BP Crisis Communication

Introduction
One major business incident happened in April 2010 shocked the world and caused an “earthquake” of British Petroleum (BP)’s brand image. The Deepwater Horizon oil rig owned by BP in the Golf of Mexico exploded, leading to a disastrous oil spill in this marine area. The maritime disaster caused by the explosion became the largest one in the history of the U.S. and brought huge financial and reputations losses to BP. What is worse, sealing the oil well took over five months. From the explosion of the completion of the sealing (announced by BP), over 780 million gallons of crude oil spilled into the sea, causing irreversible pollution and damage to the bio-system in this area and the world (Lofgren 2013). BP’s response, however, is considered as a crisis communication failure (Heller 2012) by some people and others believe BP’s response was effective (Mejri & de Wolf 2013).
This essay revolves around this incident and BP’s response, and analyses the effectiveness of BP’s crisis communication with relevant theories and concepts in the area of communication management. This essay

Financially, in one month after the burst of this incident, stock shares of BP went down from $60 per share to $27 per share. In other words, about $100 billion in shareholder value “vaporised”. In addition, to make the remedy to the financial damage caused by the oil spill, BP had to establish a fund worth $20 billion. This incident was widely criticised by the media, communities, the public and other stakeholders. It undermined the reputation of BP significantly. For example, after the incident, BP was no longer one of the top 100 brands elected by Interbrand (Interbrand 2009) because most of its brand values were destroyed by the incident. Many ethical investors also turned back on BP. BP was considered as one of the most notorious companies in the U.S.A according to a RQ survey in 2011 (Harris Interactive