| Tagged with: | Core77, Ecology, Green Design, Hypocrisy, Illustration, Marketing |
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?
Back in July of 2000, British Petroleum, the world's third largest global energy company, launched a massive $200 million public relations and advertising campaign, unveiling their current "green" brand image, in an attempt to win over environmentally aware consumers. The campaign was created by the British advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, who later the PRWeek 2001 "Campaign of the Year" award in the 'product brand development'. All told, BP spent around $200m on the rebrand.
The heart of the rebrand involved changing the company's name to BP (back from BP-Amoco, the result of a recent mega-merger), creating a wordmark in which small letters were used ("bp" was thought to have fewer imperialist associations than the erstwhile "BP"), and finally implementing a new corporate tagline, "beyond petroleum."
BP's then CEO John Browne said: "It's all about increasing sales, increasing margins and reducing costs at the retail sites." And it apparently did: During more than a decade with Browne as chief executive (ending last year), BP's market value rose fivefold and its share price rose 250 percent.
Nothing too revelatory for the BlogLESS regular here, but I thought I'd offer you a little story. This all happened in about ten minutes last Friday, and in those minutes, I found myself mentally reinforcing a few key maxims for web design.
| Tagged with: | Color, Fun, Hypocrisy, Information Design, Tim OReilly, Twitter, Web Design |
