Thursday, Dec. 09, 2010
@BPGlobalPR: Oil-Spill Satire
When your company is responsible for one of the largest man-made disasters in history, you wouldn't expect a publicist to tweet, "Look, cut us some slack. We've kinda just been winging this whole 'deepwater drilling' thing." And that's because the person behind the account @BPGlobalPR certainly wasn't a BP representative. Instead, it was comedian Josh Simpson who skewered the company's response to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The satire proved to be too biting; both BP and Twitter requested that the account be accompanied by a caveat that it was highly unofficial. But that didn't stop @BPGlobalPR from entertaining more than 180,000 followers — and raising relief money through T-shirt sales.