Sunday, June 27, 2010

BP (really might) Care


If you haven't heard of it by now you must be living under a rock. BP Global PR on Twitter is an extremely popular parody account. Started by an anonymous person on May 19th, the account is definitely a parody, though it gives no indication of being so. Currently it has over 179,000 Followers and tweets rather humorous PR-like statements regarding the BP Oil Spill.

This brings into question, as a PR professional, how can you control a message in this situation? Is it even possible?! The account has been up for a month now, is still active, and seems to be prospering. On the other hand, BP_America the official BP account on twitter (for... America... wanted to point that out just in case) has only 16,000 followers and is mostly an object of ridicule in the Twitterverse.

What can be done? In this extreme situation, probably nothing, but it is an example of the worst Social Media job in the world right now, working for BP's twitter.

1 comment:

Professor Pallavi Kumar said...

Trace,
Couldn't agree more! Did you see the fake Steve Jobs tweet that says they may need to recall the iPhone that was picked up by NextWeb? http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20008957-71.html
How do companies control these erroneous accounts? Will discuss further in class.
PK