BP Trying to Control Publicity through Google AdWords
BP Trying to Control Publicity through Google AdWords
You know it's 2010 when after 50 days of spilling oil in the gulf, an oil company and starts placing ads on search engines to make sure you know what a good job they are doing handling the situation.
A quick search of terms such as "gulf oil spill" on any of the major search engines will turn up a paid advertisement from BP directing you to their oil spill response website.
Some additional digging around shows they are bidding on a variety of keywords relegated to the oil spill. I can only imagine what sort of bill they are running up for paid search given that "oil spill" is now a top search phrase on all the major search sites. That said, last week President Obama criticized BP for spending $50 million on TV ads while at the same time trying to limit their damages and liability in the Gulf Coast region.
Google AdWords Used for Real Time Damage Control
I'm sure the BP website has a lot of information about what they are trying to do. And the point here is not to question those efforts, but really to look at how companies are responding to situations using the entire 2010 media trick bag.
On the BP website some of the things you will find include:
Twitter feeds with updates as they happen
A Facebook page link for BP
Links to their You Tube Channel
Photos they are sharing via Flickr
Various news stories that you can subscribe to via RSS feeds
Links to state specific spill websites (which BP manages)
Live video feeds
Opportunities to contact them and learn more
Remember How Facebook Helped Obama in 2008?
President Obama's use of social media sites such as Facebook really helped create awareness and validity as to the power of today's digital media. And this disaster is proving, once again, that smart companies are using all of today's opportunities to communicate in order to get their message out.
So no matter what you think of BP spending money on damage control, you have to admit they've done quite a good job in the online world with a well established plan.
It's just too bad they don't have their act together in the real world.