Shifting Communication: Transocean Acts Under Siege

Much like Halliburton, the Transocean Web site remains unchanged by the Gulf Coast oil spill.

The most haunting page of all falls under the tab of responsibility. "At Transocean, we firmly believe that the safety of people underpins our success. Our safety vision above covers all our drilling units and shore-based facilities worldwide." And then there is the promise in big bold letters splash across the page as the header.

"Our operations will be conducted in an incident-free workplace, all the time, everywhere."

It's not just a headline by Transocean. It's also the company's vision statement.

Just off the front page, the only section mentioning drilling rig Deepwater Horizon is under news releases. All of its communication there has been a steady stream of releases, with an emphasis on the event from April 21 to April 26. April 26 marks the day that Transocean communication decisively changes.

The Communication Snap At Transocean.

What changed? Transocean shifts from crisis communication to increasingly defensive protectionism. After sending a message to investors that the total insured value of the rig is $560 million on April 26, releases shift to a limitation of liability petition for approximately $26 million as a necessary step to protect the interests of its employees, its shareholders and the company.

After that decisive turn, most communication becomes reactionary to rumors and the news reporting on those rumors, including the alleged distribution of any incident response forms that promised cash for cooperation. Four days later, Cheryl D. Richard, senior vice president of human resources and IT, announces her pending retirement.

The next and last communication, on May 25, responds to what it calls erroneous reports relating to its "shareholders' approval of a dividend and its intent to avoid liability arising from the Deepwater Horizon incident or to profit from such incident." The release goes on to say that "Transocean will honor all of its legal obligations arising from the Deepwater Horizon accident."

A statement seems to contradict its limitation of liability petition. Meanwhile, the company's online newsletter Beacon, appears frozen in winter 2010, filled with letters of praise. It's biannual employee publication is frozen even earlier; the last available issue published in 2008.

Coincidently, perhaps, 2008 also seems to represent a shift in company behavior. Between 2008 and 2009, Transocean went from a hot stock pick to a company that seemed to move away from the aforementioned safety-laced vision. The company had five management appointments, two vice president appointments, and a change in the nation where it is incorporated. It moved from the Cayman Islands to Switzerland.

The Transocean Connection To The Spill.

For those who might not know, Transocean was the owner and operator of Deepwater Horizon. As such, Lamar McKay, the president and chairman of BP, has alluded that the blame belongs there (despite BP accepting responsibility for the cleanup). Transocean CEO Steve Newman responded by saying it was not the time for finger pointing ... before attempting to shift blame away from his own embattled company.

If there is any truth to some of the stories surfacing in papers today, the Deep Horizon incident plays out like many construction contractor-subcontractor relationships.

Subcontractors sometimes drag their feet, which places pressure on the supervising contractor to exert influence. In one summary offered up by the Huffington Post, which criticizes the absence of two key testimony witness, it seems to be the most logical scenario, with "Donald Vidrine, BP's 'company man,' overruled the rig's chief mechanic and driller and pushed to speed up the process by remove the drilling mud faster to save BP money on the day of the tragic explosion."

It would make sense, given many of the initial delays were related to the Halliburton slowdown. However, there is one write-up that smacks of perception. If oil rigs are anything like ships, BP could probably not overrule a chief mechanic and put Transocean at risk unless the owner-operator was predisposed or ordered to follow contractual obligations and ignore the company's eroding vision to allow safety to lead to success.

The Psychology Of Influence And Erosion Of Communication.

If you worked as a pizza delivery driver and the boss told you to drive 20 miles per hour over the speed limit to shave 15 minutes off the delivery time, you might be inclined to say no. Some people might even say hell no. On Deepwater Horizon, Transocean said yes.

Once again, it seems Milgram was right. The question that ought to be asked is what convinced a chief mechanic and driller to change his mind? Was it mounting pressure from BP? Was it the lack of communication or a direct order from his company? Or was it the authorization to proceed from the regulatory agency's approval to proceed?

Answer that question andprimary party responsibility seems to land squarely. However, that is not to say the balance of participants are to be exonerated. Guilt doesn't wash off as well as oil.

From the perspective of communication alone, Transocean seems to have the most to lose. It's clearly the most defensive, sometimes flailing about. There must be a reason. Sometimes those actions are the sign of inexperienced communicators or crisis counsel. Other times, it's merely an admission that the company hasn't been observing its vision for the better part of two years.

We'll pick up on our crisis communication evaluation next Tuesday. Mostly, we're just thrilled the real priority, plugging the leak, seems to be working. In the interim, consider some other worthwhile perspectives.

• Geoff Livingston pinpoints where BP communication becomes muddled. It's an excellent point-by-point resource primer.

• Patrick Kinney of Gaffney Bennet Public Relations talks to Lynn Neary about BP's public response to the Gulf oil spill. Kinney worked for Ogilvy Public Relations when it helped BP rebrand itself as "Beyond Petroleum."

• Chris Maloney pens one post that pinpoints what BP seems to be doing right since taking full responsibility for the spill. His writeup is a bit more tempered than those who gave BP a B on crisis communication. (A "B," really? Not in my class.)

Communicating Zip: Why Halliburton Is Quiet

When you visit the Halliburton Web site, one of the world’s largest providers of products and services to the energy industry, business continues as usual.

The board declared a 2010 second quarter dividend of nine cents ($0.09) a share on the company’s common stock, the Gulf of Mexico remains "one of the world's most prolific producing areas," the company was busy presenting at the 2010 UBS Global Oil and Gas Conference, and the deep water drilling section of the site concludes "our experience speaks for itself."

Mostly, with exception to the prepared statement (one release away from being bumped off the home page) that was delivered by Tim Probert, president, Global Business Lines and chief Health, Safety and Environmental officer, Halliburton, the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico already reads like a memory rather than a current event. It's not.

The Halliburton Connection To The Spill.

Halliburton connection to the crisis is that it was responsible for sealing the well. The casing to seal the well was installed several days before the explosion. (CNN provides one of the better investigation time lines for April 20, if you are interested.)

What makes the casing significant is most accounts point to gas leaking through the casing just hours before the explosion. This seems to be supported by BP briefs as rig workers tried to close valves on the blowout preventer at least twice.

However, there are four points to consider related to the casing. Only one point falls squarely on Halliburton.

1. BP's decision to install a single barrier option made the best economic case.
2. There are some contentions that the Halliburton work was taking longer than usual and possibly improperly constructed .
3. BP seems to have made a decision to perform some tasks related to the last plug in reverse order, something that would require MMS approval.
4. BP officials had made a decision to run only six of 21 tests to ensure the drill pipe was properly centered; an uneven drill pipe could have contributed to the instability of the installation.

The Halliburton Postion And Communication Strategy.

The Halliburton position is that it was following Transocean’s orders (as dictated by BP) and is "contractually bound to comply with the well owner’s instructions on all matters relating to the performance of all work-related activities." It has simultaneously defended its work while also claiming it is premature and irresponsible to speculate on any specific causal issues.

In terms of ongoing communication, other than saying it is cooperating with investigations and releasing its investigation statement, the company is silent. While Halliburton is providing some intervention support to help secure the damaged well and planning and services associated with drilling relief well operations, details are absent.

Public relations professionals and crisis communicators generally hate this communication approach. The reality is that such little communication from Halliburton is indicative of a subcontractor role. Crisis communicators don't generally teach it, but subcontractors generally attempt to position themselves as subordinates.

The benefit for the subcontractor is limited responsibility for the communication. The benefit for the contractor is greater message control. In this case, Halliburton has mostly used its communication to send a message to BP and Transocean. That message is clear: it's your show unless you try to toss us under the bus.

Halliburton Communication Overview.

• Of the three companies, Halliburton is in the best possible position to escape the bulk of the backlash. It seems to know it, because even if the investigation shows its work may be the primary cause, the primary cause on its own did not result in a disaster. Several decisions leading up to and after the installation seem to have led to significant lapses in safety.

• The subcontractor communication strategy — based on the observation that the general public is not the customer — is becoming an arcane practice. While subcontractors have been traditionally exempt from the most rules of communication, the general public has become increasingly critical of subcontractors since the advent of social media.

• There are still weaknesses in Halliburton's communication. Given prior public exposure, the public is beginning to remember its name as a controversial and untrustworthy corporate citizen. Further, the excuse, "just following orders," seems as thin as medical personnel who relied on it during another crisis we covered two years ago.

• The most challenging concept for communicators to grasp is that the greatest threat to Halliburton is not tied to public pressure. It is only tied to how future contractors perceive their communication and cooperation during the crisis.

Since the company's survival rate is mostly based on how contractors view their cooperation, it seems likely that this company will once again survive controversy while employing a situational communication strategy that most communicators would not recommend. What could it do better?

Even for a subcontractor remaining mostly silent, Halliburton could have shored up communication on four fronts. Among them: communicating policies to ensure safe working conditions despite contractor "orders," avoiding any speculation in the testimony as opposed to what can only be called selective speculation, providing BP updates to roll on their site despite their own silence, and better communicating its role in cleanup efforts as a BP partner in being part of the solution.

In 2009, Halliburton’s total cash and in-kind donations amounted to $572 million. It would only make sense to earmark some of these funds toward a cleanup effort the company is at least partly responsible for.

Managing Crisis: Bad PR Is Only A Symptom

Any time a crisis involves a natural disaster, environmental catastrophe, or drawn-out tragedy, there is only one point of discussion.

When is it going to stop?

Transparency? It doesn't matter. Who is at fault? It doesn't matter. Is the federal government doing enough? It doesn't matter.

Sure, those questions are bound to be asked and asked again. Thirty-seven days is a long time to be in the midst of a crisis with multiple events. And during that time, when specific event coverage can no longer hold viewer interest, investigations start and second tier questions bubble up. But all stories always come back to that singular question. When is it going to stop?

It's the primary reason that for any communication offered up by one of the world's largest energy companies, it always circles back to live shots of oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico from the ocean floor. It always ends with oil washing up on the shore. It always comes back to the impact on animals and sea life or the disruption of life for residents who live within the path.

This isn't "Obama's Katrina" as some people like to call it. Katrina was over, from the time it was upgraded to a tropical storm, in five days.

The oil spill is not an event. It's multiple events.

If there is one fatal flaw in the communication strategy by BP, the Obama administration, and dozens of other vested and guilty parties, it is that they have neglected to see the obvious. This crisis is not a singular event. It's a multiple event crisis, with each event requiring a different set of answers for first tier questions.

• Provide updates and estimates related to the time and date of the event.
• Determine the what, when, where, how, and why.
• Determine who will be involved and to what extent.
• Determine the public or environmental risk of each event.
• Determine the extent of any property damage and loss of life.
• Determine which authorities will be on the scene of each event.
• Estimate and create action plans when each specific crisis will be resolved.
• Keep providing updates, with any positive outcomes, until it is resolved.

Isolating each event related to the crisis is critical if anyone hopes to manage it. Otherwise, the culmination of unrelated events will overwhelm any singular or tag team entity much like Toyota's sometimes unrelated recalls that eventually added up into a company that lost its way.

As a visual, the greater mass of the oil crisis might be likened to a giant blob that BP is attempting to hold up on its own while other vested parties stand by hoping for the best. It's not possible. Crisis and communication blobs do not act like solid mass. They act more like oil. It slips. It drips. And eventually it will coat everyone involved. It doesn't matter who gets more soiled.

Instead, the entire crisis needs to be broken up into parts. There is the leak, which was the initial cause of the crisis. There is the oil that has already seeped into the ocean, killing wildlife, damaging fishermen, and halting tourism. There are scores of smaller events that impact specific ecosystems, local communities, and residents.

The first tier priority is to stop the leak. Until then, nothing else matters.


The second tier, which occurs simultaneously, is to contain the spread of the oil and disperse it. BP is managing this effort, but relying on support from the Coast Guard and hired local fishermen. The results to date are mixed, with some unexpected consequences to the individuals exposed to chemicals.

The third tier are the dozens of events that occur anywhere oil washes up on shore. BP is attempting to mange this aspect of the spill as well. It's clearly not working, with impacted states beginning to take the heat for not doing enough.

A reorganization of the entire process is badly needed. BP clearly needs to focus its energy on stopping the leak. The federal government needed to and still needs to step up responsibility and take action on mitigating the the impact of the oil that has already escaped instead of attempting to armchair quarterback the scene with conflicting messages. And local state governments ought to have taken the lead on individual events, with support from various environmental groups, to keep the beaches clear and clean up as the oil made landfall.

Sure, BP could still act as consultants on the second and third tier events, increasing its presence as each event is resolved. And they ought not to be acting alone. Some of the companies that have a partial responsibility are all but silent on the issue.

And the blame game? Who cares about that?

Considering the amount of oil that has spilled into the Gulf Coast, the top kill solution (if it works) is only the beginning of the environmental events to come. The blame will eventually come to light as investigations continue. What will also be the subject of great debate is why the federal government sought to look like it was in control early on, but then demonstrated only a presence.

Public relations alone cannot solve such a crisis alone. Neither can the various boycotts. If anything, boycotts could make the situation worse despite the reasons some people say to move ahead.

Healthier ways to participate in the crisis at this time include any number of efforts. One beneficiary of a satirical Twitter account BPGlobalPR is to raise funds for the Gulf Restoration Network. The boycotts, if any, can wait until after the spill.

Public relations is always reliant on the actual plan.

When any plan to deal with a crisis is bad, the symptom is improper communication. For its part, BP has attempted to keep communication channels flowing, but it is clearly holding back. They seem to be focused on a singular thought that if they fix everything and then prove themselves to be only partly to blame, then they may be able to justify the clean green logo.

However, as Geoff Livingston points out, that is not the case. He writes that the collective "crisis PR has been terrible with missteps on resolution, horrific transparency on possible solutions, false accounting of actual daily oil spill amounts, the policing of beaches to prevent media reporting, bickering between BP and the EPA, dispersants’ negative impact, a new climate bill that endorses further off-shore drilling, 19 new off-shore drilling licenses since Deep Horizon, etc., etc., on and on."

He says the crisis might be insurmountable for the company. I'm not sure yet, but only because BP is much more than BP. BP is Castrol, Arco, Aral, am/pm, and even the Wild Bean Cafe. It's also a leader in biofuel technology. It's investing in solar technology. It's investing in wind. It's investing in emerging coal conversion technologies. And the list goes on.

You won't read about many of these efforts for the time being. BP is smart enough to keep the focus where is belongs, but there is more to the company than meets the eye. Where it is less adept, obviously, is in its ability to work beyond its internal sphere. Perhaps they think they are too big to do that nowadays. But they are not the only ones.

Generally, in the past, sometimes the federal government would be slow to take charge and delegate a national disaster. But ultimately, the federal government would. This time around, the crisis plan matches the PR plan. Every stakeholder in the oil spill crisis has its own message. And while it is said in many different ways, the underlying theme is "not me."

Other voices around the Web with a focus on communication.

• The Dirty Business of BP's Corporate Reputation Clean Up by Jennifer Janviere.
• Its Fake Twitter Stream Has Twice the Followers of the Real Thing by Jim Edwards
• How Not To Get “Brandjacked” Like BP Global PR by Olivier Blanchard

Losing Bounce: OfficeMax Customer Service

Last year, a customer service issue left me with the resolve to always visit Office Depot before OfficeMax. The issue was a small thing.

When we were loading my car with new office chairs, I noticed they were brown and not black. They were out of black, said the employee who spent 30 minutes looking for the chairs in the back room. No problem, just take them back, I said.

"It's the same model," he blinked. "I'll have to wheel them all the way back into the store."

"Seriously?"

I led the way.

Yesterday, our phone system had a meltdown. So I drove over to Office Depot. Unfortunately, they didn't have enough handsets for the system that met our needs. No problem. I didn't have time to check other stores; OfficeMax is one block away. Beside, nowadays they have rubberband balls as the symbol of customer service.

OfficeMax had the same stocking issue. And since the employee didn't offer to check other stores, I found another system that was obviously in stock and still met our needs. All in all, a better customer experience. Except, that is, for one small thing.

After the transaction was complete and the phones were carefully double bagged, the employee asked me to wait. He walked over to another register, came back, mentioned a 14-day return policy, and then stamped my receipt in red ink. For any reason, he added, pointing down to the stamp.

"15% Restocking Fee On Any OPEN Technology."

It's another small thing, but I still have to wonder. Are these the last words you want to leave with a customer?

Establishing Reputation: A Holistic Approach To Business

Every year, Reputation Institute looks at how the general public rates 1,000 companies in over 20 industry categories in more than 25 countries, making Global Reputation Pulse the largest study of reputation in the world. Most of the work focuses on how companies perform in their home countries, but an article in Forbes today highlights 28 companies with international merit.

The Top Ten Brands By Reputation.

1. Google (United States)
2. Sony (Japan)
3. The Walt Disney Company (United States)
4. BMW (Germany)
5. Daimler (Germany)
6. Apple (United States)
7. Nokia (Finland)
8. IKEA (Sweden)
9. Volkswagen (Germany)
10. Intel (United States)

Microsoft just missed the top ten. And there are many great companies that round out the full list of the 28 most reputable companies. The study was based on several factors, including products and services, innovation, workplace, governance, citizenship, financial performance, and leadership.

Understanding What Reputation Really Means.

One of the most common mistakes in business is to use two terms — brand and reputation — interchangeably. (The same can be said for brand and identity.) The confusion has become more pronounced in recent years, in part, because some social media experts frequently combine identity, brand, and reputation. So let's dispel some of the mystery.

There isn't much reason to reinvent an answer in this case. Richard Ettenson and Jonathan Knowles clarified brand and reputation well enough in 2008.

They defined brand as a “customer-centric” concept that focuses on what a product, service, or company has promised to for its customers and what that commitment means to them. In short, it's the total net sum of all positive and negative impressions about a company based largely upon the consumer-company relationship.

Reputation, on the other hand, is a “company-centric” concept that focuses on the credibility and respect that an organization has among a broad set of constituencies. This would include everyone: employees, investors, regulators, journalists, local communities, and customers. And, it would include all those factors cited by the Reputation Institute.

If you need an example to help drive the difference home, Walmart is one of the best companies to consider. It frequently scores high as one of the best known brands, but its reputation often serves as its primary detractor. It will always be that way for Walmart until the company holds itself to a higher standard.

What It Takes To Establish A Strong Reputation.

1. Product/Service. The ability to deliver on a brand promise — products and services — is paramount to establishing legitimacy. It's one of the primary reasons Google sucked some of the air out of Yahoo as search stewards. As Yahoo bought companies and rebranded them to the central brand, it also inherited and transposed product and service issues. Sometimes it worked out okay with platforms like Flickr, but it suffered the opposite fate with platforms like MyBlogLog. Google, on the other hand, saw its reputation soar as it transformed its acquisitions into Google culture.

2. Brand & Identity. While reputation, brand, and identity are different, they work in tandem. While the products and services may have differentiation, the ability to communicate that differentiation makes all the difference. Apple is paticularly good at this by demonstrating its minimal design elements and innovation virtually with everything it does, right down to the people we expect to see behind the counters of any Apple retail outlet.

3. Advertising. While anyone can argue the finer points of whether social media has circumvented the traditional principles of advertising, it's still the primary source of message delivery. Advertising, more than any other discipline, communicates the brand promise, establishes the identity, and attracts enough attention to create sales opportunities. Sure, sometimes advertising drives sales, but mostly it focuses on everything else.

4. Public Relations. While some people might take exception to seeing public relations follow advertising, there is some truth to the idea. Public relations (and this includes but is not limited to the art of media relations) works to have other groups — ideally employees (via internal communication), investors, regulators, journalists, local communities, and customers — to adopt and believe in the brand promise. To do it, public relations professionals need to assist in creating an environment of mutual trust.

5. Corporate Citizenship. Great companies do not operate within a void. They generally consider corporate philanthropy part of their culture. Even small localized companies can learn from larger companies in that if the community isn't economically viable, healthy, vibrant, and provides a better quality of life, then it will wither. And with it, so will sales within that community.

When you add it all up and look to some of the best run companies in the world, you might sometimes come away with the feeling that those scoring highest on the reputation charts seems to have it all or, at least, very close to it. In some ways they do. But what's even more important to consider it that any company (or individual) can have it all too. It's a choice.

Finding Freshness: Fresh Content Project

Maybe it's because I've worked with this medium for so long, but some of my colleagues who are still learning social media basics tend to ask me for tips, tactics, and best practices so they can fake their way around the application. Sometimes I give them a few answers to address their most immediate needs. It's hard not to as an instructor, and I sincerely want them to succeed whether we're working together or not.

However, I have to confess I'm not always fond of the questions. Almost all of the them have to do with attracting more attention. They long for eyeballs and are willing to take shortcuts with lower price points to do it. I'm not surprised. If they made an investment, they'd know most of the answers to their questions already exist. If it is not among the thousand plus posts I've penned here over the last five years, then certainly among the hundreds of communicators I skim for fresh content daily.

Here are five more answers to such questions, and almost none of them have to do with attracting eyeballs. You see, when you know what you're doing with social media and understand where it fits within the context of strategic communication, "finding eyeballs" becomes the least concern.

Best Fresh Content In Review, Week of May 10

• Clever Retailer Use Of Blogging
People often wonder how to attract more attention to their social media efforts. Adam Singer does a great job providing the easiest answer — do something. He doesn't mean "do something" as in find more friends on Facebook. He means do something offline and then write about it online. And the example he shares comes from a Chicago retailer, who takes pictures of people taking pictures of his dog.

• Five Reasons Why This Blog Is A Failure
Julien Smith, coauthor of Trust Agents with Chris Brogan, tells Mitch Joel why Six Pixels of Separation isn't as popular as Brogan's blog. Among the reasons? Smith says Joel peers too far into the future, isn't controversial enough, writes too much content, and fails to connect to the everyday person. Not surprisingly, those are all the reasons we read Joel's blog. Ho hum. Popularity is never an anectode for developing the right audience.

• The Slow Decline of Social Media and the Rise of Common Sense
Kyle Flaherty wasn't really calling the for the death of social media. What he was recognizing was that all advents in communication eventually lose some the enthusiastic charm and become part of the overall plan. There's nothing wrong with that. In the effort to make social media a "more respected function of business," we need to sacrifice the "set of caricatures trying a little too hard to defend the practice."

• The Myth Of The Viral Video
When Arik Hanson takes a hard look at viral videos, he takes a very hard look at them. Sure, nobody can resist feeling good after capturing tens of thousands or millions of eyeballs, but then what? Do companies that rack up millions of hits for producing catchy content truly capture as many customers? Probably not. There is certainly a sweet spot, somewhere in the middle, where you can be true to your brand and still resonate with key audiences.

• Facebook's About Face On Conversation
There are scores of posts on the subject of Facebook, but Valeria Maltoni did the best job at succinctly capturing the essence of the developing story. Facebook is steadily building a corporate culture of unconcern in regard to how it treats its customers. Right now, it might work well enough because Facebook has captured enough mass to "feel" like it is the market. However (although not mentioned in Maltoni's post), we seem to remember another company that was once so big it could call all the shots and abuse members. That company was America Online.