Corporate Communications Management: United States

The challenge:
Our client, an oilfield services company, was assisting a federal agency with the investigation of a highly publicized refinery accident in the U.S. Gulf Coast. At the same time a major European conglomerate was considering the company for a highly profitable merger. This created a tremendous amount of conflicting pressure on the company, as getting press for their assistance with the investigation of a refinery-related accident could potentially have jeopardized their highly lucrative merger.

As members of the media, the business community, and various federal agencies competed to influence our client's decisions from the outside, internal rivalries among the various company departments threatened to jeopardize both the investigation and impending sale. Essentially, our client wanted to keep a lower profile until their acquisition by a European conglomerate was complete and needed our help to do it.

Our role:
Our consultants carefully managed the entire media operation, coordinated with the federal agency that our client was working with on the investigation, and managed the process by which information was shared (or not shared) with the media.

Since some departments at our client's firm were solely focused on the investigation and others on the sale-and their objectives often clashed-we also had to devise a strategy for harnessing the competing internal interests of the company.

The result:
By taking control of the company's communications operation and devising and implementing a strategy to get these competing factions to share the same vision for the company, we were able to ensure that both the investigation and the sale were successful.