BP Enlists Washington Elite to aid with Image Management

USA Today

 

WASHINGTON — James Lee Witt, the former FEMA director who built his reputation responding to disasters, is poised to become the latest big name on a team of Washington insiders that BP has amassed to help it respond to the Gulf Coast oil spill, rescue its reputation and protect itself from lawsuits.

The list, which includes several prominent Democrats now working on behalf of a company responsible for the worst environmental disaster in the nation's history, is causing some unease — even in a city where power and influence are wielded and traded with ease.

The company is "hoping to buy a little extra credibility with Washington government officials and regulators, and these people have credibility and BP has very little credibility," says Melanie Sloan of the non-profit watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Sloan says she can "understand why people feel troubled by it" but it's simply "the way Washington operates."

BP Managing Director Bob Dudley says the company is asking Witt, who presided over the government's response to more than 350 disasters in the 1990s, to conduct "an independent overview" of BP's spill response.

Once he finalizes a contract, Witt will join other power brokers including Jamie Gorelick, a former Clinton administration Justice Department official and 9/11 commissioner, and Tony Podesta, lobbyist extraordinaire and brother of former Clinton White House chief of staff John Podesta. Gorelick, a lawyer, helped BP broker a deal with the White House to set aside $20 billion for those harmed by the Gulf Coast spill.

Witt, who was named to run FEMA by then-president Clinton in 1993, was the first FEMA chief to be given the rank of a Cabinet member after he turned the ineffective bureaucracy into a nimble disaster-response agency.

He now runs his own emergency management consulting company, working for states, cities and private companies looking to improve their emergency-response plans. Nearly five years after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit the Gulf Coast, he is still helping Louisiana with long-term recovery efforts.

Like most big companies that are subject to government regulations, BP has been represented by various Washington law, lobbying and public relations firms for years. Those include Gorelick's law firm, WilmerHale, and the Duberstein Group, a prominent lobbying shop run by former Reagan White House chief of staff Kenneth Duberstein.

"We've got nothing else to add," BP spokesman Robert Wine said when asked about the talent the company has gathered while oil continues to gush from its undersea well.

Many of those now working for BP also won't talk publicly about the work they're doing:

• Podesta, responding to an e-mail asking for comment, said he would not "talk for BP."

• Hilary Rosen, a former Capitol Hill staffer who worked for several Democratic lawmakers, also wouldn't discuss her work for the company as a partner with the London-based Brunswick Group public relations firm.

• Gorelick would say only that she is "assisting the company in responding to congressional inquiries and inquiries from executive branch agencies." So far, that amounts to 170 requests for information and/or testimony from 20 committees and agencies, she said. In one month since the spill began on April 20, there were 10 congressional hearings, including three in one day with two BP executives as witnesses.

• The Duberstein Group said Michael Berman, a onetime aide to former vice president Walter Mondale who is handling the BP account, was traveling and unavailable for comment.

Some watchdog groups say it's alarming that so many Democrats are to be paid by BP.

"Do these people go to bed at night and think, 'I hope I get to wake up in the morning and represent a corporate criminal?' " asks Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, which has called for a BP boycott.

BP's ability to scoop up so much talent is evidence that "Washington is broken," he says. "The former insiders are the most powerful and effective advocates for the wrongdoers because they have their own personal credibility they're trading on and they understand how the system works."

Some longtime Democrats, however, say having some of their own on the inside will work to the greater good.

"This is an enormous challenge and it doesn't matter who they hire to contain the spill, clean up the mess and compensate those who have lost so much," says veteran Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, a New Orleans native who has relatives who have been affected by the spill and filed claims with BP.

"Like Republicans, Democrats are ready to help with this project," she said. "I sincerely doubt any of my friends on both sides of the partisan divide will take this on without knowing we expect BP to 'get it right.' "

BP Buying Search Ads to Improve Image

USA Today

 

Google, Bing and Yahoo are seeing a windfall stemming from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. British Petroleum has begun posting sponsored advertisements that turn up in search queries related to the unfolding ecological disaster.

BP is paying to show up as the top sponsored ad when you type search queries such as "BP news," "oil spill" and "oil spill claims." The sponsored links take you to a special BP webpage brimming with images, news updates and videos of clean up efforts.

The embattled oil company "could be spending a million dollars a month depending on how broadly they've defined the keywords they're purchasing," says Kevin Lee, CEO of search consultancy DidIt.com.

Matthew Whiteway, Director of Campaign Management at search marketing agency Greenlight, calls BP's online reputation-management campaign "a PR masterstroke."

Vanessa Fox, author Marketing in the Age of Google, notes that it has long been common practice in times of crisis for companies to use PR outreach. "More and more, consumers are turning directly to search engines to get information so paid search ads can be a much more direct way for companies to connect with the audience they are trying to get their message out to," says Fox.

Apologetic BP Ads get Criticism, Not Sympathy

Associated Press

 

MIAMI — An apologetic advertising campaign by BP PLC for the oil spill polluting the Gulf of Mexico is going over about as well as the tar balls and rust-colored froth washing ashore in the Florida Panhandle.

The new radio, TV, online and print ads feature BP CEO Tony Hayward pledging to fix the damage caused by an undersea gusher of crude oil unleashed by an April 20 drilling rig explosion that killed 11 people.

The company will honor financial claims and "do everything we can so this never happens again," he says in the spots.

The ads began appearing last week and have been criticized by President Barack Obama, who said the money should be spent on cleanup efforts and on compensating fishermen and small business owners who have lost their jobs because of the spill.

The ads also don't thrill residents and visitors of the Gulf Coast, where the oil has blackened some beaches and threatens others. And others say the sentiments come to soon and insincerely.

"Their best advertising is if they get this cap (in place) and they get everything cleaned up. All you've got to do is do your job, and that's going to be plenty of good advertising," said Grover Robinson IV, chairman of the Escambia County, Fla., Commission, referring to BP's efforts to place a cap over the gushing pipe and capture the oil.

BP spokesman Robert Wine said in an e-mail Saturday that "not a cent" has been diverted from the oil spill response to pay for the ad campaign. He didn't know its cost.

"All available resources are being deployed, and efforts continue at full strength," he wrote.

BP estimates that it will spend about $84 million through June to compensate for lost wages and profits caused by the spill. The company has promised to pay all legitimate claims, and no claim has yet been rejected, Wine said.

Shortly after the one-minute television and online version of the ad begins, Hayward speaks to the camera, saying "The Gulf spill is a tragedy that never should have happened."

Hayward then narrates over images of boom lying in clear water before uncontaminated marshes and healthy pelicans. Cleanup crews walk with trash bags on white sand beaches as he touts the oil giant's response efforts: more than 2 million feet of boom, 30 planes and more than 1,300 boats deployed, along with thousands of workers at no cost to taxpayers.

The ad's imagery clashes with disturbing news photographs published recently of pelicans coated in oil, gunk dripping from their beaks.

"To those affected and your families, I'm deeply sorry," Hayward says in the ad.

As the ad fades out to show BP's website and volunteer hot line, he says, "We will get this done. We will make this right."

Picking up tar Saturday with her parents at Pensacola Beach, Fla., 13-year-old Annie Landrum of Birmingham, Ala., called Hayward's apology a joke.

"It's a lame attempt a month and half after the disaster. It's too late," she said.

Public-relations experts said BP's ad blitz seems premature and a little shallow. BP missed an opportunity to shift focus away from criticism of the company and toward BP's strategy for cleaning up the spill, said Gene Grabowski, a senior vice president with Levick Strategic Communications.

"The one element they seem to be missing is laying out a plan for what they're going to do," he said. "Usually in ads like these you apologize; he's doing that in the ad. You talk about your resolve to fix the situation; that's also included. But what's missing is a concrete plan or vision for what they plan to do next."