came across as alternately invisible, cranky, defensive and wishy-washy - everything a CEO is not supposed to be. He did not make any public comment for six days after the incident, sending two underlings to do his dirty work. (Yagoda 48-51). When he finally did speak to the press, he blamed the Coast Guard and Alaska officials for the slow cleanup. When questioned on CBS This Morning about the details of the cleanup plan, Rawl said it wasn't his job to know them. Technically, he was correct, but strategically it was a dangerous statement.
It took Rawl 10 days to sign and obligatory full-page newspaper ad apologizing for the spill, and even then he contradicted himself, claiming that the company had acted "swiftly and competently" to cleanup the spill, which was simply untrue. He didn't go to Alaska until April 14, though the spill occurred on March 24. By then the crisis window had been sealed and public opinion was already against him (Yagoda 48-51).
Others in the company only compounded the public relations problem. Soon after the Valdez started leaking, a company spokesman said damage would be minimal, a statement which was quickly contradicted by every other authority queried and by images seen on TV sets throughout America. Even after the state of Alaska had retrieved tens of thousands of dead animals, an Exxon spokesman was quoted as saying that the company counted just 300 birds and 70 otters.
Exxon's delay in acknowledging that the cleanup effort had been disastrous helped the story drag on and on. It's failure to admit the Valdez's captain's history of alcohol abuse, and their terse dismissal of him (which made the company seem an unfeeling and scapegoat-seeking monolith) did not help the situation. Exxon's decision to use the Valdez as the base of communications made information difficult to transmit, and assured that angry fishermen would be present at every press conference (Yagoda 48-51).
A more...