Admit It BP, You’re An Oil Company
by Alan Brew, originally posted on Namedroppings
“Yes, we are an oil company. But right now we are also providing natural gas, solar, hydrogen, geothermal. Because we live on this planet, too.”
No, this is not part of a mea culpa from BP. It’s a couple of lines from a Chevron ad, and one which BP would do well to consider emulating given the situation they are in. With smart and refreshing directness, Chevron’s “Human Energy” TV ad from McGarry Bowen makes the case for oil and an oil company better than it has ever been made. Actor Campbell Scott narrates the 150 second spot that unapologetically states Chevron’s case and its position in the global energy debate as an oil company searching for solutions. “…today, tomorrow and the foreseeable future, our lives demand oil. But what’s also true is that we can provide it more intelligently, more efficiently, more respectfully”.
It is in marked contrast to BP’s “Beyond Petroleum” campaign. Chevron seeks to explain and educate; BP tries to obfuscate. The problem with the “Beyond Petroleum” campaign for me is that it has always smacked of rebranding spin. Why? Because BP is, undeniably, an oil company. And a very big one at that. Like Chevron, BP is one of the world’s six oil majors, along with ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, ConocoPhillips and Total of France. Any attempt to deny that fact, or at least mask it, was bound to tempt fate in an industry in which major shit happens, as with the 2005 explosion at a BP refinery in Texas, and the Alaska oil pipeline leak a year later. Now, with oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico unabated and officials giving no indication that the flow can be contained soon, BP is unfortunately up to its oily neck in an imminent environmental disaster. Any lingering credibility attached to its pretense of being an energy company that has gone beyond petroleum has been deep-sixed along with the Deepwater Horizon oil rig.
Hold the oil
The “Beyond Petroleum” campaign was born opportunistically out of BP’s merger with Amoco in 1998. Back then, BP was British Petroleum. After a brief but respectable period as BP Amoco, the company was recast in 2000 as plain BP. Replete with its elegant, Landor-designed sunburst logo, the intent was to send the message that the company was looking past oil and gas toward a benign, eco-friendly future of solar and renewable energy. John Browne, the CEO at the time, wanted to position BP as a broader energy company, not just an oil company, ahead of the looming issues of climate change, energy security and supply scarcity. Just as all oil companies are now attempting to do, he saw it as a way to “gain a seat at the table, a chance to influence future rules.” The slogan “Beyond Petroleum” was a clever if specious way of utilizing the initials ‘BP’ to emphasize they no longer stood for British Petroleum. “Better people, better products, big picture, beyond petroleum” went the alliterative mantra. But idea was pushed way beyond the bounds of its limits. BP’s ill-advised attempt to position itself beyond the petroleum sector on the basis of its laudable but marginal investments in renewables is rather like China claiming to be “Beyond Communism” because it now owns capitalist Hong Kong. It is a huge stretch of a small, albeit desirable, truth.
How can an oil company be ”Beyond Petroleum” without actively distancing itself from its core product? It’s a very hard sell when your logo is emblazoned on 10,000 gas stations in the US alone and the vast majority of your profits come from the black stuff.
BP has really tried to clean up its act over the last few years. How the company extricates itself from its current predicament will be proof enough of whether we are seeing a new BP. One thing it can do is finally move beyond “Beyond Petroleum” and talk about the business it is in with conviction, not what business it isn’t in.
Related posts:
- GDF SUEZ Subsidiary Takes on New Name to Align with Parent Company
- The next phase for solar
- The role of nuclear and renewable energy
- The Great Solar Bazaar
- Green rhetoric for greenbacks = greenhouse gas
Tags: Beyond Petroleum, BP, BP Amoco, Brand Strategy, branding, British Petroleum, energy brandings, environment, environmental disaster, Marketing Strategy, oil company, PR, public relations
This entry was posted on Monday, June 7th, 2010 at 1:55 pm and is filed under Oil, Verticals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
July 5th, 2010 at 12:12 pm
Hi Alan-
This is a good post. So many of the posts surrounding BP are just noise-with everyone getting on the “branding is bad” band wagon. I was part of the rebranding effort at Landor. Unfortunately, we believed in what we were doing. This rebrand was the first of it’s kind. It was a big deal. If a huge oil company could commit to alternative energy and better environmental practices then what did that mean for the world? If just a fraction of their effort was spent on world issues that help the environment then wasn’t that a start?, as it said on Ogilvy’s first ads.
And in fact all the big oil companies followed suit in some way. I am not excusing BP-but I do think that the analysis going on has been short sighted. Take a look, for example, and as you mention, the Human Energy ads from Chevron. Back in 2000 no one was even recognizing that global warming was an issue. BP was the first to publicly do so. I guess the question is, does that count for anything? Think of all the companies that followed suit. And all the good that they collectively have done. I am sad that the brand we built is so tarnished. I am sad that the company did not understand the brand they had and how they needed to implement it in their operations. But I am not sorry at the work that was done. It was a good campaign and I still believe that it did good. It is a big lesson in the power of brands and the fallout if that power is wielded irresponsibly.