Introduction

If the management of the Tylenol crisis is presented in the strategic communication textbooks as an example of good and effective crisis communication, the reactions of the Exxon Corporation to the environmental disaster caused by the oil spill of the tanker Exxon Valdez appears always as a paradigm of everything that is wrong in matters of communication. Again, it would be difficult to find a crisis management textbook that does not deal with the Exxon Valdez case. Some scholarly articles have been written in which Exxon’s communication steps are systematically presented as a negative picture of crisis management, i.e. what an organization should never do in the time of a crisis (Delaney, 1991). In spite of the abundant literature, the analysis of Exxon’s strategy is in most cases naïve, and sometimes slanted too. The Exxon Valdez case is therefore a necessary reference – and the perfect colophon – for this journey through the field of crisis communication.

One of the constants in this course is the subordination of communciation goals and strategies to the fluctuating state of public opinion. This element is, as stated by Noelle-Neumann (2001), fluid. It is constantly changing, developing new appearances and reinventing its idols. The tragic factor in the Exxon Valdez episode was the fact that the corporation offended one of those idols of public opinion, the environment. We have to remember here that the limits of public opinion, as Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann (2001) suggests, are time and space. This idol, the environment, had no power 100 years ago, and now has no power in other parts of the globe either. But in most of the Western countries, environment has taken on a moral autonomy and value in itself – even if nobody could exactly define what the word exactly meant.

Nowadays, the environment attracts the most aggressive activists. They have elevated this new idol to a high altar. It belongs to the small group of holy causes which everybody would agree are worth being defended. Of course, the mass media and politicians have, as always happens, adopted the idol of the environment and used it to sell newspapers or to gain votes.

One of the worst fates that can befall an organization is to appear in the public mind as an offender of the idols of its time – and this is exactly what happened to the Exxon Corporation. The media has always covered all kinds of negative news with a special fervor. They dedicate so much attention to negative events, such as catastrophes, tragedies, or scandals, because of the unusual interest that they arouse in the public.

Thus, the Exxon Valdez’s environmental disaster had all the ingredients for the most explosive communication cocktail.

The Facts

Some crises strike without any of what Fink (1986) calls prodromes. Prodromes, as I already explained in the learning module on crisis communication, are warning signals that allow the communication professionals to anticipate a crisis. Nobody could expect or anticipate the accident of the Exxon Valdez tanker. However, the reaction of the media and public opinion followed a predictable pattern.

On March 24, 1989, the tanker Exxon Valdez hit the Bligh Reef in Alaska’s environmental paradise the Prince William Sound at a speed of 12 knots. The reef was submerged, although well documented in the maritime cartography, and well known to the crew of the ship. More than 258,000 barrels of crude oil, around 11 million gallons, were spilled into the water (Katz, 1993).

The numbers concerning the actual dimensions of the environmental disaster vary depending on the source. A year after the tragedy, biologists working for the Federal Government stated that 36,000 birds, around 100 eagles among them, had died as a direct consequence of having had contact with the oil. Activists from independent environmental organizations estimate that those official ciphers represent merely 15% of the actual damage. Exxon rejects the independent reports (Small, 1991). In most academic articles and books dealing with the tragedy, the accident is presented as the largest oil spill in U.S. history. This is not necessarily true, because during World War II, some tankers were torpedoed on the East Coast causing a spill 10 times the dimensions of the Exxon Valdez tragedy. This spill does not seem to have left any lasting damage in the area (Small, 1991).

Media Reactions

The press immediately realized the informative value of the story and generously gave it time and space. Spectacular headlines, such as “The worst Oil Spill in U.S. History”, “Alaska Tanker Piloted by Unqualified Officer” (Los Angeles Times), or “Unprecedented Ecological Disaster” (Time Magazine), monopolized the front pages of the most relevant national and international media. Newsweek did not hesitate to state that the Exxon case of man-made destruction “probably has not been equaled since Hiroshima” (Small, 1991, p.17). An environmental organization compared the Exxon Valdez accident with infamous industrial calamities, such as the cases of Chernobyl and Bhopal. Still, it has to be mentioned here that the oil spill in the Prince William Sound did not take any human live. In 1982, in the Indian town of Bhopal more than 3,800 people died and 200,000 more suffered serious injuries as a direct consequence of the leak of methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas in one of the factories owned by the Union Carbide Corporation in India (Bhopal Information Center). The accident at the nuclear power plant in Chernobyl claimed the lives of 56 people. Still, the effects of radioactivity on the people living in that area may end up causing over 2,000 deaths due to cancers related to radiation (Nuclear Issues Briefing).

Dramatic photos and movies of birds dying in a swamp of oil appeared in practically every media. And those emotionally loaded images were used by environmental activist to back their cause. Many of the traditional enemies of the corporate world, capitalism, globalization or simply the large industries saw the accident as an opportunity to intensify their attacks, as well as a concrete entity to focus their abstract hatred on. At the annual shareholders meeting, which, unfortunately for Exxon, took place a couple of weeks after the shipwreck, some of those groups staged demonstrations in front of the building where the event was being held. The demonstrations were very successful in attracting the attention of the press. The 200 journalists covering the event were more than happy to report the juicy slogans of the protesters: “Oink, oink oink, Exxon” or “What do you do with a drunken sailor? / Make him skipper of an Exxon tanker” (Yagoda, 1990).

Public Opinion’s Wrath

The American public opinion reacted in a predictable way. We cannot expect a deep elaboration of ideas, nuances or ambiguities in the judgments of the public opinion. We have also mentioned Walter Lippmann in this regard, who repeatedly pointed at this natural tendency to simplify as the main characteristic of the social-psychological phenomenon. The Exxon scandal offered the public opinion a clear and unambiguous offender. All those dead birds were perceived as innocent victims of corporate greed. The old style of muckraking journalism was helping sell newspapers again, and Exxon, which is the corporate inheritor of the legendary Standard Oil of New Jersey, was again on the focal point of public wrath. The polls clearly showed the dynamics of the public opinion. In 1989, almost 60% of Americans thought oil spills were a serious problem (in 1982 the percentage was around 40%) (Snyder, 1990). Pools carried out by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal in 1990 confirmed that 77% of the American public thought that Exxon “could have done more” to reduce the environmental impact of the spill. The same polls also showed that over 40% would be willing to support a boycott against Exxon gas stations (Yagoda, 1990). The boycott ended up taking place. 40,000 Exxon Valdez credit card holders cut up their cards and sent them to the Exxon headquarters. Some of them did it in front of TV cameras. Many innocent people, as stated by Small (1991), paid the consequences of the boycott, because most of Exxon’s gas stations were – and still are – privately owned.

Political Implications

The politicians, of course, followed the public opinion agenda. The best example of this is the Alaskan government. One of their first initiatives after the catastrophe was to raise the taxes on oil from the North Slope fields (Harrison & Prugh, 1989). The Alaskan governor at the time, Steve Cowper, made it clear that the way to establish his credibility in the public opinion as a politician was to oppose the oil industry: “It became a matter of competing credibility: the credibility of the state versus the credibility of the industry” (Harrison & Prugh, 1989).

Financial Consequences

The accident and the scandal had serious financial consequences for the company. After some initial hesitation, which severely weakened Exxon’s position in the public mind, the company signed a $ 1 billion commitment to clean up the affected area and to financially compensate those inhabitants of the region who may have been affected by the environmental damage (Hedges, 1993). The amount of money spent by EXXON as a result of the oil spill is now well beyond this first contract. The company claimed to have paid over $2 billion since 1989. According to the company, over $300 million was paid to the fishermen of the region. The boycott against Exxon gas stations and the “Cut-Up Your Exxon Credit Card” action initiated a financial trend that had serious consequences for EXXON. The company sank from third place to fifth in the ranking of American companies. The lower position in the ranking reflected, according to Small (1991), the radical drop of 43% from its 1988 profits.

Apologia Strategies in Organizational Crises

The Greek word apologia originally designates one of the subcategories of Aristotle’s forensic oratory. The forensic oratory is the especial form of rhetorical discourse used in judicial settings. This especial form of persuasive communication has, according to Aristotle, two subcategories: the kategoria and the apologia. The kategoria correspond to the oratory used by the prosecution, while the Greek term apologia designates the discourse of the defense. This last term, apologia, has been gaining acceptance in contemporary public relations vocabulary. The semantic use of the term does not differ from the original meaning. It still designates the possible defense strategies of an organization to face a crisis.

The German research-tandem of Manfred Piwinger and Wolfgang Niehüser developed an especially interesting apologia model. They established the different stages of what could be called the apologia-pyramid on the basis of research outcomes in several disciplines: linguistics, semiotics, psychology and social-psychology (Piwinger, Niehüser, 23). The catalogued responses are effective in interpersonal communication, but they are also applicable to attacks that might destroy the face of individuals or institutions in public. The scheme has the structure of a pyramid because every stage represents added concessions for the defense. As Horst Avenarius, a German scholar who found interesting applications of Piwinger and Niehüser’s theoretical frame in strategic communication, remarks, it is not infrequent for the affected person or company to go through several – or even all – of the stages of the pyramid (Avenarius, 252f), which are:

Avoidance of any reaction

At the bottom of the pyramid, Piwinger and Niehüser place the avoidance of any reaction. This is a basic, almost instinctive form of self-defense. The accusation is ignored in the hope that it remains unnoticed by the media. In most of the Crisis management manuals, this is presented as the reaction to avoid. However, it is not infrequent that companies prefer to wait and observe the development and measure the intensity of the media coverage. For whatever does not appear in the media, as Walter Lippmann prophetically stated in 1922, will hardly ever penetrate into our consciousness (Lippmann, 360f).

To distract the attention

The second stage of the pyramid is the first of action. There are different ways to distract the attention, according to the authors. One can trivialize, minimize or make fun of the accusations, so that they are not taken seriously. Another form of distracting the attention is to counterattack, to accuse the accuser of the same or different deeds, or of pursuing a hidden agenda or having personal motives for the denunciation. One important part of Bill Clinton’s strategy when dealing with the Lewinski affair was to accuse the independent counsel Kenneth Star of organizing a “Witch Hunt” that cost the country more than $40 million with the only purpose of discrediting him (Wilcox, et al, 2003).

To defend their own innocence

Of course, the defense of their own innocence may rest on the denial of the facts. In the case that this is not possible, for instance where the facts are too obvious, a way to assert their own innocence may be to redefine or reinterpret the deeds. The scandal broke out when the public knew that the Chrysler Corporation had been disconnecting the odometers of thousands of cars and selling them as new. Confronted with the accusation of fraud, Chairman Lee Iacocca described the practice as an intensive “test program” after which they would be able to offer better and more reliable products to their clients. Of course, he also apologized for the minor mistake of not having sufficiently informed the public about the test programs (Hearit, 1994).

To shift responsibility

When facts cannot be denied, redefined or reinterpreted, it is common in corporate scandals to look for a scapegoat. Volvo, in the already mentioned scandal, blamed the advertising company Scali McCabe Sloves when they were charged with deceptive advertising in 1990. The subject of the scandal was a Volvo commercial in which cars of this brand resisted several “attacks” by a monster truck. Although the commercial was based on a real event in Vermont, the cars that appeared in it had been reinforced by the advertising agency without labeling it as dramatization (Hearit, 1994).

To justify the action

Once facts and responsibilities have been accepted, there is the possibility of justifying what happened. Excuses are offered on the basis of extenuating circumstances which can mitigate the responsibility or magnitude of the incident. For instance, intentionality can be denied, or ignorance of the possible consequences of the act or, in juridical disputes, unsoundness of the mind can be claimed. Sometimes the defense is based on social comparison processes, in which parallel cases or situations are brought to light. In the case of a transgression of written or unwritten laws, we can defend ourselves by calling the rule into question. A frequent form of self-justification is to appeal to higher values that might legitimize our actions. When weapons of mass destruction were not found in Iraq, President Bush insisted on the benefits of having freed the world of a dangerous tyrant.

To apologize

At the top of the pyramid, as the last chance to prevent the total loss of trust, Piwinger und Niehüser place the apology. They found empirical evidence that people show a predisposition to judge more benevolently and value higher those who apologize and are able to express their regret (Piwinger, Niehüser, 6). According to both authors, the apology is not just a manifestation of humility and humiliation when defeat is imminent. It can rather help the individual who issues the apology make his public position stronger (Piwinger, Niehüser, 26).

The effectiveness of apologies has been studied, above all, in legal settings. Fuchs-Burnett, for instance, differentiates six elements that can influence the effectiveness of the apology: appropriateness of the case for apology, timing of the apology, scope of the apology, method of the apology, nuance, and interpersonal variation (Fuchs-Burnett, 2002). The first factor, the nature of the case, seems to be especially relevant, for there may be different degrees in regards to the severity of the offense or transgression. The perceived gravity of the transgression will always have an influence on the magnanimity of the private or public judgment. If Monica Lewinski had been under age, the broadcast apology of President Clinton would obviously have had a much less significant impact.

The criteria established by Cohen can help us understand, or even predict the effectiveness of apologies, and to asses to what extent they can restore individual respect or public image. However, they cannot explain the “healing mystery of this sacred process” (Taft, 2000), how it is possible that the acknowledgment of an offense can contribute to save the reputation of the individual or the organization who committed it, instead of ruining it.

Exxon’s Apologia Strategies

I will use Piwinger’s and Neuhüser’s apologia pyramid to analyze Exxon’s rhetorical moves in order to save face during the hottest phase of the crisis.

The first criticism against the company is based on the alleged fact that they avoided any reaction, and thus, lost control of the flow of information. In fact, Exxon’s chairman and CEO (Chief Executive Officer) at the time Lawrence G. Rawl did not appear in the media until 6 days after the incident. Rawl is frequently blamed in professional forums because he did not immediately fly to the location of the disaster. He was, in the opinion of most experts, the person who would have given Exxon the necessary credibility in front of the public. According to Harrison and Prugh (1989), the more time passes between an incident and the public appearance of the CEO, the more difficult it will be for the company to control the flow of information. In this decision – and some others – it was easy to see that he was not a professional communicator. Rawl’s academic and professional background was engineering, and he was, according to Small (1991), strongly influenced by the traditional secrecy of this profession.

However, the accusation of having reacted too late is not completely fair. At 6:30 in the morning, on the same day the tragedy occurred, Exxon sent the first press release reporting the incident (Small, 1991). At that time, nobody was aware of, or could have imagined the dimensions of the tragedy. The first press release obviously underestimated the actual damage caused by the oil spill.

It is not true either, that Exxon’s management was not present at the hot spot. Frank Iarossi, president of the Exxon Shipping Company, immediately flew to the place of the tragedy from Houston. He started a series of press conferences to feed the press information – and this is exactly what any crisis communication handbook would have recommended. At the very beginning, as stated by Small (1991), even Alaskan citizens and environmentalists were allowed to attend the press conferences.

The next stage in the apologia pyramid is to attempt to distract the attention of the public and media. In the first moments of disinformation and media turbulence, some of the spokesmen for Exxon clearly tried to play down the dimensions of the catastrophe. Some of them were quoted at estimating the amount of oil spilled to be 5,000 gallons, when it actually turned out to be over 11,000,000 (Yagoda, 1990). When images of dead birds and other animals started to stir up strong emotions against the company, some of Exxon’s spokespeople still maintained that just 300 birds and 70 otters had been killed by the spill (Yagoda, 1990).

At the same time that they tried to play down the dimensions of the tragedy, Exxon’s communication staff was also blamed for trying to distract people’s attention by sharing the burden of mismanagement with the Coast Guard and the Alaskan Environmental officials. Frank Iarossi complained in several appearances in front of the press of having been hindered and delayed in their cleaning-up endeavors by the U.S. Coast Guard and Alaskan officials. Iarossi did not lie. His first move was to get a hold of practically the whole world’s supply of the chemical dispersant COREXIT 9527, and a C-130 to treat the polluted area. Small (1991) reports than Exxon was allowed to start the treatment two days after the spill, when strong winds had already spread the oil stain.

The constant references to the stormy weather as one of the causes of Exxon’s passivity also irritated the public, which saw them as excuses for the inaction of the company. Rawl even hinted in several public appearances that the outrageous amount of money spent on the task of cleaning would have a strong effect on the price of oil. All those defensive statements reinforced the image of guilt that the American public opinion had already placed on Exxon.

Once it was impossible to ignore the public uproar any longer, and there was no way to distract the public attention, Exxon tried to shift responsibilities. Ten hours after the incident, the captain of the Exxon Valdez tanker, Joseph Hazelwood, underwent a sobriety test, which turned out to be positive. The New York Times posted the incident on the front page with the laconic, but devastating headline: “Skipper was Drunk” (Small, 1991). Exxon fired Hazelwood immediately, without any further investigation. It was also widely reported that Hazelwood was not steering the ship at the moment of the collision with the reef. The captain had accurately instructed the third mate Gregory Cousin what to do, but in spite of the instructions, Cousin turned the ship a couple of minutes later than he had been told because he was searching for icebergs on the radar. This mistake triggered a wave of criticism. The media was suddenly discussing whether Cousin was qualified to carry out the maneuver or not. In fact, he was. The third mate had all the necessary qualifications to execute the instructions given to him by the captain (Small 1991).

Yet, Exxon saw in Hazelwood the perfect scapegoat, and used him to turn aside the public’s wrath (Williams & Olaniran, 1994). The press also disclosed that the captain of the Exxon Valdez had previously been convicted twice for driving under the influence of alcohol in the state of New York in 1984 and 1985 (Small, 1991). When Exxon decided to fire Hazelwood, they were obviously trying to separate, in the public mind, the name of the company from the ecological catastrophe. It did not work though, for the public perceived Exxon’s decision as a lack of loyalty to its own employees, and thus, a further manifestation of the heartlessness of the big oil industry. Besides, the answer of the media was to fire back at Exxon for having given responsibility of one of its ships to an individual with an alcoholic history.

In spite of the media outrage, there was no proof that the captain of the Exxon Valdez was drunk at the moment of the collision. In fact, he was later found innocent of this charge. Hazelwood had a heroic reputation in the company. In 1985, he had mastered the Exxon Chester, another one of the company’s tankers , while doing the route between New York and South Carolina when a “freak storm” hit the ship (Small, 1991). The Alaskan coast guards also praised the professional attitude and expertise of the captain in dealing with the wreckage of the ship. In Spite of the huge quantity of oil spilled into the sound, Hazelwood was able to save two thirds of the oil cargo.

Exxon obviously acted too rashly in firing captain Joseph Hazelwood. Still, this was not the only rash decision of the company. In fact, almost every decision made by the management was an impulsive reaction to the headlines that were tarnishing the name of the company, or the consequent response of the public. Williams and Olaniran (1994) defined this form of coping with crisis situations as hypervigilance. This organizational response is the consequence of the rapid succession of events in the time of a crisis. The fierce media scrutiny causes an avalanche of critiques that normally generate further negative information about the company. This is the reason why, according to Fink (1986), any crisis is a prodrome for the next one. “Hypervigilance”, as defined by Williams and Olaniran, “involves an overreaction to the crisis in which the decision maker seeks an immediately available solution and is then willing to quickly abandon it for another seemingly plausible solution” (1994, p.9). Exxon is not the only organization that has reacted in a hypervigilant fashion when hit with a crisis. In fact, the stress and time pressure that, according to Fink (1986), characterize any crisis situation make a hypervigilant response almost unavoidable. The strong media inquisition constantly generates new questions, criticisms and accusations, and public opinion demands swift answers to those issues.

The last of the Exxon moves to soothe the national and international anger was to accept responsibility and apologize. In an advertisement published 10 days after the tragedy, on April 3rd, 1989, in 165 periodical publications, Lawrence G. Rawl finally decided to articulate the difficult word sorry (Williams & Olaniran, 1994). The statement came, according to most of strategic communication scholars, to late, and did not satisfy anybody. In his public apology, Rawl still claimed to have acted “swiftly and competently” to reduce the environmental impact of the spill (Yagoda, 1990). The statement, even if it was not totally untrue, was not accepted by the public, for Exxon, at that very moment, had already lost its credibility.

Mistake or Just Fate?

There is no doubt that Exxon’s communication team committed severe mistakes while presenting its corporate identity to the media and the tribunal of public opinion. Still, it cannot be stated that with others strategies, the damage to Exxon’s corporate identity would have been less significant. First of all, the American and the international public opinion had passed its judgment not just on Exxon, but also on the whole oil industry before the incident even took place. The catastrophe reinforced the stereotype of greedy corporations and businessmen that do not hesitate to make a profit at the expense of the environment and innocent wild life. Since the scandal was in consonance with those previous ideas, the public absorbed it unquestioningly. The management of the company, and this is frequently ignored in the literature on the subject, also made some good and reasonable decisions, but the media and public opinion systematically ignored them, or played down their effects. In this situation of impotence, it is not surprising that they committed some communicational faux pas that have become part of history.

Exxon’s communication strategy was in consonance with the whole philosophy of the company, mostly built on traditional values. A company that is well known in the financial world for its “conservative financial management” and “conservative corporate culture” (Inside the empire of Exxon the unloved, 1994) could unlikely be expected to use a revolutionary communication policy in such an extreme situation. Exxon’s corporate traditionalism seemed to be working well though, for the company was one of the most successful corporations in the contemporary business world. In 1993, four years after the tragedy, Exxon sales reached $111 billion with profits around $5.3 billion. These ciphers, according to The Economist (Inside the empire of Exxon the unloved, 1994), are “the equivalent to an economy three times the size of Ireland’s”. Staying with The Economist, the oil production of the company is similar to the one of Nigeria, and could be enough to supply the oil demand of Germany and France. Only the British-Dutch group, Shell, made more money in sales, although, as The Economist concludes, Exxon beat them in profits.

Not every one of the steps taken by the crisis communication team, as I have already mentioned, was wrong. First of all, according to different testimonies, the behavior of the captain and crew after the collision was exemplary. Just one-third of the cargo was lost, the rest, as well as the tanker itself, was saved by the crew (Symonds, 1990). The president of Exxon Shipping Company, responsible for all the ships of the company, flew from Houston to the site just a few hours after the accident and started a series of regular press conferences.

However, that was not enough for the public or for the media. They expected the number one on board: Exxon’s chairman and CEO Lawrence G. Rawl. The first public appearance of Rawl was not until six days after the accident. He is blamed, above all for not being present at the place of the tragedy from the very beginning. However it is uncertain whether the presence of Rawl in Alaska would have improved the public perception of Exxon or avoided the successive boycotts. The chairman of Johnson and Johnson, James Burke, never went to Chicago during the Tylenol crisis, which I have discussed in the previous chapter. In spite of that, his dealing with the crisis is presented in crisis management literature as an example of smart and effective communication. On the other extreme, we have the example of Warren Anderson, chairman of the Union Carbide at the time of the Bhopal tragedy, who flew immediately to the Indian town. This is one of the decisions that Fink (1986) criticized in his management of the crisis. Therefore, Herb Schmertz (as cited in Small, 1991) defined the Exxon dilemma as a “no win situation”. Whatever decision the chairman of Exxon had taken at that moment would have been presented by the media and perceived by the public in a negative way. The judgment had already been made.

From the very beginning, the Exxon Valdez catastrophe attracted the attention of the media. Bad news, as already mentioned, possesses the highest news value. Their attraction power is so strong, that it will get everyone to pay attention. This natural law of mass media is also the reason why all the faux pas of Exxon had much more resonance than its effective actions. A story systematically ignored by the media and seldomly mentioned by scholarly literature can help us understand how the negative bias of the media works. For the most part, the public associated the name of Exxon with the images of dead birds and otters that were flooding the media outlets. Such images were the most effective tool used by environmental activists to stir up the emotions of the public opinion. Exxon started an intense action to save the otters. More than 200 of those animals were rescued. Exxon biologists carefully washed the oil away from them and nurtured them. Small (1991) estimates that more than $40,000 was spent on each animal. Yet, most media ignored this action and, in consequence, it never penetrated the public awareness. Besides, the rescue of the otters rather irritated the Alaskan fishermen, who traditionally see those animals as one of their biggest competitors. Fishermen kill otters whenever they have a chance. The Exxon biologists radio-tagged most of the otters saved in the action and then returned them to the wild. One year later, according to Small (1991), just 22 of the otters were still reported to be alive. The story was not appealing enough though, for the public had already passed its judgment on the case.

The role of the villain was reserved, with no ambiguity, for Exxon. Therefore, the press never went into depth in the cases which could expose the official victims of the tragedy, or their natural advocates, the environmental activists. The media ignored them even though such cases could generate new scandals with potentially high news value. The reduction of ambiguity and complexity is essential for the public digestion of issues. With the money provided by the Exxon Corporation, one non-profit organization was created with the mission of building visitors centers, tourist cabins, and an Aquarium for tourists. More than $50 million was assigned to the project, and a large part of this money was awarded to state and federal agencies. What was suspicious, though, was the fact that five of the six trustees of the organization were working for those agencies that had granted the money (Hedges, 1993). This case remained unknown by the broad public.

The explosion of a Shell platform in 1970, which also caused a severe oil spill in the south flank of Bay Marchand field (offshore Louisiana, U.S.A.), is frequently contrasted with the Exxon case to illustrate effective crisis management. Shell Oil’s crisis team promptly sent a team of executives, engineers, technical staff and, of course, communication experts to maintain an informed press on all their activities to repair the damage. They did, according to Scott (1989), an excellent job, which is the reason why, in his opinion, the company escaped the crisis without the slightest dent in its public image. Yet, the cases, even if they were about a catastrophe that originated within the oil industry, cannot be compared. Time, according to Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann (2001), is one of the limits of public opinion. There was practically no environmental consciousness in 1970, almost 20 years before the Exxon Valdez scandal. Public opinion did not regard the spill as a threatening issue – even if it in fact was threatening. The environment was not in the media’s agenda either. We can see here how inextricably linked both agendas are.

Shell had a lot of trouble with the public in 1995 when the management decided to sink an old oil rig in the North Atlantic. Greenpeace started an aggressive campaign to denounce the negative environmental impact of Shell’s project. European media, again, followed the mainstream and presented the case as another example of the oil industry’s voraciousness and insensitivity to environmental matters. Shell adamantly defended the harmlessness of its original plan, but this did not help the company avoid the boycott on Shell gas stations in many central and north European countries. In the end, the oil rig was not sunk into the ocean, but towed to and dismantled on land. The German newspaper Die Welt published an enlightening and extensive article proving that Greenpeace had – consciously and intentionally – exaggerated the information about the consequences on the environment that the sinking of the oil rig would have had. In fact, the process of taking the oil rig apart on land had a much more negative impact on the environment. The scandal died after the publication of this article, but it never embarrassed the holy image of Greenpeace. Again, the public had assigned the role of the villain to the oil industry as soon as the scandal broke out. Neither a sound communication strategy, nor the fact that they were right in their claims helped the Shell management carry out the original plan.

Conclusions

In this learning module, we have discussed two paradigmatic cases of crisis management. Johnson and Johnson’s dealing with the Tylenol crisis is frequently compared with the Exxon’s apologia strategy. However, the nature of both cases is completely different, and thus, the comparison is useless. Small (1991) points out the critical difference in both cases, a difference that, by the way, is systematically overseen by strategic communication scholars. The company Johnson and Johnson was a victim of tampering. The deaths were not the result of an accident or the negligence of the company, but of a criminal action carried out by individuals who had nothing to do with Johnson and Johnson. That was not the case in the oil spill caused by the Exxon Valdez. Being in the role of the victim, and not in the role of the offender, makes it easier to project the image of the organization.

In addition to being perceived as an offender, the nature of the offense also put the Exxon Corporations in a difficult position. For the environment, the victim of the company’s wrongdoing, is one of the idols of contemporary public opinion. The power of public opinion is omnipresent in the practice of strategic communication. The internal dynamics of public opinion are determined by a series of mental associations and simplifications that normally predispose any public judgment. The power of communication strategies to fight those pre-judgments is rather insignificant. The only way to stop the damage is to create a media climax, a spectacular event or stunt powerful enough to terminate the public’s need for further information. Nowadays contemporary professional communicators recommend the corporate apology to create this peak, after which the media’s scrutiny is expected to decline. Still, the apology does not represent a magic formula. The abuse of apologies in contemporary public relations is weakening their cathartic effect. If the public perceives the apology as part of a communication strategy, the act of self-expiation will fail to create the climax and might even fuel the indignation of the public.

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