in fact have been something those individuals ate. Both cases were so completely tone-deaf that it’s hard to imagine what Mr. Hayward thought he was doing, however…

Then there’s the business with claiming that the miles-long plumes of oil detected in the water nearby don’t actually exist, or that the Gulf of Mexico is a “big ocean” relative to the oil and oil dispersing agents being poured into it. Even if these contentions were true, Mr. Hayward would still be coming off as a guy with a business degree telling a bunch of science experts they’re wrong (e.g., arrogant and oblivious). Unfortunately, these statements aren’t true, and have only served to enflame public opinion against him and his company. But worst of all is probably asking “What have we done to deserve this?” when your company has been hit with 760 safety violations in the last three years, or more than 70 times more of them than the next-worst company in your industry…

Now, admittedly, Mr. Hayward is a manager, not a professional spin doctor. Most likely he relies on experienced PR specialists to write and deliver statements for the company, and reads from prepared remarks when forced to give a public statement. But unfortunately, that also means that he really has no excuse for making ill-considered remarks to the public. Any professional manager already knows that corporate image is important, especially with a commodity product like gasoline or in a widely-reviled industry like the petroleum business. During a disaster like this, there’s really no excuse to be going around making embarrassing remarks, unless you want to be compared to a former U.S. Vice President with Tourette Syndrome…

I’m not sure how BP is going to repair its corporate image, assuming that’s even possible, and assuming that the disaster going on in the Gulf of Mexico doesn’t poison the Earth’s biosphere and make all of these discussions irrelevant. But I know a few things about strategy, and it seems to me that their spin control strategy in this case is sub-optimal…