Corporate America had not yet embraced the Green Marketing movement when BP, the world’s third biggest integrated oil group, launched its eco-conscious campaign at the beginning of the decade. At the time it seemed novel for an oil company to join environmentalists in calling for groups to return to the earth that which humans take from it. Ann Hand, SVP of Global Brand Marketing and Innovation for BP, has helped successfully grow the brand’s verdant view over the past seven years. In a recent Brand Fast-Trackers episode, Hand shares Green Marketing secrets with Brand Connections CEO and founder, Brian F Martin.
During the 2000 BP/Amoco merger, Hand says the public firm was fortunate to have a CEO who understood branding in the marketplace and internally. “The choice to move away from the British Petroleum shield, and the word British Petroleum, and to embrace the simple initials BP and our (Helios) logo … was quite a brave move.” It also opened the door for changes that made environmental concerns one of four primary corporate brand values. Hand, who started her professional career as a marketing rep for Mobil, believes BP’s recent track record backs up the promised ideological shift. The AdAge 40-under-40 nominee also stresses that BP has gone green without hindering the profitability.
The British Petroleum name was not well-known stateside at the time of the merger, but the new company opted not to take piggy-back on Amoco brand’s positive equity, favoring a total re-brand instead. Conscious of Amoco’s consistently high fuel-quality ratings, BP still points out that Amoco fuels flow from station pumps but little else remains of the once iconic brand. “The power of a brand is when you scale it up and leverage it. For us to have multiple brands out there competing against each other in the same market place didn’t make sense from an efficiency point of view.” Besides the obvious tie-in with its new corporate culture, using green as BP’s primary color helped distinguish it from the reds, whites, and blues that dominate oil industry competitors.
Going green isn’t simply a matter of color or environmental choices, according to Hand. Successful Green Marketing must pass the red face test in the marketplace. “It’s a bit of a dilemma right now when you do step out and try to do the right things that are green,” she says. That’s because firms also risk being labeled “greenwashers” whenever they take up the environmental banner, even if they’ve demonstrated eco-friendly practices throughout their corporate history. Finally, companies must weave corporate responsibility in with other primary goals and be sure to educate consumers about the good they’re doing. One of the ways BP accomplishes this last imperative is by communicating with consumers when they visit one of the company’s 28,500 petrol stations.
Gassing up your vehicle is never a fun event, Hand acknowledges, but with 13 million customers frequenting BP stations every day, the London-based company has a prime opportunity to earn customer loyalty. “I looked at that and I thought: That’s such a huge untapped asset – all of those impressions, that whole experience that someone goes through. What are the ways that I could show them what my BP brand is about during those three minutes?” Enter the Helios Power program, which aims to bring some of the brand’s core green elements to life for consumers. The SVP has helped install reminders of BP’s green mission at service stations, along with environmental tips for drivers.
The franchise relationship BP has with most station owners and operators further complicates brand management. “About 80% of those (stations) I don’t control directly,” Hand says. “They’re run by our franchisees and partners, and most of them aren’t shiny beautiful big and new with carwashes and convenience stores. They’re everyday gas stations.” But because customer expectations are so low “small steps could mean a lot in this category,” she says. Minor improvements in customer service, bathroom cleanliness, and environmental awareness promised major brand equity. That’s precisely what the “A Little Better” campaign and TV ads sought. BP still needed franchisees to buy in for the program to work. “In a way our fussiest customer group that we had to really ‘wow’ with this work, to create a pull to get them to really execute these promises at every corner, was actually the population of operators who run those sites in the U.S.” At the end of the day “it is smart marketing, plus operational improvement that will drive loyalty,” according to Hand. Part of the successful marketing equation incorporates positive communication with kids (via character trading cards), on-line gamers (with Miniclip’s Gas Mania), and urban targets (at L.A.’s Helios House).
The Indiana native claims to have learned quite a bit from her early days operating eight downtown-Philadelphia stations she now likens to mini 24-hour-a-day soap operas where anything could happen. She thinks such experiences lend credibility to marketers trying to push branding agendas through the system. Hand also strives to identify an “emotional hook” and a higher purpose as motivation for her daily work. Finding that higher calling seems to have worked for the oil-industry lifer – it’s also helped BP pump another kind of green.
