How BP's "Beyond Petroleum" Branding Strategy Became an Epic Failure

This is a great article by Jim Gregory.

Branding is all about creating alignment of your company's business processes with its corporate culture. British Petroleum (BP) provides a case in point of a brand that got way out front of its business process and culture to produce tremendous exposure to risk.

Back in 2000, BP announced a major change in posture from "British Petroleum" to "Beyond Petroleum" and spent hundreds of millions of dollars promoting their new position. Did it have a positive impact on the company? Most assuredly the impact was positive at the time, but will the brand be damaged because of the major oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? Without a doubt.

If an oil company is not 100 percent committed to dealing with any potential catastrophic disaster, how can it contemplate building the brand before it has addressed the basics of the business? With thousands of rigs pumping oil in the Gulf today how could something as fundamental as a shut-off valve not be standard operating procedure? Read more...

My response to Jim:

I think that branding encompass all things... not just the visual brand but it is the management of the company, how the people talk about the company-the in house and out.; it is everything that make the brand successful.

To me branding is an emotional response that your customers get from what you give them- your brand promise. The oil spill... ? that event really killed the brand big time... they have fail in the trust factor. I guess it would take time to rebuild BP's image again but then again... people (generally) do have short memories... Thank God for that... BP just have to do something good to overcome the mistake they made... somehow... poor fishy!