Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Shell's handle on blame

Last week I describe what experts say is the best method on handling a crisis. This week I came across an article about Shell, one of the major gas companies, and how they went about handling a crisis. It was the 15th anniversary of the execution of Nigerian activist Ken Saro-Wiwa. "Mr Saro Wiwa, who was the leader of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People at the time, was arrested on May 22, 1995 on charges of inciting Ogoni youths to kill four prominent Ogoni figures during a rally on May 21, 1995 (background information)" According to the article Shell was under scrutiny for not standing up for Ken Saro-Wiwa, being in cahoots with the military and government, as well as gas spills and oil fires. 


Since it has been 15 years and Shell gas is still running, the question behind it all was how did they do it? It was because of the PR team. The first thing that they did was stick to a message (like one of the steps I wrote about last week). They also realized who were their allies and who were their enemies of the press. They locked out their enemies and gave their friends the leads. Something that was out of the ordinary that i consider extremely interesting was that they organized a workshop. Technically it was more of a focus group. They gathered people from Amnesty International, church groups, people from the academic world etc. to figure out the boundaries of the corporate world and what is acceptable or were the boundaries are. I thought this was interesting resorting to the consumer for guidelines. It's actually quite brilliant because you're giving the people a chance to take out your anger on you while at the same time helping you out. They feel like they've made a difference - the company walks away knowing how to get their customers back on their good side.

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