The public doesn’t appreciate brands that cross invisible but well-established lines in our culture, particularly in the name of greed. For example, don’t break out your storefront Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving Day. Oh, and don’t sell lingerie to girls who are still convinced they’re going to marry Justin Bieber under a rainbow.

By selling lingerie to the “tween” demographic, Victoria’s Secret has broken all sorts of unspoken public relations rules, most importantly “don’t piss off parents”. (We had a feeling this wasn’t going to go over well.) Brands attempting to court the tween demographic should remember one fact: these girls are too young to legally hold jobs, so their primary source of income (and purchasing decisions) is their parents.

Apparently Victoria’s Secret forgot this, didn’t think parents were paying attention, or honestly didn’t believe there was anything inappropriate about a tween girl and her divorced father’s new girlfriend going shopping together for something hot and spicy at the local VS.

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BP (that’s “Beyond Petroleum” to you, sir) is in trouble again this week for doing the very sort of thing we’d expect it to do: using its spokesperson to rewrite nearly half of its own Wikipedia page.

The purpose of the edits was to play down the corporation’s horrible environmental record. And the accusation came only a few weeks before yet another hearing in which BP’s lawyer will try to argue that his client shouldn’t have to pay millions in “fictitious or inflated claims” related to the pending class action oil spill lawsuit.

So: move along, nothing to see here…

Of course it’s not all in-house: today PR Week reminds us that firms have been criticized for doing this sort of thing for their clients before.

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The BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill trial finally began yesterday after earlier settlement talks failed to produce a compromise, and today brings reports of witness testimony about the company “putting cost cuts over safety” and other familiar, defamatory refrains.

At the same time, settlement talks continue behind closed doors. As part of a “last minute” offer, the Department of Justice now says this whole ordeal could all end tomorrow if BP simply pays $16 billion to the feds and the five affected states.

BP should have no real interest in drawing this long, painful process out. The company has received more bad publicity than any other. It paid the highest fines in history. It’s been shamed (repeatedly) by the DOJ. The public has known about all those incriminating emails for some time. BP’s lawyers may negotiate a smaller settlement by spreading the blame to partners Halliburton and Transocean, but plenty of dirty laundry will be aired (again) in the meantime. So why doesn’t BP just accept the offer?

We can only think of two possible explanations: either the company’s executives feel like the damage has already been done or they’re a bunch of cheap, weaselly bastards.

We’ll go with “both.”

Running a green/sustainable/environmentally friendly brand is obviously a big deal now. Following retail giant H&M‘s promises to use its water responsibly (under the watchful eye of the World Wildlife Federation), we figured we’d revisit the issue.

The public is understandably skeptical of such “sustainability” pledges, especially when made by notorious polluters like BP. It’s sort of like Apple promising to stop using child labor to build your iPhone or McDonald’s swearing by “certified sustainable fish” for its seafood McBites: how much of this is for real and how much of it is just another “greenwashing” corporate reputation stunt?

It’s one thing for a brand to release ads highlighting its environmental efforts but, as the Greenpeace Stop Greenwashing project tells us, most of these companies aren’t really all that interested in making their practices more sustainable–especially if they operate in the energy, automotive or forestry industries.

BP is a great example of a brand that just doesn’t have much credibility in the environmental sphere, no matter how many enthusiastic press releases its team writes. Puma, on the other hand, has begun publishing regular accounts of its supply chain’s influence on the environment, making clear that many of its practices have a serious impact and setting related goals that can be measured statistically.

So tell us: which brands do you trust on the sustainability front? While we’re at it, we have a couple more questions:

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Yesterday’s Q&A concerned Teneshia Jackson-Warner‘s vision of a PR/marketing industry focused on “serving” rather than “selling”–or providing work that truly improves both the lives of a given brand’s customers and the communities in which they live.

It’s a tall order. Firms adopting Jackson-Warner’s model would move beyond corporate social responsibility (CSR) projects that are–let’s be honest–almost always designed to improve public perceptions of a brand rather than the lives of people touched by that brand.

These considerations leave us very interested in the most recent study conducted by the Reputation Institute, which asks whether CSR efforts are worth the time and money required. The study’s conclusion: In most cases, they’re probably not. As the Institute’s recent Forbes guest post puts it, CSR isn’t necessarily dead–it’s just “mismanaged.”

Interesting. How so?

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One of the few downsides of doing great branding work is that the public’s familiarity with your name can be easily exploited. Thanks to the explosion of social media, “brandjacking” is a growing phenomenon.

In some cases, brands may benefit from being hijacked (see fictional characters like Lord Voldemort popping up with their own Twitter handles, thereby actually promoting the Harry Potter series). But most brand imposters operate with devious intentions: they either want to steal business from the company, purposely damage the company’s brand image, or create clever parody or satire. In the example below, we see a combination of the last two — a clever campaign created with the clear intent of doing harm to Exxon Mobil.

Look and sound familiar? That’s because it’s a virtual clone of recent Exxon Mobil ads like this one. This is brandjacking at its finest (and perhaps most dangerous for the brand being hijacked).

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BP‘s hopes of negotiating an out-of-court settlement regarding the disastrous 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill officially died today as the company agreed to pay a $4.5 billion dollar fine to the US government. That total includes reparations owed to government agencies like the SEC and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation along with $1.3 billion in criminal fines–the largest such penalty in history.

Perhaps even more significantly, the company also admitted its own culpability in the deaths of 11 rig workers as part of the agreement and confessed to lying to members of congress about the scale of the damage. And that’s not all: two BP employees will face felony charges of manslaughter relating to their roles in the deaths.

We can’t say we envy the firm responsible for dragging BP’s reputation out of the gutter. The company’s Olympics ads may have been surprisingly effective in boosting consumer perceptions, but we can’t imagine this latest development going over too well with an already skeptical public. BP won’t be getting past this you-know-what anytime soon.

Despite all the noise, BP still managed to make a $5.5. billion profit in the third quarter alone–so brace yourself for a glut of commercials starring oil-splattered birds, wrecked homes and Good Samaritans who just happen to be wearing BP logos.

Public relations professionals face no greater adversary than cynicism. Public disappointment, apathy or even anger are tough, but cynicism is a killer–it’s the main reason brands that falsely claim to be “eco-friendly” may never regain the public’s trust.

Various products have made “green”, “environmentally sustainable” claims for decades, but in recent years the trend materialized into a billion dollar movement—one that captivated consumers and their dollars, and then lost that good will faster than BP can say “Gulf of Mexico.” According to this article in Advertising Age, consumers continue to do what they can to save the environment–but they are no longer as willing to pay more for green products. Why? Read more

Tony Hayward finally got his life back, thanks for asking. According to recent profiles, the former beleaguered CEO of oil leader BP PLC is making the most of his moment away from the PR spotlight by spending some “me time” hanging out on yachts, starting new businesses and making massive distribution deals with oil-rich Middle Eastern nations like the ever-pleasant Iraq.

Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for his former company. The United States Department of Justice just hit BP with a “gross negligence” charge relating to the big Deepwater Horizon Gulf spill that happened way back in 2010 (remember those heady days of first-stage Bieber Fever and Tea Parties celebrating tri-corner hats?). The trial is set to begin in January, 2013. Everyone let out a collective groan.

This development is only the latest in a series of very large-scale PR challenges for BP, but it represents the most extreme position taken so far by the American government, whose lawyers are effectively throwing up their hands and saying “let’s do this.” The announcement all but erases the possibility of an out-of-court settlement—and it’s especially harsh considering recent speculation that oil still submerged from the spill washed ashore during Hurricane Isaac last week.

Try to determine the mindset of the government lawyer who wrote this line:

“The behavior, words and actions of these BP executives would not be tolerated in a middling size company manufacturing dry goods for sale in a suburban mall.” Ouch!

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A recent survey conducted by YouGov BrandIndex in order to gauge the public’s perceptions of Olympics advertisers may prove that the coveted ad slots and expensive sponsorships are worthy investments, especially for certain brands with PR problems.

According to Ad Age, surveyors posed the same question for each brand: “If you’ve heard anything about the brand in the last two weeks, through advertising, news or word of mouth, was it positive or negative?” YouGov then derived scores ranging from 100 to -100 by subtracting negative feedback from positive (For instance, a score of zero means a brand received equal parts positive and negative feedback).

Oil company and international pariah BP, whose public image has soured since the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf Of Mexico, reportedly saw its score jump from a negative 5.9 in the week prior to the Olympics to a positive 2.6 during the first week of the games thanks to ads like this one. Only Visa, which, according to YouGov, spent $100 million to be a “Worldwide Olympic Partner”, saw its brand perception rise more during the same time period. Ted Marzilli, global managing director for YouGov’s BrandIndex service, told Ad Age, “We have seen the recovery with BP over the last year and a half…but I think its association with the Olympics is showing benefits.”

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