Brand Management: BP’s PPC Campaign, Another Disaster in the Making

The Gulf of Mexico oil spill is an enormous tragedy that is affecting millions and for British Petroleum (BP), the company responsible for the spill, it is a brand reputation disaster. While there are many ways that a company can protect their brand reputation and do some serious damage control, BP decided to take a surprising approach. They purchased all available keywords connected with the oil spill on search engines like Google, and Yahoo so that the first result  that appears in these search engines directs people looking for information to BP's official website. For instance, when someone searched a term like "gulf oil spill" the results came back looking something like this:

So what was BP's reasoning behind this? According to a spokesperson for the company, they purchased these terms in order to “make the information on the spill more accessible to the public.” 

Since implementing this strategy BP has come under some harsh criticism for their tactics, and many critics feel that their choice was unethical. Many search engine marketers are questioning whether trying to control what the public finds when they search for information on the oil spill is just a reputation damage control tactic, rather than a way to inform the public about the oil spill itself, especially since many non-technical web users may not realize the difference between paid listings and actual organic news results. 

As of this morning, the ads seem to have been taken down (see below). Does this mean that BP has decided they no longer want to “make the information on the spill more accessible” or are they merely crumbling under the pressure they are receiving for their questionable methods?

No matter what their reasons for buying the ads in the first place (or taking them down) it seems pretty obvious that their latest venture has done little or nothing to improve the public’s opinion of their brand. 

Personally, we think that BP should start taking the advice of their fake BP PR Twitter account which has already garnered over 100,000 followers.

If you'd like to read some articles on this subject we suggest you look at the resources below:

Fox News - BP Manipulating Search Results on Google, Critics Accuse 

ABC News - BP Buys 'Oil' Search Terms to Redirect Users to Official Company Website

Posted by Amberlie Denny at June 14, 2010 8:15 AM

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