Digitized Thoughts

I went to the Lake of the Ozarks over the weekend to see a couple of friends I hadn’t seen in some time. I had an absolute blast, but as you’ve probably guessed from the headline, I incurred some problematic situations. In the first incident, I lost my wedding ring. It’s sitting at the bottom of the Lake currently, and probably will be for some time. A few hours later, I slipped off of the boat I was riding on and landed in the water…with my phone and iPod in my pockets. Both were instantly transformed into paperweights.

As I was debating the best way to tell my wife about all of this, I realized there WASN’T a best way. I just had to tell her, and face the music. In retrospect, and in part because of the BP discussion during last night’s #pr20chat, I’m able to apply some lessons in crisis communications.

Lesson #1 – “The Ring” Know when a problem is unsolvable. My wedding ring is gone, there’s no finding it unless I hire a diver to go searching for it. That’s too expensive, and we’ll be replacing the ring. However, the original ring my wife gave me at our wedding is gone. Lost to the depths. There’s really no replacing it. BP needs to realize that there’s no “fixing” the disaster in the Gulf. It will take beyond our lifetimes for the ecosystem to completely restore itself…if it ever happens. It is finally beginning to realize it needs to quickly plug the leak, which is the only way it can remedy the issue.

Lesson #2 – “The Phone” Know when to make the best of the situation. I’m using my wife’s old phone…a Samsung Instinct she bought in 2008. I’m having withdrawals from my Android OS phone already. It’s not the situation I’d prefer, but it’s my fault for falling in the Lake with it in my pocket, so now I have to deal with the consequences. I’m not convinced BP’s image will ever truly recover, but it can commit itself to being the most environmentally conscious oil company on the planet. Develop a new segment of the company dedicated to creating methods of quickly, and with as little environmental impact as possible, cleaning up oil spills. BP will never be able to replace what it has lost, but it can find a new opportunity for growth, and become synonymous with a positive idea than a negative.

Lesson #3 – “The iPod” Know when to let go. I got my iPod for Christmas this past year. I loved it. It was a “Classic” with 160 GB of storage. When I got it, I figured I’d be able to go 15 yrs or so without having to get a new one. I was able to put my entire CD collection, plus a few movies, on it and have about 115 GB left. I was in love. Now, I’m without an iPod for the foreseeable future. I’m ok with that. It’s not something I must have like my ring or phone. BP needs to let go of whatever it thinks/thought its image was before the Deepwater Horizon disaster and resulting oil leak. It doesn’t exist anymore. Any goodwill it had remaining from people who still connected it to the Amoco stations of their youth (like me) is gone. Rather than trying to rescue an image stained with oil, a decimated ecosystem, and an entire region’s fishing industry destroyed, it needs to let go of that past and focus on the future. Become a new company, one (as suggested above) whose primary focus, aside from being an oil company, is figuring out new and better ways of cleaning up spills.