• Brandweek, Newsweek, USA Today, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Fast Company, Thursday, June 3, 2010 10:38 AM

BP's full-page ad in today's New York Times (page A13) carries the headline: "We will get this done. We will make this right" and goes on to assure readers that its employees are working "around the clock" to contain and collect most of the leak. "The ad is perhaps the first response by BP since the spill occurred on April 20," writes Todd Wasserman. Presumably he means by way of paid media.

There have been plenty of responses, Ravi Somaiya points out in Newsweek, but they've just been terribly wrongheaded. The short piece detailing some unchoice words BP CEO Tony Hayward has uttered in various venues is headlined, "What Not To Say When Your Company Is Ruining The World." For example, Hayward tried to persuade The Guardian that "the Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume."

No wonder, then, that USA Today's Chris Joyner and a cast of legpeople at newspapers around the country report that "Anger About Oil Spill Turns To Protests Of BP." Motorists are boycotting BP stations, Joyner writes, either as an individual protest or in response to various calls to bypass the 22,400 stations carrying the BP name (even though most are independently owned, family businesses). No matter, says Tyson Slocum, director of the energy program at Ralph Nader's consumer advocacy group, Public Citizen, which has called for a three-month boycott of the stations. "A boycott effort is as much a public relations campaign as it is a hit at the bottom line," he says.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg BusinessWeek's Brian Swint reports that CEO Hayward will speak on a conference call with investors and analysts tomorrow. "The pressure is on Hayward at the moment, primarily from politicians," says David Paterson, head of corporate governance at the National Association of Pension Funds in London. "Investors clearly will want some answers in order to understand what the long-term future for the company is."

Finally, Fast Company's Dan Nosowitz reports on an article on Streetgiant.com written by a man purporting to be the founder of the @BPGlobalPR Twitter account that has been skewering the company. "I've read a bunch of articles and blogs about this whole situation by publicists and marketing folk wondering what BP should do to save their brand from @BPGlobalPR," writes the pseudonymous Leroy Stick. "First of all, who cares? Second of all, what kind of business are you in? I'm trashing a company that is literally trashing the ocean, and these idiots are trying to figure out how to protect that company?

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