You know the best way to get the public to respect your brand?  Have a respectable brand.  Offer a great, innovative product and make responsible, ethical business decisions.  Lead the pack!  Evolve!  Don’t send hundreds of temp workers to the gulf to put on a show for the President.  Hire those workers to actually work!  Don’t dump toxic dispersant into the ocean just so the surface looks better.  Collect the oil and get it out of the water!  Don’t tell your employees that they can’t wear respirators while they work because it makes for a bad picture.  Take a picture of those employees working safely to fix the problem.  Lastly, don’t keep the press and the people trying to help you away from the disaster, open it up so people can see it and help fix it.  This isn’t just your disaster, this is a human tragedy.  Allow us to mourn so that we can stop being angry.

(Leroy Stick, The Man Behind @BPGlobalPR)

A justifiably angry article explaining why it’s okay to hit BP with the big Twitter stick. Makes me wish I had fought with Twitter to keep my @virginmedia account. They weren’t destroying the planet or anything, but they did (and do) have terrible customer service.

[Edited post to switch link from Gizmodo to the actual source. Screw Gizmodo, I thought it was their scoop.]