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So I spent a fair part of my weekend trolling the internet for information about the BP rebrand. But there was something that’s been really bothering me: why does BP’s clearly hypocritical branding strategy seem to be working (and indeed even on me)?

This was really sticking in my craw, not because I think the world of corporate branding is morally comprehensible, but because I honestly believed that brand hypocrisy didn’t work. So BP’s rebrand was chewing at me. Did I just miss the boat here?

The answer hit me in an unlikely place: the in the comments of an article about BP’s recent technical woes at America’s largest oil field. Let’s read the comment that was my lightning rod.

The focus of the article was the numerous challenges faced by the oil industry in general. They even specifically mentioned that in an overview of the story. Guess it’s easy and popular to take shots at BP.

Hold on. Why is it easy and popular?

I’ve got an idea.

I’ll tell you why: Because BP’s brand-reality dissonance is totally obvious, and it’s putting people on the defensive. How can I know this? Because that’s exactly what it did to me. I saw that brand on thirty gas stations in my town and my bullshit detector almost exploded. Without knowing why, I knew something was up. And so does everyone else. At least that’s my theory.

Which some totally bootleg Google testing shows to be a good one. I Googled the name of each of the six supermajors in combination with the word "unethical." Look at my results:

^* Total S.A. is a bit of a tricky case for my dubious methods. You’ll notice that because of the word "total," the ungrouped query returns a lot of results (76,700), but, for example, none of the front-page results are for Total S.A. The grouped-term query returns significantly fewer (710).

What this tells me, with at least some degree of likelihood, is that the scrutiny BP has to endure in consequence of its clear brand-reality dissonance is at least 200% (and it seems to me likely something more like 400%) more than similar companies, who, from a brand perspective "hide in plain sight."

Further, Google has some circumstantial evidence that suggests that BP doesn’t inspire the investor confidence the other supermajors do. Below is a stock chart for the six supermajors between Dec 31, 2004 and May 7, 2008. At the beginning of 2005, all six supermajors are priced almost exactly equally. By the middle of 2007, BP’s growth (the blue line) is the lowest at +22.50%. The second lowest growth for an oil major is Royal Dutch Shell at +41.67%, with ConocoPhillips rising over 100%.

Stock ticker for the six supermajors between Dec 31, 2004 and May 7, 2008.

I’m not saying that coincidence implies correlation here, but it does make me wonder.