Unfortunately we’ve all been seeing the catastrophe that is going on down in the Gulf region with the oil leak that is nearing a month of continuous devastation. Today begins the ‘Top Kill’  method where BP will in essence clog the leak – I don’t want to get into the scientific process of this – I’ll leave that up to the experts to expand upon.

What I wanted to do is give BP a ‘grade’ in terms of how they’ve managed this crisis from a communications standpoint. IMHO – they haven’t done so bad with this. First off their CEO, Tony Hayward and COO, Doug Suttles have been out in front of every camera and reporter in the Gulf region and doing their best to keep everyone updated on the progress, situation and plan to stop this leak. We’ve also seen BP on the ground surveying the situation and reviewing ideas on what can be done to stop this now. Credit to the team at BP for not running and hiding behind closed doors during this disaster – they were out in front of this from day one. What could help them now is to introduce more of the engineering team that can discuss the depths BP is going to in order to shut this leak – also if BP were to introduce some of their enviornmental scientists to discuss the impact on the immedate coastline and what needs to be done to limit anymore damage and what needs to be done to fix what damage has been done to date.

Now to all the good things you can do, there is always some bad. 1. Be humble and keep your ego in check. BP’s Chairman recently told the Financial Times that BP is “big and important” to the US.  Really? Stay quiet and talk about what you’re doing as a big and important company to fix this big and important problem. Your reputation and brand has been hit and hit hard – it’s going to take a lot of work to repair it. 2. Mr. Hayward suppossedly kicking a camera crew off a local beach where oil has been washing up. You can’t hide this spill.

Now keep in mind – the most savvy of communications executives can’t fix the engineering side of their house – but they can advise on what should be addressed and what should be focused on by their spokespeople. They’ve done a good job of making their people available, addressing the tough questions and showing that BP understands the local fisherman in Louisiana are in dire need of their paychecks and have offered them work (if only temporary) – but what stands in front of BP is what will they do 6, 12 and 24 months down the road to make sure that this is not a lasting situation in the Gulf region. This issue is going to be around and part of the Gulf residents lives for the foreseeable future and BP needs to show what they are going to do long-term for the area – here is where the BP team needs to be thinking about ways to alleviate this problem in the future, continuous focus on clean-up and what they can give the community hope that their lives and businesses will return to normal very, very soon.

From a pure communications and public relations grade on the clean-up and issue at hand - they’ve done a decent job. B-minus in my opinion. What are your thoughts? What would you do differently or what have you done in the past when a crisis hits?