BP blows $50 million on apology ads
Posted by drocolate on June 3rd, 2010
I’ve been hesitant to write about the BP oil spill clusterfuck here on ITE because it’s all still so open ended. How much oil is going to end up in our oceans? Who knows. How much is the whole disaster going to cost? We have no idea (but current estimates are coming in at around 10 fuckloads… or $30 billion). This lack of facts has made me tenative.
At least until today.
You see, today I read that BP is currently in the midst of spending about $50 million on television apology ads. Before I go on, here’s the ad:
Doesn’t it just fill you up with confidence! They’re going to help us clean up the mess! YES!
But then you think about how the oil leak hasn’t even been stopped yet. And you think about how that $50 million ad buy may have been better spent on coming up with ways to plug it once and for all. Hell, maybe they can just take the $50 million and cash it out into pennies and shoot them into the hole. It’s a literal solution but who knows, it just may work.
I’m truly shocked by the stupidity of BP on this. And I know what they think. They think this ad is the first step towards fixing their shattered image, but until that leak is contained no one is going to forgive them. It’s baffling. Sometimes less is way more when it comes to PR and I think this is one of those times.
Ugh. Such a waste.
Tags: BP, clusterfuck, idiots, oil spill
It is incredibly shortsighted of BP to sit there allow these things to unfold. Not only is it an societal failure, but also a PR disaster for the organization that now goes by the name of “Beyond Petroleum.”