BP Ads Try to Look Earnest, End Up Hollow

Isn't there too much blood in the water for BP CEO Tony Hayward to start apologizing now?

Hayward doesn't think so, or maybe he's just trying to hold onto his job (good luck with that). The man that the New York Daily News is calling "the most hated in America" is the star of an intended-to-be-earnest new national ad campaign in which he takes "full responsibility" for the Gulf disaster and promises to clean it up. "We will get this done. We will make this right," he says.

Ad industry veterans estimate the TV and print ads (full pages in USA Today, the Wall Street Journal and other major pubs) will run about $50 million. They've just started hitting now, more than a month after the catastrophic spill, which has hemorrhaged more than three-quarters of a million barrels of oil from a ruptured pipe about 40 miles off the coast of Louisiana.

First question many civilians (non-ad-industry folk) may ask: why isn't this money being spent to staunch the gusher and sop up the mess? Throw in a few more underwater robots! And the second (from anyone who's paying attention): why are you bragging about the size of your effort, dubbed "the largest environmental response in this country's history," when it's your company's incompetence that caused this calamity in the first place?

Hayward says he's sorry, but not long ago he said he wanted his life back. (He had to apologize for that, too). BP's stock is crashing, and Hayward's star is falling as he's continued to downplay the damage. Time to start buffing the company's image? Honestly, it's too late for that.

(Just fyi: if you want some BP rage off your chest, don't bother going to this video on YouTube, where you'll find that "adding comments has been disabled for this video." Another good call, BP.)