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BP Buys "Oil Spill" Search Term
technology_dude found an unsurprising but amusing little story that BP is buying keywords on Google and Yahoo for things like "Oil Spill" to help spin some damage control. I guess if you can't plug your spill, the least you can do is try to clog the flow of information.
how about they concentrate their efforts a mile down instead?
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
At this point does BP actually think they can buy their way out of this with good PR?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Maybe they should pay attention to their own rules: http://www.flickr.com/photos/therachelmaddowshow/4667450260/?
Did they purchase "gargantuan+fuck+up" too?
Raters gon' rate.
If i google "oil spill" here (Netherlands) it does not show sponsered links.
I'd have expected less of them... But I guess they're doing pretty well so far with their coverage on bp.com and using dispersants to keep most of the spill at depth and keeping away science vessels so they're free to misunderestimate the true magnitude.
Wonder what their PR budget is compared to their recovery budget.
but this really isn't news. Money has a voice. More money has a louder voice. Lots of money can shout out all other voices.
I hope the search providers enjoy their windfall. I hope the states, the Feds, and the individual victims of this disaster take careful note of how much money is being spent on non-productive spin control, rather than actually fixing the problem and cleaning up the aftermath.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
The worst part of this oil spill is that you can't even boycott BP effectively without also boycotting the local gas station owner and the whole refinery chain. Say that this shady keyword purchasing damage control made you so upset that you went down and picketed the BP station in your neighborhood. Well, you might be affecting BP a little but you're having a much larger impact on the guy who owns that station. A huge impact if you're there all day appealing to people's empathy for the Gulf.
What can I do? Write my senator demanding what exactly?
My work here is dung.
Suddenly I'm proud to be British. God save the Queen!
@BPGlobalPR
By the way, we made it so if you google image search "oil spill" or "bp" you'll see some great celeb sideboob pics. #bpcares
Ah, the fun we poke.
By the way, we made it so if you google image search "oil spill" or "bp" you'll see some great celeb sideboob pics. #bpcares
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
Are filled with oil... Nothing to see here just move along.
BP - "One of the World Leaders in Oil Spills and Public Relations Damage Control"
Have you spilled oil today? Our P.R. team can help!
ipv6 is my vpn
Hell yeah!
People should check out BPGlobalPR on twitter. It is some guy in his underwear parodying BP spin control. He posted this last night - "By the way, we made it so if you google image search "oil spill" or "bp" you'll see some great celeb sideboob pics. #bpcares"
Related: http://digg.com/comedy/Massive_Flow_Of_Bull****_Continues_To_Gush_From_BP
One is to:
www.BP.com/OilSpillNews "Info about the Gulf of Mexico Spill Learn More about How BP is Helping."
The other is:
Tar Ball Burner(tm) "Collect free tar balls from beaches and turn them into unleaded gas!"
Please slashdot both of them.
"His name was James Damore."
Wait till they declare a profit this quarter. The whole country will draw and quarter them.
...is the flow of information, amirite?
I would have brought in a fleet of NOAA research vessels accompanied by a full-flotilla of Coast Guard or Navy accompaniment, just to show BP no-one owns the ocean.
they will come in handy when it's time to pay the bill for what they have destroyed.
But I guess they're doing pretty well so far with their coverage on bp.com and using dispersants to keep most of the spill at depth and keeping away science vessels so they're free to misunderestimate the true magnitude.
Science vessels? According to Newsweek, it's photographers and people looking to document the damage that BP is turning away. Now that's some unadulterated bullshit "damage control."
I heard on NPR that some people looking to investigate beaches were turned away by policeman and when they asked the policemen who was paying them to do that the policeman said they were off duty police officers employed by BP. I don't know if that's true or if the people are lying but the stinks worse than crude if it's the truth and I hope the US AG criminal investigation gets to the bottom of that.
My work here is dung.
People need to learn how to properly use search engines and interpret their results. SPONSORED LINKS are exactly that - people pay to have their links appear when certain terms are searched; that's how search engines make money. Sponsored links aren't the best and most relevant result for your search (and are likely the exact opposite).
I have a friend who does affiliate marketing, and makes a lot of money off of people's dumb search habits, specifically their willingness to click sponsored links, believing they're actual search results that link to the retailer they're looking for.
The president should temporarily take over BP's Gulf operations. We have a national emergency on our hands. No president would sit by and watch a privately owned nuclear reactor melt down and the gulf spill is the environmental equivalent.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/why-obama-should-put-bp-u_b_595346.html
Relax, dude, I'm pretty sure we can all find plenty of things to blame BP for without pretending that buying keyword impressions is somehow harmful.
Go google "oil spill". Sure enough, the top sponsored link will be the BP oil spill site. The other sponsored link will be... yet another partison point of view from someone who was willing to pay to get a message out. That's what sponsored links are.
Right below them - right where they always are - you still find the real search results. How that squares with the flow of information being "clogged" is beyond me.
I'd find more to complain about if BP wasn't trying to present a strong media presence. You know, saying "I'd like my life back" or something like that.
For any company with an extra $40B lying around, a takeover of BP while trumpeting "We will fix this collosal disaster because BP can't!" would be a PR goldmine. Use BP's equipment and personel to keep working on the spill, then reap the massive profits that the company will continue to make after this mess is all but forgotten by society's collective ADHD.
My other sig is clever.
Cause I have a mouse, here, and I could click it a LOT.
Hmmmm, a story combining the ever-inflammatory idea of censorship with the, 'greatest environmental disaster of our time,' delivered right to our internet front-door here on slashdot. I have my money on more than 400 comments in the first 4 hours.
/popcorn
This should be fun. =)
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
I share your optimism. I hope that the victims never tire of reminding us what happened in the Gulf. We as a nation have a pretty short attention span.
Blar.
Completely BS writeup of the article. This is a straightforward and common tactic used by companies in situations like this. Yes, with all the band-wagoning and rhetoric surrounding the issue its not even a bad idea. The spill is obviously a tragedy of incredible proportions, which invites entirely too much disinformation, half truth and anecdotal evidence. No matter what BP did here they would be crucified for either having no strategy, or (like the poster did) assuming the strategy was a CYA move. Everyone is so busy hating right now must forget that BP was a darling until this happened. They gave 7 million to politicians last year, testified before congress, were given one of the largest tax breaks in history by the bush regime. we all helped create this monster. live with it.
sig loading.......
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Yes, if you search for "oil spill" in google, there is a single sponsored link (and identified as such) before the search results. About 6 results down, there are image results with oil covered birds and such. Is it news that one of the most profitable companies in the world is spending a relatively piddly amount on damage control? It's not as if they are buying out search engines.
Similes are like metaphors
Stop wasting it on stupid stuff like this and save it for the cleanup.
Search for "Oil Spill" and then click on the ad, then close the browser...
Test your net with Netalyzr
Personally I thought it was great as it made it nice and easy for me to find their ROV camera page which I love. So what's the problem here?
The last figure I heard for PR money spent was $50 million. The last figure I heard for potential cleanup costs was $25 billion (about the same as their 2009 profits). While spin control on a hideous accident may not be in good taste, I don't think advertising expense is what's going to stop them from fulfilling their remediation obligations.
they've been under estimating the leaking oil, telling us things are progressing fine and then telling us they failed, etc etc so I hope this bit about them purchasing search terms is not a surprise. They, like Exxon before them, plan on surviving this and moving on with business of making billions in profit every year from oil sales. They might have to change their name in the US though because the Gulf is not Alaska and it's likely that this could spread up the easter seaboard too. All area which are far more populated than where the Exxon Valdez mess occurred.
I don't think this will be the last bit of spin we'll be seeing from them. I've already noticed that their public relations people are spinning the leak estimation numbers as US government defined estimates. My guess is that if they put a real cap on this and therefore have a measured amount of flow, the numbers will have to be made public. Changing the perception that the under estimated values were government estimates cover there asses when the real numbers come to light. There's more spin to come.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
In metro Atlanta, BP stations charge on average 11 cents more than everyone else for gas; which apparently isn't a local problem.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
who wants to watch the Alien movies again? Think about it for a moment: if Weyland-Yutani was practicing business today, is there a better way to be evil/deceptive than this? Don't answer that -- you might give them ideas.
I drive a car to work each day. I create demand for gasoline, which creates demand for off shore drilling. My next car will be electric. I'm waiting for the Chevy Volt to come out. Then I won't have oil soaked birds or the blood of young soldiers in Iraq on my conscience.
If this pisses you off, do something. Click on A LOT of ads, and ignore the propaganda. Adword-wastage: it's the new boycott!
Post your profile on " R i c h C h a tS .c o m" and contact with millions of quality members now!
After 9/11, we could have easily used the national will to ditch foreign oil like Carter tried to do in the late 1970s. Unfortunately, we were told to get back to work and keep shopping, while the terrorists were "brought to justice."
Nearly ten years later, we have no high level convictions in any court, only dead suspects. Our economy has been wrecked by tax cuts during a time in which we spent an extra three trillion dollars or so on military expenditures. We've doubled the death toll of Americans, maimed thousands more, killed at least one hundred thousand civilians, and we are still happily sending cash directly into the pockets of the people who fund Al Qaeda.
Oil is also mainly responsible for the looming climate change that may spur even more resource wars across the world, not to mention the simple catastrophic effects of having it spill anywhere.
They don't call oil the devil's excrement for nothing.
According to The Onion BP hasn't just caused an oil spill...
but you're having a much larger impact on the guy who owns that station
Sometimes when you do business with the devil, you get burned.
Reply to That ||
Eventually, they'll go out of business and be replaced by vendors selling oil from a more responsible company. That's how capitalism works, or at least that's how it's supposed to work.
I say we get a campaign going to get as many people to constantly click on these ads. They will end up getting quite a bill!
Enter here.
See some nice new logos for BP.
The media hasn't exactly been objective with its coverage, either. If you'll actually do some research on most of these BP stories, you'll find that the media will do anything to paint BP in a more negative than deserved light. Negative story == more pageviews and more money. BP couldn't possibly offset the biased news coverage of the situation, so I see no problem with them buying ads.
And don't get me wrong, I don't think BP is perfect, and they've done plenty of things wrong, but I see a lot of "screw BP" and very little reason for it (relative to how much it's said).
Just google search oil spill and you'll see what I mean!... (sorry, I had to make that joke, but the first part of my comment is not sarcastic at all).
I have a slightly different outlook. I actually think this is a good thing as every time someone clicks on a sponsered link BP looses money and your favorite search engine gets money.
PR is still important. It's important because the anger of the citizens does effect how hard the government comes down on BP. It makes a difference on how much BP ends up paying in monetary damages. It makes a difference in how stringent the inevitable new drilling regulations are. It makes a difference on whether or not the government feels compelled to press criminal charges against the executives.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
Greenwashing: the practice of companies disingenuously spinning their products and policies as environmentally friendly. For example - if your company spends more in a year on redesigning and distributing its logo to look like a Spirograph green sun than it spent on solar power development in a six year period, that's greenwashing.
Shiny. Let's be bad guys...
They are calling it a 'leak'. It does sound less negative that way...
So BP is spending their money on ads for a relevant search term and when you click on the ad you are lead to information on what they are doing with the oil spill. And we're supposed to be angry at them for doing this? Huh? Maybe their info is bogus or they should be providing more info. Maybe they have totally botched the oil spill. But it would make more sense to me if people were outraged if they DIDN'T buy ads that lead people to information.
Energy is energy, your electric car will need it. Granted, it will likely be lighter and more energy efficient than current offerings, but if you are trying to make a statement about social responsibility and environmentalism, you need to focus on bicycles (self/human propelled vehicles). Also, bear in mind, that if we (G8/G20) all shift away from oil, that makes it easier/cheaper for developing nations to consume it, so the tide you are stemming at home likely won't reach beyond your borders.
I'm looking forward to the Nissan Leaf, which will almost certainly be built well, and perform as Nissan claims it will.
I'd make an example of BP the way we made an example of Philip Morris with cigarettes. Take a portion of BP and all other oil companies profits, and from that drive for renewable energy sources like solar/wind. Make the oil companies fund anti-oil commercials like tobacco revenue funds anti-smoking ads, have them research/subsidize into solar, etc. And make all technologies developed from any think tank funded by these revenues be forever patent free.
You can get 15 minutes of fame, but you can go down in history for infamy.
"I'm feeling lucky" sends me to the wiki for oil spill. USA dude here.
do you use anything with plastic?
do you use anything that was transported?
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
I just had to do some reading up on the Volt, you do realise after the first 40 Miles it has to switch to a petrol powered engine to generate electricity to drive the motor/charge the batteries.
I will admit it does have a higher MPG than most petrol cars, and is similar to most Diesel car's MPG.
I wonder if all the plastics in a Volt are recycled, and on that subject (but perhaps less importantly) if the lubricants it uses are made from crude oil?
Disclaimer: I should probably be doing things to reduce my use of oil, my car only gets around 35 MPG, and I drive the mile to work each day, and I guess I could probably shop a bit closer to home instead of the 40mile weekly round trip to Tesco.
Of course BP is going to do this, of course they are going to do damage control. You honestly think their PR department should be a mile down plugging a hole? or that a few million in advertising is really going to help with the clean up? Give me a break. People have taken their newly found hatred for BP and turned it into something absolutely ridiculous, so ridiculous in fact that it ignores that...PR and advertising departments have...nothing to do with engineering. Not only that, but the story itself is blatantly bias, as buying advertising is hardly "stopping the flow of information." BP got what's coming to them, but that is hardly a reason to make up fairytale business practices and be completely bias in our narrative about the spill. The crap people are spewing about BP is about as bad, if not worse, than the PR campaign BP is running trying to salvage their brand equity.
Does this not indicate that corporations such as BP, when under the gun will result to Orwellian bending of reality to serve their interests. I must admit I am disturbed by the recent comments by the BP CEO that minimize the environmental impacts of the spill.
Their apparent strategy:
Understate the amount of oil erupting from the well.
Apply dispersants so much of the oil stays underwater.
Implement a PR strategy to deny the impact of the invisible underwater oil.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
What I'd like to know is why Transocean, the US company that owned and operated the rig is apparently blameless for this yet BP is being vilified. Transocean is also seeking to use an 1851 law to restrict its liability for economic damages to $26.7 million whereas BP is not. More here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/7806200/Gulf-of-Mexico-oil-spill-Transocean-silent-as-BP-bears-the-brunt-of-anger.html
Not sure what's different about my searches, but oil spill returns Wikipedia, Huffington Post, NY Times, Yahoo news, etc. I don't actually see a BP site in there and no sponsored ads at all. Maybe we Slashdotted their ad budget. Hooray for our team if so.
I hoped they paid billions for the keyword 'cause typing that into google gives you the first page with no BP propaganda whatsoever, unless you include what is being said in newspaper articles and wikis. Ha!
I think therefore I can't be ~TTNH
Well, you might be affecting BP a little but you're having a much larger impact on the guy who owns that station. A huge impact if you're there all day appealing to people's empathy for the Gulf.
very true, but when do boycotts NOT hurt the middle man? It is kind of rare that you can directly target a company's bottom line without collateral damage. The real problem with boycotting local BP stations isn't that you might destroy a few local businesses, its that BP has a product that cannot be tracked. If BP cannot sell its product via retail, it can just sell it's product to other companies to resell, and you will never know.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
BP is now trying to fill the inter-tubes with junk in an effort to stop the uncontrolled flow of information...
A company does not plug a poorly managed leaking hole in the sea, the employees plug the hole. This would not change under receivership.
BP is only a corporate facade, the government used to have the power to remove this facade if it no longer has this power then American has become a Fascist nation where foreign corporations have more power that "we the people".
From what I'm hearing BP has avoided proper safety methods in favor of protecting shareholder value. This has caused the loss of 11 lives, people were killed on that platform! Remember back to the Exxonvaldez, Exxon repeatedly and continuously fought in court to reduce its responsibility and receivership would prevent BP from putting the interest of its management and shareholders ahead of the damage they caused like Exxon did.
What BP is still a company?????
First we need to fine the board of directors sooo much money that they'll have to go to China sell some kidneys on the black market to pay up.
Then we need to lock them up in jail in Yemen for criminal negligence. I mean we do have the memo proving it : http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2010/05/leaked_bp_memo.php
The big unreported tragedy here is how much effort BP is putting into capturing the oil, vs. stopping the flow. They are still, despite the historically unprecedented damage they are causing, more concerned with how to maximize their profit rather than minimize the damage.
Was drill baby drill,
But I think now it's
Spin Baby Spin!!!!!!!!!
locked out of this slashdot account for 10+ years... Im back
BP's PR campaign has been a bit late, but, at least for me halfway across the country from the first-person impact of the sludge, it's making fine use of available media and hitting the notes it needs to hit.
Of course, I'm tone-deaf and have sources of factual information available to me, so I'm all for boiling Tony Hayward in light sweet crude, but he's getting his money's worth from his image folks.
An electric car is still two tonnes of metal and plastic, with a high production cost and a detrimental effect on the environment, even if you buy only non-fossil-fuel electricity to run it.
It would be better to drive your existing car less, and walk, cycle or use public transport instead. If you don't already, why not walk all journeys of less than 1 mile, cycle anything less than 5-10 miles, and take a train for your next longer distance trip?
I still share responsibility (sort of) for the Gulf and Iraq, although according to this site, my carbon footprint is 53% of the British average:
* House 1.20 tonnes of CO2
* Flights 0.95 tonnes of CO2
* Car 0.00 tonnes of CO2
* Motorbike 0.00 tonnes of CO2
* Bus & Rail 0.18 tonnes of CO2
* Secondary 2.94 tonnes of CO2
(With very little estimation. I have the last 12 months of gas and electricity bills online, and also receipts from buying train tickets and flights online. The website for London's public transport records the last few months of bus/tube journeys using my card, so I've extrapolated that to the whole year.)
Yet *another* reason to install AdBlock... reduced propaganda!
How exactly does buying advertising space around search engine results "clog the flow of information"?
All it does is give them a hook to ensure their information/spin is included in the mix - for better or worse, it doesn't do anything except block out lower-paying advertisers on related search results...
Ken
A 13 mpg sports car baby!
Fuck your hippy ass!
So, by clicking on the sponsored links we can cause BP to pay money to Google? (Presuming that AdSense charges for click-throughs as well as page-impressions.) Okay, I'm there.
Pretend I said something meaningful or insightful here.
while opening themselves to click fraud.
Actually these are from the ROVs and not from the camera at the well head. You can pick from the different ROVs which is kinda cool. Even if it is government mandated it is cools to pick from the ROVs.
Dude I didn't call it a kindness so stop being universally mad at everything BP does.
This is at worst a so what they are trying to put the best spin on this they can. Which is totally to be expected. You can be mad all you like at them not following safety regulations, using the BOP that had a known hydraulic leak, and even keeping the press at a distance.
But getting mad over this is like getting pissed that they are spending money on toilet paper in their offices and not using the money for the cleanup.
Good grief folks as I said this is such a none story and the venom that is being shown dilutes the justifiable dislike of the real issues BP has caused.
In other words people need to not be mindless flaming hate machines. Instead say this is what they did wrong and this is what they need to do.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
that isn't what I hear from relatives on the gulf.
incidentally, do you have any really good plans for million-volt stun guns that are about two feet long and under a couple pounds? promised I'd look around.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Yes, they are.
Free Martian Whores!
whoops, "their", posting from a mobile is bleh
Rope, stalk, hunt, torture, hang, midnight, home addresses, BP, get, kill, destroy
BP, we want to share some things with you.
Anyone who honestly thinks BP isn't doing E V E R Y T H I N G in its power to stem the flow is a fool.
I believe that BP has every incentive to stop the leak.
I also believe BP has every incentive to do so as cheaply as possible. For instance, they originally wanted to only drill one relief well until Congress insisted they start on another one. Why? Well because a relief well is not a guaranteed fixe. Sometimes the first one you drill doesn't do much, assuming you even succeed in hitting the foot-wide hole with the other foot-wide hole you're drilling at an angle through miles of rock.
I am not about to second-guess the engineers who are busting their ass working on fixes. I fully realize that what they are trying to do is exceedingly difficult -- I mean, that's part of why it's such a big problem. However that also applies to the relief wells. With the problems that keep coming up in all the other attempted solutions, just assuming that a single relief well will work on the first try seems ludicrous. Could the extra cost possibly outweigh the impact if the relief well fails and oil spews until they can go through the whole process of drilling another? Could you, as an engineer, justify that lack of redundancy when solving a problem of this magnitude?
But those decisions aren't made by engineers. Engineers quantify the risks as best they can, and executives make the decision off the summary middle management hands them. For them, maybe the cost vs risk works out? Maybe a mentality that you cut corners and do the minimum (or less) and just hope things work out is so entrenched that they would still try it even after things had already failed to work out?
And not that I don't think their Top Kill attempt was anything but sincere, but that's exactly why it strikes me as odd that you'd mention that $700000/day figure for siphoning oil as some kind of incentive for plugging the well. When they really fix the well it won't be usable anymore. So no more oil. Which gives them the opposite incentive. Again, this is just the thought train your observation led me down.
The enemies of Democracy are
Joe Wilson buys "You Lie!"
Bill Clinton buys "I did not have sexual relations with that woman"
Palin buys "Drill, baby, drill"
Blagojevich buys "pay to play"
Larry Craig buys "wide stance"
Best regards.
You could just register like the rest of us, you know?
Hi all,
So, if you don't like BP, don't sit here griping at a screen. Vote with your dollar. It seems to have more effect than our political votes.
Look up BP on wikipedia and don't shop at their subsidiaries.
BP seems to own Arco, AmPm, and Castrol. Looks like Conoco and Amoco too. I suggest that the next time you pull in to get gas, or get an oil change, you take a look at who you're buying from. :D
-Tony
That's why we need corporate death penalties, combined with making their existing stock worthless. Yes, worthless, from something to zero market cap in one second.
And I'll tell you why, and I have read it numerous times here right on this forum from "investors". Too many times have we read the mindset of stock holders, that the corporations only interest is and should be "making money". Nonsense, they should also be of the public interest and benefit, making money is not necessarily always in the public interest, as this latest massive ongoing oil spill proves. There's no amount of money in the world that can clean an ocean, it doesn't exist. Shortcuts taken, questionable practices, all in the name of "making money" in the fastest way possible. We the public who live in the environment are MORE interested in tactics that would make corporations "not do that" before they screw up, not really offer them some fine to pay for that which can't even be fixed. No, you can't "fix" an environmental screwup this big, not even your "100 billion" can fix it.
The stockholders are supposed to be closely supervising their employees so stuff like this doesn't happen in the first place, and time and again, it is proven they are not, in fact I think it is safe to say that corporations and their practices are the *last* thing most stockholders are concerned with, as long as that monthly statement comes in and they see "positive results". This is what is wrong and broken and needs to change. Most stockholders spend more time watching TV or other pursuits than they do watching their corporate employees. And they won't until such a time as they all realize that THEY are responsible and can't just pass it off saying "well, we hire the board to do this for us". Nope, stockholders need to monitor their boards closer, and they haven't been, and neither have the government "regulators" who are just in and out again corporate shills.
The only way to get stock holders attention in the market, and get real effective market and investment reforms and practices as a whole is for a few million of them to wake up one morning and find out they "invested" in short sighted greedy incompetent jerks, and that that was a bad idea. The corporate death penalty would do this. If they can use "three strikes" to throw an individual in jail for life, they can use "three strikes" against corporations, no matter how big they get. Three screwups, that's it, dissolved instantly, and at the first inkling of the third screwup, the stock is frozen, no more trading, and if they are found guilty of negligence or other crime, tough noogies, instant dissolution and the stock declared worthless.
This will make stockholders pay closer attention, like maybe that "big game" or "american idol" or the "trip to the bar" might be postponed as they study the books closer if they want to "make money". And this would also make lower ranking employees more amenable to saying NO, I AM NOT GOING TO DO THAT to stupid orders from their "superiors" in the organization, like if they are ordered to "cut corners" or anything like that.
just like one of the most famous phrases ever created (you may not be familiar with) Fuck You G.I. it now should be Fuck You BP
How about they invest in others like "Lying arseholes" and "Cover up's".
.
Voting up, Voting down - If I really gave a fuck about your approval or not, I'd come and ask you.
Do the search, click on the link. Make BP pay for the ads.
BP buying Google ads shows that giants such as BP are beginning to understand how powerful the Internet has become for brand building.
I feel that BP could be much more effective, though. If you search “oil spill” on Google you will see that BP gets only one ad spot on top of that page. They would be paying about £2.74 million per month if everybody looking for that search term would click on their ad.
Google surely will donate the money made from the BP ad to help clean up the gulf region, won’t they ;-) and use it as a publicity stunt?
BP could get better results at less cost by occupying more natural search listings for the term ‘oil spill’ and many related terms, quickly establishing themselves as an authority in the field. Over 80% of all information seekers don’t click on ads, they click on ‘natural | organic’ listings. Natural listings are ‘free’, if you don’t count your time AND preserve your brand value at the same time.
There are several ways for BP to search engine optimise for the term ‘oil spill’ and related ones, namely article marketing and online press releases. The most obvious one is video marketing: Video marketing can gain top search engine rankings fast. Just see the two videos on Google’s ‘oil spill’ search results page.
Video can also work very well for brand building and reaches an immense audience. After all YouTube has already become the 2nd largest search engine.
Plus video allows you to market to the two second largest search engines at the same time!
This at a fraction of a fraction of what BT is spending now since BP has most of the ‘marketing’ material anyway, whereas a Google ‘oil spill’ ad, they need to continue to buy to make an impact.
Additionally social media would allow them to participate in ‘oil spill’ discussions in real time, thus reaching a much more targeted audience and being able to interact right then and there when opinions are formed – free.
BP facing even more financial and brand damage won’t help anyone, so besides cleaning up the gulf region I hope they will use the Internet even more to rebuild. I guess the better position BP is in, the more it can and will do.
kind regards,
Karl zu Ortenburg
http://internet-experts-live.co.uk/