Rebrand BP or Human Progress - Which Will It Be?

The satiric, anonymous "BP-Pr" twitter man, whom we mentioned a few days ago, has come half way out of the closet, you might say. Now, we can call him Leroy Stick.

Leroy has just published one of the sanest, most rational Public Relations plans we've ever read for a corporation that's just done a Very Bad Thing. You can read the whole thing right here.

Here's a taste:

Do you want to know what BP should do about me? Do you want to know what their PR strategy should be? They should fire everyone in their joke of a PR department, starting with all-star Anne Womack-Kolto and focus on actually fixing the problems at hand. Honestly, Cheney’s publicist? That’s too easy.

You know the best way to get the public to respect your brand? Have a respectable brand. Offer a great, innovative product and make responsible, ethical business decisions. Lead the pack! Evolve!

Don’t send hundreds of temp workers to the Gulf to put on a show for the President. Hire those workers to actually work! Don’t dump toxic dispersant into the ocean just so the surface looks better. Collect the oil and get it out of the water! Don’t tell your employees that they can’t wear respirators while they work because it makes for a bad picture. Take a picture of those employees working safely to fix the problem.

Lastly, don’t keep the press and the people trying to help you away from the disaster, open it up so people can see it and help fix it. This isn’t just your disaster, this is a human tragedy. Allow us to mourn so that we can stop being angry.

Then he ends with this:

Right now, PR is all about brand protection. All I’m suggesting is that we use that energy to work on human progression. Until then, I guess we’ve still got jokes.

Please read the whole thing. It's worth it.

Enjoy the jokes, too. Like this classic from "Leroy Stick" from yesterday, doubtless inspired by Eric Holder's announcement ["U.S. Attorney General Opens Criminal Probe of Gulf Oil Spill"]:

BP Spokeswoman Chucked Out of Pensacola Council Room

UPDATE BELOW

Rick's Blog reports that BP's Civic Affairs Director, Liz Castro, was more or less thrown out of the Pensacola city council room today "after the community liaison failed to answer a simple question about the boom decontamination operation BP wants to establish at Pensacola Shipyards on Bayou Chico." Rick says she was only "three pages into her PowerPoint presentation."

Once upon a time, there was a hilarious web site on the Internet called "Power Point Makes You Stupid." It was, wouldn't you know, in the form of a Power Point presentation.

Last we looked, that particular parody had disappeared. But there are a number of follow-ups verifying the eternal truth. Here's one: "Why I Still Use an Overhead Projector: " And here's another: Power Point Makes You Stupid." Not as funny, but still worth reading if you're a BP spokeswoman.

Dept. of Amplification
5-25 am

Rick Outzen has in hand a copy of BP's Power Point presentation. Take a look:

Staging operations
Booming strategies

It almost looks as hilariously stupid as the original, long-lost "Power Point Makes You Stupid" parody. From the looks of BP's picture-book presentation, Liz Castro may well have planned to conclude by saying, "Do you get it now, children? Okay, take out your pencils for the pop quiz."