First Dawn, now Pepsi. Something interesting is happening with brands out to do good and brands like BP who are (especially now) labelled with doing harm. Never before has one brand come to rescue a situation created by another brand. Rebellious brands like Apple and Virgin have always snubbed their noses at the establishment and found new and better ways to champion customers. But this is different and it’s worth noting.

For those of you who have spent the last six months under a log, ‘Refresh’ is the new big social campaign from Pepsi whereby they diverted their leviathan Super Bowl ad budget to crowd-source CSR funding initiatives. Now, Pepsi is spending a month of their campaign and $1.3m of their ‘Refresh’ budget to fund projects that help the disaster in the Gulf.

So why is this campaign different? Instead of championing a customer issue, or even taking on a social issue to do with the beverage market, Pepsi have come to the rescue of a disaster caused by another company/brand. The Gulf disaster is different than other disasters as it is so closely associated with BP similar to the Exxon Valdez spill or Union Carbide’s Bhopal. Therefore, there is no avoiding the brand-association.

There are many ways to set a civil strategy for a brand. One way is to analyse the issues within your own industry. Dove’s insight was that the beauty industry does harm to women’s self-esteem. Citi focused on the financial industry’s harmful prioritisation on money above all else with their ‘Live Richly’ campaign.

The Pepsi campaign is the first that I have seen where a brand looks outside its own industry to help solve problems associated with another industry. This strategy not only helps draw attention to brand, it reduces any risk of hypocrisy that can result from an activist approach (see previous Dove post). Pepsi can nicely sidestep any such charge by staying out of the issues that surround their industry (like water usage, obesity and worker rights) and give responsibility to their customers by crowd-sourcing the projects that will make the campaign work.

Amnesty International adopts a similar risk reduction strategy with causes and countries: ensuring that local chapters are not harassed by requiring them to only campaign about issues in other countries. Pepsi skilfully demonstrates how brands can enter into more social and civil discussions by concentrating on issues outside their own industry.  Of course, this strategy cannot divert attention from the harm present in any native industry, but it appears to be a less risky approach for raising civil issues in this particular case.

Related:
+ Our previous article on Pepsi Refresh

I thought this was worth a post only insofar-as it is a marker of a worst-case scenario response from one brand to another.

This is the first time I have ever seen one company benefit from a disaster that another company (or industry) created. It’s an interesting way to avoid taking a activist position while effectively positioning a brand for a cause.

As the environmental space gets increasingly crowded, it becomes ever more difficult to rationally position a brand as a green hero. Can brands like Dawn be seen as a hero of sorts because their product takes an active role in mitigating oil spills or will this ad be seen as green-washing? 65,000 people have viewed the ad on YouTube so far and 98% of people who voted like the ad, so the stats look good so far.

The ad was produced well before BP’s accident in the Gulf. It will be interesting to see whether Dawn will make a bigger push for the wildlife fund or promote a specific rescue package in the coming weeks.

Related:

+ Dove and the difficulty of an activist approach
+ Dawn wildlife microsite

It’s been over 10-years since BP launched its ‘Beyond Petroleum’ positioning and the recent accident in the gulf poses some important questions for business leaders:

• What is happening in the BP culture that such an accident could occur? Despite a huge push for safety under Tony Hayward, BP’s safety record remains worrying. With this new accident, BP is in danger of replacing Exxon/Esso as the black hat of the oil world.
• If the beyond petroleum positioning was supported better, would BP have built up enough equity to help better the reaction that people are having over this latest accident?

One cannot help feeling that the board was not really behind Lord John Browne and the shift to non-petroleum products. To quote Kenny Bruno at Corporate Watch: “When a company spends more on advertising its environmental friendliness than on environmental actions, that’s greenwash.”

Tony Hayward, the (relatively) new chief executive has been public about steering BP away from alternative energies and creating a company more focused on shareholder value, safety and meeting tough engineering needs that difficult-to-reach oil demands.

Hayward: Start watching at 11.30 minutes for the change in strategy

Naturally, a shift in culture has occurred since Haywad took control. However, I wonder if the shift has been so large as to shake the culture and the belief of employees in the vision to unacceptable limits. It’s fair to assume that a degree of cynicism would creep into a culture when leadership direction changes from an aspirational promise that transforms society back to predicable aims like financial performance and putting cash into shareholders bank accounts.

The most depressing six words in the English language for any employee to hear from the leadership are: ‘Our brand is about delivering shareholder value’. As a geologist, Hayward may delight in this challenge as it means coming up with new, more efficient solutions for getting at deep oil. But employees will not feel connected to any greater purpose directed at shareholder wealth.

Where there is smoke there is fire (sorry). Serious accidents like this one and the near miss that BP had with it’s football-stadium-sized rig in the same area point to real hurdles in the culture and around leadership’s ability to drive a new vision for the company.

Changing the direction of the company is critical for BPs survival. In order to do so, the leadership must create a direction that is about more than shareholder value and goes well beyond marketing. If not ‘Beyond Petroleum’, a new story needs to be forged with employee’s and society’s concerns at heart.

Without a new vision, BP’s license to operate will dry up. Governor Swartzenager was the first to react by withdrawing his support for offshore exploration on the Tea Ridge project in California. The fallout from this incident will be severe on BPs ability to win bids and compete. It’s all too easy for governments to look like the good guys by not awarding BP a contract.

+ Wikipedia list of BP accidents
+ Leaking Oil Well Lacked Safeguard Device – WSJ.com
+ CEO strategy summary – BP Website
+ Warnings on Backup Systems for Oil Rigs Sounded 10 Years Ago – NYT

In his 2006 state of the union address, George Bush stated that “America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world”. The topic of security is certainly not a new theme for politicians, but it is a new move for an oil company (or any other company for that matter).

This campaign seems to be the latest step forward from the beyond petroleum narrative to to discuss other reasons to go green(er). This new message and others like it from the same campaign move subtly in a fresh direction by suggesting the political dimension of energy security and stability. This is a departure from the more focused environmental message adopted since 2000.

The new message equates feelings of security – or lack of conflict – with fuel diversity. Are BP aiming to achieve greater authenticity by bringing a political dimension to the fray? Creating a dialogue around the politics of energy security is an interesting new approach that nevertheless remains consistent with their stated values  listed under their brand promise. It will be interesting to see where this approach goes since it looks like this could just be the opening statement.