BP goes greener with "beyond petroleum" rebrand
Date: 25-Jul-00
Country: UK
Author: William Maclean
"Beyond Petroleum - BP" purrs a television advertisement to debut in Britain on Tuesday in a rebranding drive aimed at raising retail fossil fuel earnings by over 10 percent a year.
Chief executive John Browne said a new green, yellow and white sunburst corporate logo, replacing BP's venerable shield and named the Helios mark after the sun god of ancient Greece, showed a commitment to the environment and to solar power.
But he acknowledged that despite the heavily green tinge to the campaign, the priority of the world's number three publicly-traded energy company remained the bottom line.
"It's all about increasing sales, increasing margins and reducing costs at the retail sites," Browne told reporters, noting the company's 28,000 service stations around the world made it a bigger retailer than McDonalds fast-food chain.
Browne said the company hoped the new stations, boasting internet access at the pump, would raise non-fuel retail sales to 50 percent of its marketing profits in due course.
He reiterated a previous announcement that the company was reverting to its old name of BP following two years as BP Amoco, in the wake of its acquisition of the former U.S. Amoco and more recent takeovers of Atlantic Richfield and Burmah Castrol.
GREENPEACE REJECTS REBRANDING
A Greenpeace spokesman rejected the rebranding as a stunt.
"BP doesn't stand for Beyond Petroleum. It stands for Burning the Planet," the environmentalist group said.
"This is a triumph of style over substance. BP spent more on their logo this year than they did on renewable energy last year. A more appropriate logo would be a miserable polar bear on a melting ice pack."
BP has long touted itself as the most environmentally-friendly of the supermajors that dominate one of the world's dirtiest industries, promoting a slew of projects aimed at reducing the impact of fossil fuel pollution.
The new logo takes green awareness to new heights, hinting the company is positioning itself for the end of the oil era.
"Is it possible to drive a car and still have a clean environment. Can solar power become mainstream? Can business go further and be a force for good. We think so," says the advert.
"It's thinking about the future as well as yesterday," Browne said when asked whether the Beyond Petroleum slogan underplayed the importance of oil to the company.
Browne noted 40 percent of the company's business now lay in natural gas, BP made lots of petrochemicals and BP intended its solar business to remain the world's largest.
The new logos will quickly appear at company offices and plants but will only show up at retail sites as the updating of the retail network takes place over the next four years.
The first new retail sites will open later this year in London and in Cleveland and Indianapolis in the United States.
The station's BP Connect service will feature in-store online kiosks where customers can check weather, traffic, sports and general news, call up directions to destinations and pay without cash or credit cards using an authorisation number.
While filling their tanks, customers can use touch-screen monitors to order food which will be waiting for them inside the store. The new sites will be partly powered by solar panels that will form a transparent canopy above the pumps.
The company has spent some $7 million on researching the new brand and will spend $25 million a quarter in support of the rand change, mainly in signs and additional advertising.