Brent Spar again

When we want to analyze a relationship between two crisis communication theories. The Brent Spar is a great example. As a reminder: 

In 1995 Greenpace started a Seabattle, tiny boats against a 14.500 tons massive oil tank. It was a crisis that was weeks in the media. Until today the „Brent Spar“ is the object lesson for the badest crisis communication. Shell planned to sink the Brent Spar in the pacific. 100 tons of Oil and Saltcrust would go down with the Brent Spar. 

In this blog I will analyze the last steps of the crisis management from Shell. Shell started a vast campaign after the horrible fights on sea and in the media. This campaign was Shells trying to do image repair and what is better than a huge campaign for repairing an image. Shell tried with that to save their stakeholders. Until today they never really recover from that incident. Shell has a file with 135 sites of the incident, published on their website because they had to save the trust of their stakeholder. They had to make an excuse. They analyzed on themselves what went wrong in this timelapse. That is one amazing form of Corporate Apologia. In my opinion, I never saw a statement like that with 135 sites until the analysis of Brent Spar. 

But to concentrate more on the campaign: With the words “Wir haben Verstanden.“ Shell definitely used Corporate Apologia and admitted their guilt. They tried to convince the public and their stakeholder, that an incident like this will never happen again. So we have here a relationship between Corporate Apologia and Image Repair Theory.