It really has to be a little embarrassing for the corporate communications staff of BP. At a recent IABC/Houston awards banquet, BP, and the vendors it hires, were by far the biggest winner of the evening. In almost every category the BP name was heard as part of a winning entry.
So this brings up an interesting question, now that the world knows that BP has a huge communication problem with the continuing oil leak catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, should IABC ask BP to send the “Quills” back?
In all seriousness the real question is, how does a company that a year ago had an award winning communications program become a broken machine that cannot seem to get anything correct?
Winning awards and having a communication programs that is beneficial to employees, stakeholders and press is easy when a company is in smooth waters, however, when the seas become rough and you are leaking crediblity every day, the true expertise of a a great corporate communications program comes to be tested. In this case, it has a test that BP has failed, and is continuing to fail, miserably.
So what has changed? In three months have the BP professional communicators forgot eveything they ever learned?
I believe the real reason that BP has failed to have a successful public relations and communications program in in handling the continuing oil leak catastrophe is because the VP of Communications does not have the “balls” to stand up to the army of lawyers that the company has hired. It is not like this is a new responsiblity. Even in calm waters, the VP of Communications has the duty to forge an excellent working relationship between communications and the legal department. It is obvious this relationship was never in place at BP.
While working for People Magazine I was once told that a publication is only as good as its weakest link, so too with a corporate communications department. I am sure that the true professionalism of the BP staff has not changed, but it is obvious that they are being ordered from the top down on how to handle a terrible situation in a way that even a novice communication professional knows is not correct. In the case of BP, the weakest link of the communications department is the senior executive who should be standing up for the principles that IABC and PRSA tout.
Should BP return all those “Quills” back to IABC, or instead should it find a true communication professional to lead the excellent staff that it already has in place?
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