On my recent trip to South Africa I noticed a lot of BP gas stations, something I don’t see in my part of the States. But the really troubling part came when, Amid the shared excitement for the coming World Cup I noticed that BP was also a World Cup sponsor. “Oh no. This won’t end well.” I thought. High profile, feel good marketing in times of crisis are not a good idea. This obviously bothered me because I thought BP was trying to hide behind a huge event instead of focusing on their problem.
BP’s not doing so well on the PR front. A quick search on Twendz for BP shows the expected bad sentiment and the word associations with it.
In a recent blog post, my colleague, Kevin Murphy even had a few tips for BP on how to handle the current crisis. His #2 recommendation: “Shut down all marketing activities except for information about their efforts to stop the oil and the cleanup.” I completely agree, but this isn’t just a sponsorship by BP, this is a sponsorship by BP Africa.
Bad Marketing or Bad Timing?
What difference does it make if BP Corporate or BP Africa sponsors World Cup? BP Africa is a Sub (subsidiary) of BP Global. The people at BP Africa had about as much to do with the spill and the following bad communications, as you and I. BP is listed by FIFA as a national sponsor, which means BP Global had nothing to do with the sponsorship and many of them may not have known (and may still not know) that BP is a World Cup sponsor. BP Africa has been sponsoring African football events for along time, this deal has been in place for several years, long before the spill.
The banners are printed, the collateral is out there, what should BP do know that they are a sponsor of the World’s largest sporting event? Does BP Global stay out of it? Does BP Africa pretend that the Gulf of Mexico doesn’t exist and hope it all blows over. That is one strategy often employed and has it’s own merits. After all, Africa is half a world away and real football fans probably aren’t thinking about America and the Gulf of Mexico (well except Mexico). But there’s a problem with that: according to early reports, US fans have purchased to most tickets to World Cup. Yes, you read that right, USA. What do you think will happen when they see BP as a sponsor? No turning back now, if you’re in for an inch, you’re in for a mile. (Or something like that.)
I would recommend not doing TV ads, of any kind. I would monitor social media heavily looking for hot spots either at the event or around the world, especially those around the sponsorship. As another colleague, Scott Meis, pointed out, BP has already been brand jacked on Twitter, look for more of this, not less. They should not celebrate the sponsorship in their marketing but instead deploy street teams to deal with the problem head on. I would expect environmental groups to start boycotts and stage demonstrations at the World Cup.
(Note to activists: Don’t disrupt the games unless you want to lose the general public, which right now agrees with you. Don’t mess with football, the fans will kill you, literally.)
If BP hasn’t already, they should have several prepared statements about the sponsorship, that like I outlined above, this was NOT an attempt by BP Global to win over soccer fans but a long term relationship BP South Africa has supporting South Africa and football.
To BP critiques: (and I count myself in that camp right now), hold BP Global, and its leaders responsible and expect nothing short of full restitution (even if it’s technically impossible), but don’t hate the employees, especially those in South Africa. Unfortunately to hurt BP you have to hurt their business in South Africa (I’m talking with money not actual violence) so boycotts and demonstrations are perfectly appropriate but harassing the employees there (or anywhere) is pointless.
If the BP employees in South Africa are anything like the employees of every major band I met with while in Africa they see their job priorities in this order:
- Advocate for, and represent South Africa for the betterment of South Africa first.
- Advocate for, and represent your company for the betterment of South Africa second.
- Advocate for, and represent your company for the betterment of the company third.
And I do mean all South African employees, all the way to the top of regional management, this is a strange notion for Americans, or most of the developed world to grasp but I saw this over and over again. They most likely, sponsored World Cup because they saw this as an opportunity to promote a huge community building opportunity for South Africa and they justified the ad spend to Global (if justification was even needed) because of the exposure.
What Should BP Do Now?
- Besides focusing every available resource on stopping and cleaning up the spill they need to have a strong plan in place just for World Cup.
- BP Global should support BP Africa in terms of messaging around the spill and monitor accordingly but largely get out of BP South Africa’s way and let them engage with the local community.
- BP Global should consider having people on the ground trying to answer questions openly and honestly but understand that this will only have minimal effect because people are rightly upset.
- Any tickets BP gets as a sponsor of World Cup should be auctioned off to a charity that is currently cleaning up their mess. All of them!
- I’d also consider giving all sponsorship opportunities, booths, ad space, etc to the Deepwater Horizon Response joint effort with Federal agencies, which BP is a member of and probably forced to fund.
- I also think BP needs to more transparently disclose their affiliation to Deepwater Horizons Response on the Facebook page. (As an aside, whoever is running the Facebook page also needs to engage with people not just post news updates.)
Overall I think this is horrible timing and could add a bad overtone for an amazing event and make things worse, but if BP plays it’s cards right, actually makes some progress on fixing the problem and gets lucky, it could mark the beginning of a very, very long road to regaining the public’s trust. Or they could stand by and watch things blow up.
What do you think they should do?
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