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David Brancaccio: David Brancaccio here in for Brian Lehrer. About nine years ago, the Sierra Club's magazine proposed to answer I think a fascinating question. It's an environmental group, of course. In an ideal world, according to the Sierra Club, we'd all be driving electric cars powered by wind and solar. That's what we'd use to charge them up. It is not a perfect world, the Sierra Club conceded, and so the question back then was which gas station brand is the most environmentally sound? The article was entitled Pick Your Poison. Back in 2001, oil companies were rated by the Sierra Club as really bad bottom of the barrel, middle of the barrel, and then the best ones were at the top of the barrel.

You know where this is going. Among the two companies at the top of the barrel, most environmentally friendly in 2001, BP. The other one was Sunoco. I haven't forgotten that. After three and a half months of hell, BP is having actually not a horrible day today. There is guarded optimism that the pumping of mud into the well has worked, as we heard during the news, with the company calling a significant milestone. White House energy adviser, Carol Browner, says about two-thirds of the spilled oil is now gone.

Carol Browner: The vast majority of the oil has been contained, it's been burned, it's been cleaned. I think that's good news for the people of the Gulf.

David Brancaccio: She was speaking on the CBS morning news program. She also said mother nature is doing and will continue to do her part to get rid of what's around. Just under five million barrels of oil flowed out of the well. Some scientists are questioning the administration's assessment that we just heard saying that some of the oil may have dropped to the ocean floor where it's tough to see, and it's still causing problems, they worry.

The spill costs the lives of at least 11 people on that rig and has savaged the economy of an entire region. BP is going to have to work hard to fix their brand so that, A, anyone buys another gallon of gasoline from them and, B, they continue to get lucrative government business and, C, so they don't get sued out of existence. Here to help me explore whether or not BP's brand is a hopeless cause or not is Elsie Maio, The principal of Maio and company, a business consulting firm based here in New York. Hello, Elsie.

Elsie Maio: Hi, David.

David Brancaccio: Elsie's pioneered a concept called SoulBranding, soul, S-O-U-L. She helps companies actually practice what they preach on ethical and environmental issues. Let's give it a go here on BP's brand. They already have this logo that looks a bit like either the Green Party logo or the Greenpeace's logo. They got this cute brand that looks all green. I guess we'll have to modify that a little bit, put a little ocean motif or a seagull, that would help a little bit. When people see that, they're just going to snort with derision after all that's happened, right?

Elsie Maio: Yes, and rightly so. Part of the fix that BP is facing is really a fix and delivery on the promise that that symbol represents. That symbol has been dubbed the Helios and you know Helios is the sun god in ancient Greece. Perhaps it was because of their campaign and their name change.

When they instituted that symbol in the early 2000s, that they had the reputation that you cited earlier as among the most environmentally sensitive because their reputation, as communicated by that brand, preceded our experience of any problems. The fix now is much deeper than changing the brand mark. The fix is much more about restoring trust that what happened here is not a signal of an endemic problem and a lack of social responsibility.

David Brancaccio: I don't see the phone lines flashing now from BP calling in to hire us both to fix it. If they did call in and in the unlikely event you took the business, how do you start re-establishing trust? A lot of it has to do with, in the past, did you live up to your previous statements? BP does, unfortunately, have a problem with that right now

Elsie Maio: They do. What they're going through now is not an enviable position for anyone for any organization. We've worked with leading organizations, nonprofits, for-profits and I must say that every leader that we've ever talked to wants to do the right thing. We give them the benefit of the doubt, of course. We're in the middle of an interesting shift in paradigm where doing the right thing has meant Gordon Gekko's style, making the most money.

David Brancaccio: You're doing the right thing by our shareholders for the next quarter.

Elsie Maio: Exactly. Increasingly, and I think this BP incident puts a fine point on it, that most of us are sensitized to the fact that we are living in a closed system called spaceship earth if you will. Everything that each of us does affects an aspect of that closed system. In it, business is the juggernaut. Business has potentially the biggest impact on global economies, the global environment, as well as on an individual level, the people who work for that company. BP is facing a wonderful opportunity if it looks at things in terms of that continuum, stepping into the new paradigm from the old one, getting a hold of its value system, and holding itself accountable for living it.

David Brancaccio: We've been already getting some fascinating input from our listeners on our Facebook site. Steve Dearing writes, "I trust oil companies to destroy the earth that has made them so much money." That's what he trusts. Kenneth Dupli writes, "I honestly don't think BP needs to make amends at all except by killing the well, compensating the aggrieved, and cleaning up to the best of their ability. This could have happened to any oil company and we as oil-addicted humans are as much to blame for this catastrophe as anyone."

That may be true, but that's not something BP is going to be able to say out loud, "You bought our gas, you're not going to get off our fossil fuel energy source anytime soon, you're at fault." That's going to go absolutely nowhere.

Elsie Maio: Just as that caller or writer on Facebook did, he took some accountability for his role in keeping this industry alive. The extractive industries are by their nature, they're taking things out of the earth. By our nature in our society today, we use those products day-to-day. We're sitting here in a studio, there's metal, there's equipment, there are things that have been extracted. Each of us does have a responsibility. We're all playing a part. The new paradigm that I'm talking about is one in which we humbly honor that and put ourselves deliberately on a path of minimizing the negative impact and maximizing the wellbeing of life on earth.

This is not just pie in the sky talk. On a personal level, people are encouraged, of course, by the economy becoming more prudent in their spending patterns, becoming more conscious of healthful food, of buying local to reduce the impact of carbon emissions in terms of food production and transportation. Likewise, we look to our corporations, which are the juggernaut in our globe for what are they doing about it.

David Brancaccio: What would you expect if BP has in fact gotten religion on these issues? They have to do something big that surprises us that would somehow demonstrate the fact that they see things as more than just fulfilling analysts' expectations next quarter. Something big that confounds their critics in terms of embracing some new sustainable policy.

Elsie Maio: It depends on their objective. Look at what they've done in stages. They're in mop-up now. Figuratively and literally, they're mopping up their image. They've entered a Lindsay Lohan strategy of they've gone into rehab if you will, secreted off to Siberia, and chastised. Now the question is, what will change in a fundamental way? Other companies have gone through this before. Shell went through this. It was years ago. It was in the late '90s, I believe, through the Brent Spar incident.

David Brancaccio: This is in the North Sea, I think.

Elsie Maio: Yes, where they decommissioned an oil container. They had gone through the legal channels and gotten a legal okay to basically leave it there. Put it out there in very deep sea and leave it there and that would be okay. Civil society reared its head and said, "Hang on a second, that is not okay." Initially, there was some resistance in the old paradigm like, "We've done the legal thing," but Shell stepped up to the plate. If you look on their website today and search for Brent Spar, they're not hiding it. You can click on and see their point of view, which says essentially, "We made a boo-boo."

David Brancaccio: It is an important point, Elsie, that you're making that it's frankly not just about BP. The industry, fairly or unfairly, the other oil companies are also being tard by some of this. In fact, a number of them, including BP have come together. They're ponying up some serious cash. It's going to add up to I think about $1 billion to create this rapid response system in case, God forbid, there's another blow out of a well somewhere. Is that a demonstration of something that you'd be looking for in order to establish trust?

Elsie Maio: I think it's more comforting to know that they're actively managing risk and that they're able, as an industry, to collaborate and cooperate. It makes sense to do that, to pool their expertise and resources to do that. Does that indicate that they're ahead of the curve? Not necessarily. That's a smart risk management approach.

David Brancaccio: How come they didn't have this ahead of time? I don't mean to imply that every oil company is exactly the same. Marilyn in Westchester, you have a comment in this area?

Marilyn: Yes, I do. Frequently, this argument is put on accompanying that it's an accident, it could happen to anybody. However, if you look at the most egregious violators in any industry, you can take the top 10% of the violators who are doing the most damage and really go after those violators with regulations and vigorously pursue that and eliminate the major part of the problems in the industry. Massey Coal, 85% of the violations. Exxon, same thing. BP, same thing. 85% of the violations that were given and not really enforced or changed in the oil industry went to BP.

You can look at these outstanding violators and if you bring them back into compliance with industry standards, you've really done 90% of the conservation work that needs to happen. We're not really taking that kind of approach. This is not a theft to the commons, and this is not, "I'm responsible for using oil, and I have to stop using oil." That's just diddly squat when you compare it to the breadth of the profit BP gets and the harm they're inflicting. There's a real good case here for a vigorous regulation and not targeted for the industry, but just for that particular company that's so egregiously violating the regulations we have now.

David Brancaccio: Thanks, Marilyn. Elsie?

Elsie Maio: That's a good point, Marilyn. It is going to take, it's a triangulated approach, enforcing regulations and publicizing that enforcement if that's what business requires. It's going to take people like you and me who look at our investment portfolio and see, "What are the companies that we're investing in? Are we comfortable that the values that they state right on their website are being lived?" When you look at BP site, they have a list to values. Three of them are performance-driven, and one of them is about safety.

One of the things that in the new paradigm BP might consider doing as other companies that we are working with with our SoulBranding is literally developing a benchmark of how are you living these values, and each employee is answering that question. It's a way for management to stay on top of performance so that it's not blindsided. By the way, there were telltale signs that BP was slipping on the safety issue, if anybody was looking.

David Brancaccio: Yes, there was some actually vivid evidence about this. We had an interesting comment coming on the website from someone who labels himself Super F88. He's trying to rebrand BP. He thinks maybe blatant polluter, banish petroleum, buy a Prius. [laughs] I can't read the rest. One of them is biggest-- It's a word that begins with P, a Yiddishism that I don't think I'm allowed to say on the air. It is usually used in a derogatory context.

More seriously, Elsie, there is a term called greenwashing. This is when a company acts very sustainable, does press conferences that seems sustainable, and makes promises, but perhaps the proof is not in the pudding. That they don't really walk the talk. It's a widespread phenomenon. How do we tell the difference between greenwash and a company that is getting serious?

Elsie Maio: You have to look at what are they incent their people to do? How is the performance of the company calibrated and matched with what their stated goals are? I'm glad that you brought this up because this is, again, looking at this new paradigm. I keep saying new paradigm because it's an opportunity for leaders to come forward and embrace this way of being that their American style marketing has actually reached its peak. You've talked about Marshall McLuhan or the previous call talked about Marshall McLuhan.

We have taken the expression of marketing to ridiculous heights, and we are so darn good at it that we are believing our own whatever. It's time now to pull back. I think BP is a great example because they did come out with a very big brand promise in the UK in the late '90s, and they said, "BP, Beyond Petroleum." The UK civil society said, "We don't believe that. That is not true. Don't insult our intelligence. Not even 1% of your profits are coming from anything but petroleum."

David Brancaccio: You can't just make these statements. You can't use advertising. What can you do instead?

Elsie Maio: You can come out transparently and say something like, "We are on a path. We recognize that we have a sacred role to play in preserving this earth and in inspiring people to do the best that they can do, including our employees. We know that's a role for our business and society. We also know that we are forging a new paradigm here. Here's our plan to move ahead. Keep us posted." It's like Ed Koch in New York, "How am I doing?"

Open yourself to feedback. Employees are the most trusted source of information about companies now. Employees on the internet. There's really no place to hide anyway. For companies who are enlightened are engaging employees and saying, "Share with us. We're going to empower you to be all you can be." You see improved results in places like Zappos.

David Brancaccio: The online shoe company?

Elsie Maio: Exactly, where those employees just go the extra mile. You see it in examples of companies who are creating new revenue streams because they're telling their people, "If you were living our company values more fully, what kind of products would we have?"

David Brancaccio: Also, as you know, Elsie, what really talks often is money, and big oil companies have a lot of money to lobby. They have a lot of money to have their say in the legislative process. I, as a reporter, like to follow the money. That would be a way of establishing trust again for BP, which is where they're putting their money for what kind of new energy legislation given the failure of the climate bill about two weeks ago on Capitol hill. That'd be an interesting place to look. What kind of regulatory structure are they looking for going forward? If it's surprising in an interesting way, who knows? It could possibly influence. Can I track money as an early sign of people walking the walk?

Elsie Maio: Yes, you can. Companies that are looking to restore credibility will be willing to demonstrate where they're putting the money, where they're assigning effort and executive talent on what projects.

David Brancaccio: On which projects. When companies want to live up to their public promises, they call SoulBranding consultant, Elsie Maio. Elsie, thank you so much.

Elsie Maio: Thank you, David.

David Brancaccio: I'm David Brancaccio. You're listening to The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC.

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