BP Uses Google AdWords for Damage Control

Lost in last week’s excitement over Google Instant was an interesting Ad Age article on BP’s Google AdWords spend. The statistics raised a few eyebrows:

In two months, BP went from spending very little on search advertising — about $57,000 a month — to becoming one of Google’s top advertisers, dropping nearly $3.6 million in the month of June alone…

BP targeted broad search terms related to the Gulf oil spill. They then launched paid text ads (one reads “BP Response: Learn About BP’s Response On The Gulf Of Mexico Response Effort”) leading to the company’s dedicated Gulf of Mexico response page.

Spin Doctoring or Regulatory Mandate?

This is an old-school damage control campaign using new-school methods. In an era where bad press can quickly spiral out of control, the use of AdWords becomes a powerful tool for corralling interested spectators and pointing them to positive information.

While the cynical among us might cite this as simple spin doctoring, BP’s AdWords campaign has a more practical purpose: It efficiently gets those affected by the oil spill to a platform for getting information and filing a claim.

Is the US government mandating BP use Google AdWords to reach out to those affected? Probably not. But it’s sure helpful.

Close to Home for Healthcare

Over the years, the healthcare industry has had its share of press scrutiny. Pharma and medical device manufacturers sometimes make headlines for mandatory FDA recalls, and the resulting recall awareness campaigns often involve their ad agencies and interactive partners.

In most of these instances, the FDA mandates steps that must be taken to raise awareness and actually carry out the recalls. While a Google AdWord campaign has yet to make the official FDA guidelines (to our knowledge), we at HC&B would recommend a similar keyword campaign to target affected users.

Given the specificity of the terms involved in healthcare, an AdWords spend would be much more efficient than that reported for BP: While there are many daily searches for “oil spill”, there are probably relatively few for Vioxx, for example.