BP Buys Key Oil Search Terms - Costs could be as high as $10,000 a day, according to web insiders

[highplainsdem]

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Issues/The-Economy/2010/06/02/BP-Admits-To-Buying-Oil-Spill-Search-Terms.aspx

BP Buys Key Oil Search Terms
Costs could be as high as ten thousand dollars a day, according to web insiders
June 02, 2010
By JACQUELINE LEO, The Fiscal Times


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Even more important, BP is using paid search to influence public opinion as people look for information about the oil spill and its consequences. Just Google any of the common search terms related to the disaster, and what pops up first? BP. Since this catastrophe is one of the hot search topics of the year, you can imagine what BP is paying for the privilege of elbowing out other news and opinion sites that would normally buy at least one of these terms. But money talks — and oil money, as slippery as it may be, talks louder than most.

According to Scott Slatin, who runs a New York-based search marketing company, “While we have seen corporations use search engine marketing to sway opinions, most recently in the health care debate, it is always under the cover of a nonprofit or lobbying organization. This is the first time I have seen a company use this tactic on such a wide scale. And it is very effective, because BP gets its message, ‘Learn more about how BP is helping,’ atop almost every Google search permutation related to the spill, and effectively blocks nonprofits (with much smaller pockets) from getting their message across.”

The strategy appears to be working, as BP's ads show up on neutral searches like "spill,” "gulf oil," "offshore oil," "oil spill," "Louisiana coast spill" and "oil cleanup," but not "oil disaster." And the cost? Slatin says, “I’d estimate that BP is spending at least $7,500 a day to own the top position on searches related to the oil spill on Google, and another $3,000 a day to cover both Yahoo and MSN’s Bing". In April, says Slatin, the number of searches on Google for “oil spill” was 2,240,000, versus a 12-month average of 301,000.

In a phone interview with The Fiscal Times on Wednesday afternoon, a company spokesperson acknowledged purchasing the search terms but declined to discuss costs. “Yes, you’re right, we have been buying up search terms,” said BP spokesman Robert Wine. “We’ve tried to pick terms which will help the people who are most directly affected in the Gulf coast states with information about how to get in touch with us and make claims for loss of earnings.” When pressed for examples of the terms they’ve bought, Wine said, “Some examples would be ‘oil spill’ and ‘claims.’ The main aim is a marketing tool, to help the people who are most directly affected — fishermen, local businesses, volunteers in the cleanup. We want people to be able to find us, so we can work out how to minimize the impact on their lives and businesses.”

Wine said it is the BP web teams in Houston and London, together with the company’s marketing executives, who are engaged in buying search terms.

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[conscious evolution]

1. Perception management

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perception_management

the purpose is to get the other side to believe what one wishes it to believe, whatever the truth may be."<2>


Cognition
The objective of this seedling project is to investigate the feasibility of enhancing the quality of human decision-making in complex and uncertain situations and under time pressure. The specific focus is to characterize the principles underlying the augmented cognition systems and to develop techniques that alleviate natural human attentional limitations in the management of uncertainty using dynamic visualization techniques.<28>

See also
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media
Spin (public relations)
Public diplomacy
Alhurra Satellite TV channel sponsored by the U.S. government.
Brand management
Emotional intelligence
Customer Relationship Management
PSYOPS Psychological Operations, techniques used to influence belief systems and behavior.
Propaganda
Opposition research


Someday,hopefully,some bright young kid will write their Phd thesis on BPs actions

[Vinnie From Indy]

2. BP's efforts here might be less than successful

For the million sof people that will see the oil with their own eyes or smell the oil, BP's buying search terms will hardly matter.