14 DAY TRIAL // BP, the oil giant pretty much responsible for the massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, has a lot of problems on its hands. Not only is it trying to plug the oil leak in the middle of the ocean, it’s also trying to plug the bad publicity leak in the media and especially online. It’s failing miserably to do the former, but maybe it can have more success with the latter. The company has bought relevant keywords like “oil spill” on Google, Bing and Yahoo and is running its own ads against those searches to, maybe, get people to see BP’s side of the story.
BP confirmed that it had bought the keywords and says it has done so to make it easier for people to find out what BP is doing in the Gulf. At the same time, the company says the ads are aimed at people wanting to file claims with the company or even volunteer with the clean-up efforts.
Some estimates say that BP could be paying as much as $10,000 per day to secure the top spot on all of the top three search engines, a very small price to pay to have its, decidedly positive, spin on events sit on top of the news reports that are obviously mostly critical.
On Google, the simple ad has a link to the BP page dedicated to the oil spill and a short message saying, “Info about the Gulf of Mexico Spill; Learn more about how BP is helping.” The choice of words may be a bit odd, as ‘helping’ may not exactly be the best way of describing efforts, failed ones at that, to clean up its own mess.
BP’s efforts to clean up its public image, on the other hand, have not gone unnoticed. The satirical BP Twitter account that has become quite popular lately has weighed in with tweets like “We're paying Google a lot of money to make sure you only have access to the best possible info on the oil spill: our info,” and “Proud to announce we've partnered with Google to turn the Information Superhighway into a Corporate Bus Route.”