BP….. Ok, now we are on the same page. We are talking about defending your brand and your mindshare with your customers in the event of *cough cough* negative press.

By now you have probably seen and forgotten BP’s PR nightmare in the form of an anonymous tweeter @BPGlobalPR. Let’s take care of the obvious here first, this guy/gal is hilarious. Posing as a BP PR big wig, the handle-squatting oil spill play-by-play analyst has made a mockery of almost every move the oil giant makes. The jabs, near lethal in their brevity, have commanded over 180,000 followers and untold thousands of dollars in earned media exposure.

BP’s solution in the midst of the disaster? If we ignore it, it will go away. This may be oversimplifying their approach, but the company has acknowledged the thorn in its heel while indirectly proclaiming it has a right to be there. Perhaps this is approach is the lesser of two evils. BP had bigger fish to fry (unfortunate pun). But, imagine if the giant corporation came down, heavy handedly, on a lone “concerned citizen.” Sure the steady flow of 140 characters of comic relief is a thorn, but BP is the one that went tromping through the thicket.

The vast majority of us do not play in the same league as the giant that claimed $74.4 billion of revenue in Q1 2010. But the approach to social media in light of “difficult circumstances” is worth study. If nothing else, social media has given an authoritative voice to the average social-savvy wordsmith. It has been nearly 8 months since the explosion on the rig that started the disaster and prompted over 500 tweets from the unofficial spokes-tweeter. It seems like the only real action against @BPGlobalPR has been Twitter and BP enforcing the social network’s policy in parody, making the account clearly inform follows it is not really speaking on behalf of BP.

But maybe that’s the lesson. Restraint is a powerful tool in a company’s arsenal of Social Media / Public Relations tactics. Knowing when to clarify your position, do right by a wronged customer or let the venting permeate and eventually disperse in the sea of tweets and updates is more art than science. But eight months later, the ignored satirist thorn has not gone away.