Blue Helm

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is a huge disaster. I am sad for all of the damage to the environment. I’m sad for the massive economic repercussions this has and will have on the local and national economy . I’m sad that BP was not prepared to deal with something like this. It’s just a terrible situation.

While the actual oil spill has been terrible, the PR around the oil spill has been just as bad. I’m not going to talk about BP in this post; they have all sorts of problems I could talk about. Click here to read an interesting post about some things BP’s PR could have done better. Click here to see some parodies on BP’s response.

My focus today is on the Obama administration and their PR problems. People are upset, and rightfully so. They are mad at BP, they are mad at the damage to their beaches and businesses, they are mad at Obama, they are just mad. They don’t care who fixes the problem, they just want it fixed.

It’s been very interesting to watch Obama and his response. He is mad and wants to figure out whose “booty to kick” (he didn’t use the word booty, but you get the idea). He is very defensive of his administration and spends a lot of time explaining that he is very angry at what’s going on. I’m sure people are happy that Obama is mad, but the problem is that people aren’t seeing action.

So what should the government do? I believe they should better explain what they’re doing to stop this catastrophe. If they’re consulting with experts about how to clean oil spills, then tell us. If they are planning on sending resources to aid in the clean up, send out a press release. If Obama just gave an earful to the CEO of BP, then tweet about it. This is simple PR!

In this new age of communication, when people can find anything they want by typing it into their search engine, when people can vent their frustrations on blogs, Facebook and Twitter, good PR is a must. But it goes much further than having good PR. Your organization has to be willing to do and to change if necessary. If all you’re doing is talking, then people will call you out on it.

What do you think?