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BP CEO Tony Hayward: “I’d Like My Life Back” – What??

Jeannette Paladino — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 14:00:37 +0000

[tweetmeme]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.

In His Crisis Communications, Is Tiger Woods Really Sorry?

Jeannette Paladino — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 20:00:02 +0000

Yet another celebrity’s image crashes and burns with the revelations about Tiger Woods’ affairs. The rule in crisis communications is to get all the bad news out at once. Drip, drip, drip is not going to work because the news media will grab on to a hot story like a dog with a bone. In his situation, the bad news is so broad and torturous, that all the bad news may never get out.

But the point of this blog is not to discuss the merits of his communications and whether he miscalculated in trying to cover up the truth. This is the question: is he really sorry about his “transgressions,” as he calls them?

In truth, are celebrity mea cupas, like Tiger’s, really authentic? When celebrities get caught in illicit affairs, taking drugs, or beating their wives, they rush to the spotlight, often with wife in tow, to profoundly apologize for their misdeeds. They can’t believe the hurt they’ve caused their families and adoring fans.

This is my take on it: what they are really apologizing for is getting caught. Is it likely Tiger, or Eliot Spitzer, or LeBron James would have stopped their affairs if they hadn’t been outed? Were they sorry about being unfaithful while enjoying themselves behind closed doors?

What if the CEO Died of Swine Flu?

Jeannette Paladino — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 04:55:54 +0000

Schools are closing and the World Health Organization (WHO) raised its global flu pandemic level. So far, the outbreak of swine flu has killed relatively few people and many experts feel the risk maybe overstated. But just maybe, maybe one of those statistics could be the CEO of your company.

Does your company have a crisis communications plan in place specifically addressing a global pandemic? Not likely. The last scare was the Avian flu outbreak a couple of years ago. According to a Deloitte & Touche survey of 100 companies in the U.S. last year, two-thirds of the companies had not planned adequately for the avian flu and there was no one in charge of such a plan. By contrast, 80 per cent of corporate officials surveyed at a conference in Hong Kong had people and plans in place because of reported deaths in Asia.

So it may just take the death of a prominent CEO of a U.S. company to scare companies into finally putting a crisis communications plan in place that covers not only disasters in a manufacturing facility, or a rumor about a product recall, but also one for a possible global pandemic.