"Beyond Petroleum?"
As promised, this week DLB plans to drill into the BP brand and design strategy. Today: The research.
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.
