• The Awl, Monday, September 13, 2010 2:43 PM

The Awl's Mat Honan sits down with Josh Simpson -- an L.A.-based comedian who upended BP's multimillion-dollar marketing strategy with a single twitter account -- @BPGlobalPR -- and some helpful contributors. Since May, Simpson and a team of about 15 have been sending out messages about the Gulf oil spill to Twitter. The parody account took on the persona of an inept and insensitive pr pro working at BP -- "and it viciously skewered BP's messaging attempts from behind a veil of anonymity."

Said Simpson: "I was literally taking a whiz when I had this idea: How could I be BP's public relations team on Twitter? ... Roger Ebert retweeted something I said, and then it just didn't stop growing ... It was gaining like 50,000 a week and didn't start slowing down until about 170,000 or 180,000."

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