Twitter Account Strikes Oil With BP Satire

When I was studying public relations in college, the classic example of what not to do in a crisis was Exxon and the Juan Valdez oil spill.

Now with an even larger oil disaster still wreaking havoc off of the Gulf Coast, BP is dealing with an ecological, financial and PR nightmare.

To their credit, BP already had a Twitter account (@BP_America) that they've been using extensively over the past couple of weeks in an attempt to communicate with their 4,400 followers.

However, there's a new Twitter account aim solely at making fun of BP's response to the oil spill. The account, @BPGlobalPR, is a mock BP public relations Twitter account that puts a satirical twist on BP's crisis communication.

This is becoming a big problem for BP, not necessarily because there is an account poking fun at them, but because that account has more than twice as many followers as BP's actual Twitter account.

That's right, even though the @BPGlobalPR account was created just 5 days ago, they have already amassed over 9,500 followers...and that number shows no signs of slowing.

Obviously this raises questions about how BP should respond, because the bottom line is that more people are seeing the satire and the mockery at a time when the world is already looking at them in a negative light.

But one thing isn't being questioned, and that is how quickly social media trends like this can take off and gain momentum.