On the BP Oil Spill

01 Jul 2010, Posted by Joan in awareness,current events / news, 0 Comments

We’ve all heard of BP’s Deepwater Horizon by now. It’s the underwater oil rig that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20, 2010, spewing up to 2.5 million gallons of crude oil into the gulf every day — leading to what may be one of the most dire environmental disasters in U.S. history.

Needless to say, the oil spill has not been a boon to BP’s public image. But how exactly has Deepwater Horizon affected their brand, and what measures have they taken to defend it? We took our cameras and notebooks to the streets of New York to get a sense of what people know about the spill, and how that knowledge has affected how they think of BP. In our interviews, we presented people with the following questions and images:

• What are your thoughts on the BP oil spill?
• What do you think about BP’s print ad? (Here is the ad that BP ran in the June 2nd issue of the NYTimes)
• Do you now trust other oil companies over BP?
• How do you think BP can rebuild their brand?

Not surprisingly, BP has not been very successful in their attempts to minimize the damage to their brand by the Deepwater Horizon spill. Here’s what one interviewee had to say: ”Why don’t they show this (points to images of oil soaked wildlife) and say we’re gonna fix this instead of showing pretty images (points to BP’s NYTimes ad) and saying it’s not that bad?”

A few clips of my interviews:









Has the Deepwater Horizon spill permanently damaged BP’s reputation? Exxon may have recovered their image following the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster, but that spill (previously the largest oil spill in U.S. history) has been utterly eclipsed by Deepwater Horizon. Exxon may have been able to help us forget about their 11 million gallons of spilled oil, but will BP be able to pull off the same feat with their 120 million (and counting)?

Perhaps at some point in the future — months, years or decades from now — BP will ultimately wipe this gigantic black stain off their record. But would that be a triumph of marketing, or a failure of human memory?