How not to salvage a reputation, at BP and beyond
By John Gapper
Published: June 24 2010 00:02 | Last updated: June 24 2010 00:02
Towards the end of his seven-hour testimony in Washington last week about BP’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Tony Hayward’s face, full of resentment at the politicians who were goring him, evoked Charlie Rich’s “Feel Like Going Home”.
“Lord, I feel like going home/I tried and I failed and I’m tired and weary/Everything I done was wrong/And I feel like going home.”
Unfortunately, having gone home, BP’s chief executive then went out again to sail his yacht, prompting a fresh fusillade from across the Atlantic. “I think we can all conclude that Tony Hayward is not going to have a second career in PR,” said Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff.
Not everything Mr Hayward did was wrong, and nor was poor public relations the only cause of his downfall. His fate was sealed when BP’s early plans to cap its well failed, leaving oil still spewing. As one of BP’s advisers argues: “This is not a PR disaster; it’s a disaster.”
But Mr Hayward’s wayward PR performance worsened BP’s troubles; his yachting trip came after he had suggested early on that the environmental impact of the spill would be “very, very modest” and then, as part of an apology, said: “I would like my life back.”
The irony of this is that, early on at least, BP appeared to be adopting a textbook approach to corporate crises – dispatching its chief executive to lead from the front, taking responsibility for cleaning the spill and compensating victims.
Mr Hayward was, laughable as it now sounds, eager to be a model corporate citizen and show that BP would be more responsive than Exxon Mobil after the Valdez disaster. Andrew Gowers, a former Financial Times editor, is his head of PR, and they launched a very visible public campaign, to little avail.
So should chief executives, many of whom are shocked by the sudden shredding of Mr Hayward’s reputation, avoid taking charge of blow-ups and dispatch some smooth-talking (and disposable) underling instead? Does the corporate crisis textbook need to be rewritten?
Not completely, I think. The chief executive still has to be the battlefield general because there is no alternative – the media and politicians will demand it whatever he or she does. But the BP debacle shows the need to plan carefully.
First, be prepared. That does not just mean undergoing media training when trouble strikes, but being used to dealing with the vagaries of the media and politicians beforehand. Mr Hayward was not prepared because he had kept such a low profile since taking over from John Browne as BP chief executive in 2007.
Mr Hayward positioned himself as the antithesis of “the Sun King”, who had seemed to revel in the spotlight, being constantly pictured on magazine covers. But by keeping such a low profile, he did not go through the media mill until a crisis blew up, and it showed.
Second, marshal support. One of the enigmas of the BP affair is how little public backing Mr Hayward got from Carl-Henric Svanberg, its chairman (who has his own PR adviser). Mr Svanberg only appeared in public right at the end, when he was summoned to Washington.
BP thought few Americans would know what a non-executive chairman was, which is a counsel of despair. If a company goes to the trouble of having a chairman whose job is to mediate with investors and the outside world, he must visibly and vocally support the chief executive.
Last, pick your battles. This is the most important lesson of the Deepwater crisis because it was a rolling (and still ongoing) disaster. By making himself a target from the start, rather than timing his entry until later, Mr Hayward exhausted himself and his usefulness.
BP had a suitable surrogate in Robert Dudley, a southerner who is director in charge of US operations and had duelled with the Russian government and media, which is fine training for anything. Mr Dudley has now come to the fore, too late.
It is near-impossible for a company to win the battle for hearts and minds when trouble strikes; the best it can do is not lose too disastrously. Mr Hayward fought solo and ended, as Charlie Rich once sang, with “not a friend around to help me”.
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