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BP has gone on the news and taken responsibility for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. They have promised to send $25 million to Florida to help the state prepare for the oil that is about to hit its coastline. They have even tried offering fishermen immediate $5,000 payments and asking them to waive their rights to sue for more later.
In other words, BP's attempted PR cleanup is underway.
And, according to Harlan Loeb, the director of crisis and issues management at Edelman PR, the oil company's responses have been unimpressive:
This kind of event should clearly have been contemplated in their crisis simulations. ... BP is an enormous actor in offshore drilling and exploration, and the fact that this kind of event took place, while tragic and horrible, should not leave BP looking totally unprepared.
It looks like this disaster will end up costing BP a lot more than the $10 billion plus that they will pay for clean up efforts and in compensation to Gulf Coast fishing and tourism businesses.
(Thanks to Business Insider and Shawn Rice from B2C Marketing Insider.)
