The branding lessons of BP

It's only going to get worse for Tony Hayward and BP. The disaster at Deepwater Horizon continues to spew thousands upon thousands of gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico and there is, by most accounts, many months to go before any solution will be achieved. 

Any big brand finding themselves in this situation would be in trouble. But there is a very specific marketing reason why BP, of all companies, will suffer perhaps a fatal blow from the crisis in the Gulf of Mexico. Ten years ago the brand consulting firm Landor repositioned BP from British Petroleum to Beyond Petroleum. In what was easily the most famous repositioning case of the new century, BP to changed its logo, its name and its positioning to reflect the fact that the company was now actively "exploring new ways to live without oil”.
 
At the time many sceptics accused BP of greenwashing. But it appeared to most that BP really was walking the walk. Their CEO had accepted a link between burning fossil fuels and global warming, the company was investing billions in alternative energy development, and, in developing the original campaign to launch the rebranding, the team at ad agency Ogilvy had found "hundreds of astonishing proof points that made the vision credible”.  Research confirmed that consumers were believers too. Landor's own brand research revealed that BP was seen as the most 'environmental' oil brand with more than half the market now agreeing that BP had become "more green” in the past five years. BP's brand awareness shot up and in a poll of UK marketers BP was rated one of the top 10 green brands, finishing higher up the ranking than Greenpeace.
 
But of course it was all nonsense. How could the second biggest producer of fossil fuels on the planet truly reposition itself as a company that was moving Beyond Petroleum? And we are forced back to one of the fundamental truths of branding: repositioning is almost always impossible. No matter how attractive it appears or how commonly we use the term in marketing, the actual business of changing a brand's DNA and being successful is ridiculous.

It looks good on a flip chart. Here we are in the lower left quadrant, but we'd sell more if we moved to the top right of the chart. But actually changing a brand from black to white – or from oil to green – is a ludicrous notion. Even when you can fool the people into believing the change has occurred – and to the credit or shame of BP that's certainly something they achieved – you cannot change the fundamental nature of the way a brand does business.

I have been asked several times by clients to help them either rebrand or reposition their brands. Each time I have tried everything in my power to dissuade them from the task. I explain that the vast majority of brands are fixed to their original positions by consumer memory, core competence and brand heritage. I challenge the managers to explain why they are in such a hurry to impose their own agenda onto a brand that usually existed within the business long before them. Then I try to introduce them to a third option – brand revitalisation.

Brand revitalisation is a two-step process. First go and find out what your brand's intended, original positioning was. Use historical archives. Use interviews with the founder of the brand. Visit the original home of the brand. Talk to the original consumers who have adored the brand since its inception and ask them why they first loved it. Boil all this down to the core DNA of the brand. Don't change it. Don't modify it. Just humbly decode and articulate it.

Then re-interpret this original positioning for 2010. The great paradox of branding is that to be consistent to a position a brand just keeps changing. What sexy meant in 1970 is very different from 2010. And yet if a brand is to retain that association across the decades it must alter its tactics, product mix and communication. Not because it is changing its positioning, but because it is trying to stay true to it.

A properly trained brand manager cannot earn his or her title until they visit the places, people and period in which the brand was born. If more marketers did, they would be much more reluctant to attempt brand repositioning and the inherent arrogant ignorance of the past that it inevitably entails.

So the next time a bright young consultant or hot advertising agency suggests that you change the meaning of your brand, take a long hard look at the dank black underwater geyser pumping thousands of gallons of oil into the Gulf, and remember the correct response: the leopard rarely changes its spots.

In fact, go even further. Be happy being a leopard. Learn to love those spots. They make you, you. And in the past they made you a lot of money. It's time to work out how to make those spots make you money with the new generation of consumers inevitably waiting at the end of the demographic rainbow. Respect your brand. Reject repositioning. And you are on the right path...

Mark Ritson is associate professor of marketing at Melbourne Business School