BP tries to rename oil spill
BP CEO Tony Hayward. Image by Getty Images North America via @daylife
In its $50 million advertising campaign, BP is trying to make sure the disaster currently unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico does not go down in history as the “BP Oil Spill.”
In BP’s preferred parlance, the spill is called the “Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill” or the “Deepwater Horizon Incident.” However, people are googling “BP oil spill” more often than either of those terms.
So BP’s advertising budget includes paid placement at the top of Google and Yahoo search-result pages with the following message: “Info about the Gulf of Mexico Spill. Learn More about How BP is Helping.”
“Helping” seems an unusual verb for BP’s still-unsuccessful effort to halt the still-unfolding disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Initially, BP denied fault for the spill, blaming the drilling platform’s owner, Transocean Ltd. BP was leasing the platform from Transocean, the world’s largest offshore drilling and oil exploration company.
“We are responsible not for the accident, but we are responsible for the oil and dealing with it and cleaning it up,” BP CEO Tony Hayward told ABC News on May 3.
BP still avoids admitting fault but has “taken full responsibility” and promised “to make this right,” Hayward says in a new video released as part of its television advertising campaign (video below).
BP’s Google ads include a link that points to the company’s “Gulf of Mexico response” page. The White House continues to refer to the disaster as the “BP Oil Spill.”
Today, Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen had more dramatic language for the containment and clean-up effort: “This is a war, it’s an insidious war, because it’s attacking, you know, four states one at a time, and it comes from different directions depending on the weather.”
Hayward’s apology:
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