Thirty-eight days and counting. There’s no doubt all of the positive brand equity BP built since its $200 million, award-winning rebranding effort nearly a decade ago has been more than spent in the past five weeks. When the company re-branded as BP after its Amoco acquisition, it leveraged the tagline “Beyond Petroleum” to assert itself as a green brand. It was a bold and successful strategy that created clear differentiation between BP and its top competitors.

However, BP faces a tragic and undoubtedly complicated situation today. But when you are a $246 billion company in the oil and gas business, the stakes are always high. As a household brand name with a significant consumer retail footprint, BP has a lot to lose. And as the days continue to tick by in the effort to plug the massive mile-deep oil leak, questions are mounting. Oil sludge has reached Louisiana’s shoreline, is infiltrating fragile marshlands and is negatively affecting wildlife.

Watching CNN’s Anderson Cooper on location in New Orleans last night, he’s doing what he does – “keeping them honest” and asking the tough questions. James Carville has also escalated his involvement , doing what he can to raise awareness of the dire situation. With Carville pressuring the White House and Cooper getting his hands dirty in the marshes with Gov. Bobby Jindal and other local leaders, reputations are getting hammered.

Unfortunately, BP’s CEO was not available for Cooper’s show to address the plans to take control of the situation and assure the American public that his company is doing everything it can do. Yes, BP has been communicating and participating in interviews, but in times like these, companies can’t appear to be sidestepping tough questions. If you are doing the right thing, you need to make sure your side of the story is told. But instead, the story is being told for BP, just like last night when Cooper clamored to know why he was denied an interview. It looked bad.

In situations like this when the stakes are high on all accounts, it’s imperative that brands and their leaders do everything they can to assure all stakeholder groups they are doing the right thing. They must map out everything they are doing to fix the problem and explain how they will make sure it never happens again. It has to be a priority.

Now, let’s hope the “top kill” effort holds and aggressive clean-up activities can commence.

Matt Averitt can be reached at maveritt@mww.com.

maveritt Crisis Communications BP

This guest piece in Forbes about the importance of culture and employee communications at the new United Airlines just hit my inbox. It’s true that the majority of mergers fail due to post merger integration problems. While experts often focus on systems and back office, the issue of culture should not be overlooked.

Airlines are particularly vulnerable to the impact of culture on reputation. In any given customer flight, there are a multitude of opportunities to muck it up – oversold seats, security lines, weather and air traffic delays, lost luggage – and none of these involved direct employee customer interaction yet. Add a surly flight attendant, a prickly gate agent or baggage handler who just doesn’t care that it takes forever for your bag to arrive, it seems miraculous that airlines – who live and die by their DOT statistics – ever have a good reputation. Let’s face it, they pack hundreds of humans into a flying tin can, with not enough personal space (unless you know which seat to pick or choose to buy more leg room!) and nothing to do but tweet from the tarmac.

Employees need to have a common goal, and a shared vision of how to reach that goal. And they need to understand HOW TO DO THEIR SPECIFIC JOB in order to contribute to that goal.

Continental Airlines has a great track record in building a culture to optimize performance. Some of my greatest years were spent working with them on that very project. United, by reputation, not so much.

It should be an interesting case to watch.

Bob Silver can be reached at bsilver@mww.com.

bsilver Employee Engagement, General Corporate Continental, Employee Engagement, integration, mergers, United

Bottled water, once a cash cow product ballooning in consumption from the early 2000s until 2007, is now a difficult business. Ask Nestle.

Along with others, Nestle is facing pressure from activists groups and other opponents to reform its bottled water business. The Wall Street Journal reports:

In Cascade Locks (Oregon), Nestlé is trying to tap 100 million gallons of water annually for its Arrowhead water brand from a new spring—and keep the environmentalists happy, too. A key is proving that water drawn from the spring—which supplies a hatchery that raises Idaho Sockeye, an endangered species—can be replaced with municipal well water, with no harm to the fish.

Nestlé is running a one-year test here to raise 700 rainbow trout in a tank filled with well water. Worried that activists might sabotage the test, Nestlé put the 1,700-gallon tank under lock and added security cameras.

Further:

Its role as leader of the U.S. bottled-water market and the fact that it taps springs in often-pristine rural areas has exposed it to particular criticism from opponents of bottled water.

The article goes on to recount the number of, to my mind, reasonable measures Nestle is taking to ensure they are (at least currently if not historically) tapping water sources responsibly. Engaging the local community, working with government entities, conducting studies. In general, it sounds like they are listening and trying to do this right.

But in the zero-sum game of activist campaigns, that counts for very little.

A couple months back, my colleague Ame wrote about Nestle’s response on the social Web to a Greenpeace campaign on Nestle’s purportedly harmful palm oil sourcing leading to deforestation. Since then, Nestle has, as some media has put it, “caved” to activist demands and reevaluated its sourcing.

But the truth is Nestle has, at least, a respectable track record of trying to do the right thing for the environment. This isn’t some big company mindlessly gobbling all the resources it can sink it’s ravenous teeth into, regardless of how activists paint it.

My advice to Nestle is, keep doing what you’re doing. Rebut critics with facts. Work with all stakeholders to understand their often real concerns. That’s where reputation is made.

Mike Sacks can be reached at msacks@mww.com.

msacks CSR, Crisis Communications activists, Nestle

MSN Money’s best and worst companies for customer service rankings are out, and apparently the big banks are not too big to fail…their customers.

Of the ten companies on the list, half are financial service companies, and the other half are cable or communications providers. Ubiquitous, everybody has ‘em kinds of services, and apparently, everyone hates them. It might make you think that in certain businesses, there is just no pleasing your customers.
And that is all about the economy.

But think again.

Because among the best loved companies for customer service are supermarkets, airlines and consumer shipping and delivery services – where presumably your reputation is only as good as your worst hourly employee. Companies you also can’t live without, but who manage to keep you happy despite that fact.

Consider the following:

Food prices have skyrocketed, yet customers at Trader Joe’s aren’t holding a grudge. FedEx certainly lose packages on occasion, yet its customers still support it. Airline travel is costlier, slower and in general, more of a hassle in the post 9-11 world, yet Southwest still gets high marks. And the Nordstrom Way still seems to be working.

What do these companies know that seems to be eluding the media and banking giants?

It’s all about culture. When your practices and policies walk the “customer first” talk, and when leadership expends energy to educate, motivate and otherwise engage their team, good things happen.

It is a simple equation. It works in all businesses, and all economic cycles. When your employees understand end exemplify a culture of service….your customers will notice. And your reputation will benefit.

Carreen Winters can be reached at cwinters@mww.com.

cwinters Employee Engagement, General Corporate customer service, Leadership

This Wall Street Journal article is directed towards small entrepreneurial firms, and provides guidance on how to make effective use of interns, and in return, give them a great experience. But its guidance would be worth a read for businesses of all sizes.

To put it simply, today’s interns are tomorrow’s new hires, and the eventual leaders of our industry. Take the time to teach them, and guide them (in between their stints filing, researching and copying), and you will have your pick of top talent when the unemployment pendulum swings the other way. Treat them poorly, and those intern tales will reach Paul Bunyan proportions as your former interns build their careers elsewhere, and tell everyone around them all of the reasons not to work at your company.

Like many in our industry (or any industry for that matter), I started my career with an internship. Or more appropriately, you might say I test drove and ultimately chose my career, based on a great internship back in 1989. Yes, I spent countless hours pasting up envelope after envelope of Burelle’s clips, and faxing news releases (remember when we used to do that?). But I also got my first hit in the New York Times, and I was hooked.

I try to remember that every time I welcome a new intern.

Carreen Winters can be reached at cwinters@mww.com.

cwinters General Corporate Interns

It isn’t often a company makes headlines for writing a philanthropic check. But Walmart decided to go big. Two billion dollars big in cash and food to fight hunger.

This isn’t a simple, though extraordinary, act of charity. It’s smart CR. Walmart is taking some ownership of an issue that can be addressed through its core business and is in a substantial position to do something about.

It has an astronomically large consumer base, many of whom (judging from the data in the article) rely on food banks. Such a gesture is about connecting with the communities in which Walmart operates, and Walmart operates just about everywhere. The company also has “donated the services of its staff to help food banks improve lighting and refrigeration, and develop ways to increase the amount of fresh food on their shelves.” So, it’s about coupling the bills with the skills.

Mike Sacks can be reached at msacks@mww.com.

msacks CSR corporate responsibility, CSR, Target, Walmart

Point to the AP for one of the better headlines I’ve seen recently: “Feds investigate baby bottom complaints”

Now, I’m going to do my best to avoid being too cheeky (1) throughout this post, but I can’t guarantee I have that sort of discipline.

Unfortunately for Procter & Gamble, maker of Pampers, not all is smooth (2) in baby butt land. The article is about the Consumer Product Safety Commission and its investigation to get to the bottom (3) of complaints of “babies and toddlers suffering severe and persistent diaper rashes and blisters that resemble chemical burns” due to a new “Dry Max” diaper Pampers introduced.

Evidently, this whole thing, as many brands are finding out the hard way, got going on Facebook, and found its way into the mainstream media. Both upset parents and Pampers seem to be utilizing the tools available to make their respective cases. When I checked while writing this, the Facebook page serving as the hub of activity – Pampers bring back the OLD CRUISERS/SWADDLERS – had 6,424 fans. Also on the page – the damning evidence! Photos! I would not recommend looking at them though.

Pampers has dismissed these rash (4) claims as it “aimed to contain a public relations threat to its biggest diaper innovation in 25 years,” says Reuters. The company claims, and executives have stated online, that these rumors are false, and they have turned over all safety data to the CPSC.

As we’ve explored on this blog before, parents are a group you do not want to mess with. So, P&G cannot simply ignore it. And it isn’t. P&G is engaging its concerned consumers where they are gathering online.

A lot of self-proclaimed experts, as one quoted by Reuters does, might advocate contrition. But P&G is sticking (rightly, I think) to its guns. The company thinks the facts are on its side – that there is no evidence behind the claims, either presented by others or in its own research. Unfortunately, facts don’t always win the day, and Pampers might do well to at least be open to exploring the issue a bit more rather than making a goofy claim about this being nothing more than some kind of diaper conspiracy among a handful of upset parents.

While this movement against Dry Max might not affect sales or otherwise cause longer-term brand damage, all it takes is a few consumers at a time switching to Huggies.

Mike Sacks can be reached at msacks@mww.com.

msacks Crisis Communications, General Corporate, Social Media crisis management, Facebook, P&G, Pampers

Love, love, love this story from the Wall Street Journal about Managing Your Career. It profiles three mega-CEO’s – Myron Ullman of JC Penney, Peter Peterson of Blackstone, and Jeffrey Hollander of Seventh Generation and the mistakes they have made that helped them reach their personal pinnacles of success.

Too often, CEOs and other leaders who seek to raise their profiles to enhance corporate reputations think that this means they must put a perfect foot forward at all times, like robotic executives who do everything right all the time.

The real sign of a leader is one who acknowledges her mistakes, and learns from them. And the real sign of character is candor about those mistakes, which enables others to learn, too.

Carreen Winters can be reached at cwinters@mww.com.

cwinters General Corporate Leadership, mistakes

BP’s CEO told NBC today that the oil spill that is likely to be worse than the mother of all spills – the Exxon Valdez – “wasn’t their accident, but they would clean it up.”

As more than 200,000 gallons of oil are spewed into the Gulf of Mexico each day – a number that may climb to millions according to some experts – BP is desperately grasping onto any lifeboat it can to preserve its reputation. This began with the assertion that the U.S. Government should have have acted more quickly to mobilize resources, to today’s attempt to draw a distinction between the big brand of BP and the little known operator of the actual machinery, Trans Oceana.

This raises an important issue on the role of partners and reputation. To put it simply, reputational sh#@ doesn’t roll down hill. It stays right at the top, where it belongs. Airlines use code share partners, sometimes very small regional code-share partners. But when that plane goes down, the flagship brand’s reputation takes the hit. Always.

Any time you put millions of gallons of oil anywhere other than a tank, you’ve got a problem. But it is how you respond that defines your future. So far, BP isn’t doing much to help themselves.

The issue of reputation cannot be sub-contracted. Leadership, like management, requires that the leader accept responsibility in bad times, and share credit in good times. And BP’s attempt to throw their vendor under the proverbial bus does little to advance their cause.

They selected this vendor.

They supervise this vendor.

They are responsible for this vendor.

The good Sisters at my Catholic School always used to tell us that when you point a finger, three more are pointed back at you.

In other words, BP… you own it.

Carreen Winters can be reached at cwinters@mww.com.

cwinters Crisis Communications, General Corporate BP, Exxon, oil spill