June 15th, 2010

The Rebranding of BP… Again

Ten years ago, British Petroleum launched one of the decades more successful branding campaigns. BP’s “eco-friendly” campaign to rebrand as “Beyond Petroleum,” seemed to have remarkable results for the energy giant. From 2000-2007, BP states that it’s brand awareness went up from 4% to a whopping 67%. In 2007, BP’s “beyond petroleum” campaign was awarded a gold Effie from the American Marketing Association. The company set record profits, and their “green” focused ads seemed to have struck a note with consumers. A Landor Associates survey, showed that a majority of consumers thought that BP was the “greenest” of the oil companies.

Although BP was the first oil company to openly acknowledge a link between fossil fuel consumption and global warming, and their “beyond petroleum” campaign was considered a raging success,  only a few years later, it seems that BP is re-branding again…only this time…Greenpeace is taking a wack at it.

Fuelled by the massive outrage, and environmental damage caused by a broken BP oil rig spewing millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, Greenpeace has launched a new branding campaign for BP.  Greenpeace is calling for the rebranding of BP by creating their own version of the companies logo.  They are inviting anyone outraged by this environmental disaster to design a new logo for BP that “more accurately” portrays the oil company. The campaign as Greenpeace pus it “will be used…as an international campaign against the oil company.”

While BP is possibly facing the biggest environmental disaster of all time, and the world’s worst PR headache, all I know is that I’m glad I don’t work in that marketing department right now.

If you’d like to view Greenpeace’s competition logo entries you can do so here.

Image by nDevilTV

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