On the negative side effects of BPs advertising on customers, is how the company showed absence of empathetic with how technology has taken a vast on consumer lives.
Reason why I state this is because customer had forwarded all over their social media on prohibiting BP gas stations for causing the oil spills. Although public relations tried to spread announcement on newspapers and television, going against the social media that has previously taken over millions of posts already added on user pages with the BP logo crossed out and encouraging Greenpeace over the logo instead. Worst of all because these ads from social media are not paid, it made the negative posts continue without any resolution. This condition fell under an interpersonal communication in which a post would be past to one contact to another on social media. This interpersonal communication passed all over social media quickly like a virus.
Unfortunately, BP had to spend over millions of dollars on advertising to change their reputation (BP Spent $93M on Advertising after Gulf Spill, 2010). BP had to stop these adverse social media communications by sending a mass communication in which they try to direct an optimistic message to a large audience, by commercial ads, social media and news. The positive effect of BPs advertisement was to impact customer to show the genuineness of their accountability to this oil spill and show a sincere apology on commercial ads would have possibly win over the negative statements. But all this BP marketable convincing is beyond the consumer decision to want to trust this gas company again. I would describe BPs campaign as institutional advertising, as the company was trying to sway consumer otherwise. The BPs corporation basically just wanted customer to consider them in a promising way.
BP wanted to change the consumer attitude in trusting their gas service again, their outcome came across as advocacy advertising as BP was trying to get rid of the negative thoughts from the consumers (Lamb, 2019). For BP to restore both institutional advertising and product advertising is by changing the mind of the consumers who doubted the gas company in still providing good service for product advertising. The company still must use product advertising to entice their consumer in letting go of the negative comments that social media had develop among the company. No matter what BP would continue putting effort on convincing their customers that they provide great gas and its durable for all types of cars. The company even tried to lower their gas rate to attract more customer in adding gas from their stations. In this type of event I remember adding gas by BP station because it was cheaper than the other gas station. One of the smart ways that BP should use differently to continue to reform its image is by changing the company name and logo completely.
That would be one way to lose BP’s bad image, it would keep consumer distracted in forgetting the oil spill situation just by ridding the BP logo. In my opinion I am sure that the BP logo automatically gives customer a bad image reminding them of the oil spill event. Another way is by having another gas company buy out BP gas stations without using the BP name but rather using the original gas company name and logo that’s buying it instead.
