BP CEO Tony Hayward: “I’d Like My Life Back” – What??
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As the Gulf oil disaster continues to escalate and BP is faced with another failure to stop the gushing “black gold,” BP CEO Tony Hayward has been spending his time sticking his foot in his mouth. For any company, the CEO is the chief communications officer. Where are his PR advisors with the crisis communications plan? Just two weeks ago in this video he was predicting a “very modest impact” of the spill. Now an underwater oil plume some 22 miles wide is threatening the food chain and is predicted to reach the Florida Panhandle’s famous sugar-white beaches by Friday. Even as Hayward spoke, wildlife was washing up on beaches coated in oil and fishermen sat by their empty boats as the disaster unfolded before their eyes.
Then, just this week, Hayward acknowledged that the spill is a “catastrophe” but also claimed that he “wanted his life back.” Is he kidding? His company’s alleged shortcuts may have caused the worst oil spill in this country’s history, disrupting millions of lives, wrecking the environment and causing billions in cleanup costs and lost productivity. The people living on the coastline want their lives back, too, but they can’t fly to the U.K. to escape the disaster. I can hardly think of another CEO being so tone deaf. Instead, he should be saying, “I’ll be on top of this until we solve the problem so people can get their lives back.” Theirs, not his.
Here is a video in which he makes his infamous claim:
It’s difficult to believe that a major oil company like BP doesn’t have a crisis communications plan in place, not only for managing the cleanup, but with the key messages the CEO should be communicating to the public. I’m sure that Mr. Hayward is a decent man and is sincerely sorry for this mess. But he needs to stay on message about what the company is doing to solve the crisis and be sensitive to the horrible disruption it is causing to people and the environment. Words do count. And people are listening.
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He was being inauthentic, as well as inappropriate (think insert-foot-in-mouth, AGAIN.) He really does want HIS life back, so he can revert to enjoying all the perks of being a well-compensated CEO.
My my my. I suppose all the birds and fish would like their lives back, too.
I’m amazed at how out of touch corporate leaders seem to be – it’s not just that they are lacking wise PR counsel, but they seem to be missing an internal element of common sense.
I am from Scotland in the UK and we are getting a huge amount of coverage on this.
One very interesting discussion that has been raised here about CEO Tony Hayward is that he may be suffering from “cultural differences” between the US and the UK.
It was suggested that we tend to adopt a “don’t panic and play it down” approach in the hope we don’t cause too much concern and that things will get better. Also there was a thought that when we are told “the company is doing the best it can” we tend to accept the answer.
If you subscribe to this idea then poor Tony needs more globally aware PR.