Imperial Sugar

Imperial Sugar, a United States based sugar producer and marketer, faced a very hard year in 2008.  First, on February 7, 2008 there was a plant explosion at Imperial Sugar’s Port Wentworth Refinery, killing 14 employees, injuring several others and almost costing John Sheptor, President and CEO of Imperial Sugar, his life. 

Soon after the explosion at the Port Wentworth Refinery, the company faced more trouble when the Louisiana Sugar Cooperative decided to cut ties with Imperial Sugar to back a new refinery.

The trouble for Imperial Sugar did not end there, in September 2008, Lehman Brothers, a global financial services firm, failed.  With the failure over three million shares, or 28 percent of the company’s stock were at rick, these were eventually bought by Barclays, a United Kingdom based financial services firm.

In March 2009, Imperial Sugar once again faced trouble when Barclays sold 3.1 million shares five minutes before the market closed, within one minute the shares were sold again, however this cost Imperial Sugar three million dollars in market capitalization.

At this time any internet search that was done on Imperial Sugar pulled up  stories about the company in crisis.  The articles all talked about the explosion and monetary and raw sugar supply troubles.

Finally, in May 2009, Sheptor called on The News Group Net to develop an online newsroom that would address the troubles with the online news stories and connect with Imperial’s audiences.

Sheptor required that the newsroom provide an online alternative for media to access credible information about Imperial Sugar.  Sheptor saw the newsroom as a way to position the company as the leader in sugar-refinery safety, create brand awareness to acquire new customers and grow business, restore company integrity, and establish Imperial Sugar as a worthwhile choice for investors and customers.

Imperial Sugar’s online newsroom featured an appealing style, unbiased, accurate stories with photos, an online library of photos and videos, an RSS feed featuring the latest sugar news, and media inquiries were answered within minutes.

The online newsroom also led Imperial Sugar to develop accounts on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Flickr.

Imperial Sugars online newsroom, seen here, was a huge success from the very beginning.  Stories came into the newsroom about the company rebuilding, how the community was responding from the crisis, and how Imperial Sugar was building “the safest and most modern sugar production plants in the world”.

In less than two months Imperial Sugar’s online newsroom became the most popular online sugar site in the global industry.

From my point of view, Imperial Sugar did everything right except from a public relations stand point they responded far too late.  It took them thirteen months to take steps to repair the damage that was done beginning in February 2008.  Though the online newsroom worked gloriously for Imperial Sugar, this is not usually the case after waiting so long to respond to a situation.

BP's online response to the oil spill

On April 20, 2010 the Deepwater Horizon exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, spewing millions of gallons of oil into the gulf.  BP the owners of the rig responded over the course of the following weeks on the internet.  They used mediums such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, the company website, blogs, and Live Stream as a tactic in their response to the spill and to help communicate with those affected.  It took the company a week to respond online.

The first online response to the oil spill was on April 27, via a post on Twitter stating, “BP pledges full support for Deepwater Horizon probes.”  Since this first Tweet, BP has been using Twitter almost daily to update those affected on anything that is happening because of or as a result of the spill.

The next online response to the oil spill was on May 2, via an update on Facebook.  The company updated their contact, news, and notes tabs on their Facebook page.  BP is again updating this medium almost daily.  The Facebook page overtime has given updates on how much oil has been collected in the Gulf of Mexico as well as any other information about the oil spill.

Other ways that BP has responded online to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico include the use of their own channel on YouTube, on which they have videos related to response and cleanup efforts, claims, health and safety, and restoration of the environment and wildlife.  BP has also used Flickr to post images of what is happening in the Gulf of Mexico.  Other mediums that have been used by BP include setting up a section on their webpage for information on the oil spill, establishing bloggers to report of the spill is affecting the various areas, and running a live stream of the millions of gallons of crude oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico.

On paper, overall this looks like a winner, BP utilized any mediums possible to communicate with those affected by the spill and tried to establish ways of hearing what the public was saying.  Unfortunately, for all that was done, it may have not been enough.  Because BP waited a week before actually trying to communicate to those who were affected by the oil spill, many people were developing their strong feelings on the situation.  If BP had acted in a timelier manner, then they may have had a chance at being more influential, but in a crisis one week can seem like a decade.  This was BP’s major mess up when it came to their online response.

BP could have done a couple things differently for their online campaign and made it work better for them.  First, if BP had responded online sooner this would have helped the mass of people that went online to find out more information develop a more positive response to the company.  Second, because of the lapse in time between the oil spill and the online response, many fake BP accounts were being set up on Twitter and Facebook.  Had they monitored the internet better, they could have had these fake accounts taken down within minutes of going up, instead they let these stand, and as a result had their image tarnished even more in the minds of those that were searching for information online about the spill.