What Can BP’s Mistakes Teach Us About Marketing

What can BP teach us about marketing in the face of the largest environmental disaster in USA history? Some very good points and some points that Frank Kern talks about “avoiding at all costs” in one of his squeeze pages.

I hesitated for a minute before writing this because this is a marketing forum and I wanted to keep it that way, however, it is so disturbing to me that this is being let happen to our country that it just flat out pisses me off!

So, lets start with some of the good that we can take away from this horrendous situation as I try to stifle my cynical tongue for a moment. BP can be compared to a “guru” in the internet marketing industry. Because of this they can move and guide opinion as people already have a positive opinion of them due to their “guru” status.

This means they can influence their customers opinion much easier.

They can recover from mistakes faster.

They can charge a premium for the same product.

They can lead the conversation in their niche and people will listen.

All this adds up to their ability to survive the worst environmental disaster in our history. They will come back as a company and find a away to turn this around because they have influence in the market. Influence that reaches much wider and deeper than people realize. Every dollar they spent to build their brand equity will pay them tenfold when the begin the image recovery process.

So what is the “one thing that we should avoid at all costs” in the words of Frank.

Taking on a major endeavor without a backup plan. Whether that is conducting a product launch with only one merchant account or creating a website in a niche without doing proper research first. If you don’t have a back up plan you are just asking for trouble and BP didn’t have one.

The end result is an unfortunate incident that started off as something that probably had more to do with the inherent risk of doing business, and ended up as the worst environmental disaster of our history. All because BP had no backup plan.

God help us if this is the best we have to offer.

Don’t let this happen to you…. and say a prayer for the workers who passed away.