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Where has all the oil gone? BP branding and the discursive elimination of
climate change risk
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Introduction
What on earth is a carbon footprint? Everybody in the world has one. It’s the
amount of carbon dioxide emitted each year due to the energy we use. Calculate
the size of your household carbon footprint, learn how you can reduce it, and how
we’re reducing ours at bp.com/carbonfootprint. (BP advert, 2005a , my emphasis)
BP’s catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010 called attention to
the human, social and environmental risks, both short and long term, of deepwater
oil drilling. Prior to this catastrophe, however, one could be forgiven for thinking
that BP, the second largest global oil company, had become a renewable energy
enterprise.1 In recent years, its advertising campaigns have acknowledged the
problem of climate change whilst offering the corporation as the solution to the
problem: BP is the energy company that goes “beyond petroleum”. Yet, these
adverts have served to mask the dominant activities of the company, which remain
the extraction and sale of crude oil, one of the major contributors to CO2 emissions
and climate change. How, then, has an oil company come to figure itself at the
forefront of climate-change communication and activism? Part of the answer lies in
the recent history of BP’s branding processes, understood within the context of the
role of brands as relations of meaning within contemporary culture. Adam
Arvidsson argues that since the 1980s brands have become “spun into the social
fabric as a ubiquitous medium for the construction of a common social world”
where the value of a brand is to “build on its capacity to appropriate identification
with and attachment to the common: to appropriate political passions and affect”
(Arvidsson 2006, 3 & 88). I will argue that BP has appropriated a collective social
concern for the environment in the construction of its brand image, in order to
mitigate its own contribution, as a global oil company, to climate change.
CHAPTER EIGHT
It’s time to turn the heat up on global warming. (BP advert, 2005b)
The issue of climate change is at the forefront of BP’s recent print and TV
advertisements. For an oil company that “was formerly a member of the Global
Climate Coalition (GCC)”, a coalition that “heavily lobbied governments ... to turn
public opinion against concrete action on greenhouse gas emissions” (Corporate
Watch 2006), this admission of the reality of climate change is quite a remarkable
shift of emphasis, even opinion. A recent advert proudly proclaims that “we
became the first major energy company to publicly acknowledge the need to take
steps against global warming” (BP 2005b). In 1997 BP withdrew from the GCC, at
a time when there was growing scientific consensus over the reality of climate
change with the publication in 1995 of the second assessment report by the IPCC
(Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). The report stated that the growth of
greenhouse gases as a result of human activity, such as the burning of fossil fuels,
would interfere “with the climate system [and] will grow in magnitude” (IPCC
1995, 3). Nineteen ninety-seven was also the year that the Kyoto Protocol was
established and international focus on the issue of climate change was high. BP’s
public acknowledgement of this issue was therefore consistent with the political
and environmental concerns of the time, but was also oppositional to other oil
companies such as ExxonMobil who continued to deny climate change.3 Alina
Wheeler observes that “every company needs to differentiate itself from its
competitors and gain greater share…. Brand identity is a critical strategy for
accelerating success” (Wheeler 2003, 8). BP’s acceptance of climate change
marked it out as different from competitors within the oil sector: a key strategy in
establishing brand identity.
Capital (in the form of propertied symbols, and signifying complexes: advertising
brands, television series, music and other forms of content) is socialised to the extent
of it becoming part of the very environment, the bio-political context in which life is
lived. (Arvidsson 2006, 30)
The creation of the BP global brand—through, for example, their logo, their
advertising, their corporate literature, their website, and employee identification—
can be assessed in this light.
It is precisely because brands have become one of the central means of both
creating and sustaining aspects of identity and community within late modernity
that it is important to examine how BP has incorporated the recent social concern
for climate change into its branding processes and to consider the implications of
this branding of climate change within contemporary and future eco-politics. What
messages about climate change is BP communicating to the public? What effects
might these have upon public perceptions of this issue? What forms of action to
address climate change are being delimited and authorised by BP? What role does
consumption play in BP’s commitment to climate change mitigation? Given the
recent increase in ethical or green branding, an examination of BP advertising also
raises questions about the role of green branding and marketing more generally
within contemporary eco-politics. However, before discussing this issue, I will
move on to analyse the discursive strategies used by BP in its climate change
communications through an analysis of its advertising campaigns of 2005-2006.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Holt argues that consumers have become increasingly knowledgeable about the
advertising and branding tactics used by corporations. In order to be successful,
corporations have to create “the perception that brands provide consumers with
original cultural resources untainted by instrumental motivations of sponsoring
companies” (Holt 2002, 84). One technique used by brand managers is called “Life
World Enhancement”, intended to show the authenticity of the brand in relation to
everyday life, for example, through the use of handheld cameras and on-the-street
footage. BP’s TV adverts utilise this technique. One of the UK TV adverts poses
the question “Do you worry about global climate change” to four members of the
general public, three in London and one in Chicago (BP 2005c). Identified as a
white male cabbie, a young Indian woman, a white middle-aged businessman and a
young Asian woman, these individuals come to represent all members of the public
and the varying levels of public knowledge about climate change. Their responses
to the question express individual worries alongside collective concerns and
responsibilities, for example: “I worry because I don’t know much about it” (young
Indian woman); “it’s something that we need to deal with and we need to deal with
it today” (young Asian woman). By directing the question to “you”, with the
responses referring to “I” and “we”, BP is able linguistically to remove itself as a
contributor to the problem of climate change, instead offering itself as an active
participant in the solution: “Our energy efficiency projects have reduced emissions
by over 4 million tonnes since 2001”. There is no explanation of these energy
efficiency projects. Instead the viewer is left with the impression that BP is not
only in touch with public opinion but actually ahead of the game when it comes to
combating climate change.
be responsible for their … companies, for the next generation of owners of that
company, then they’ve got to be investing now in these other alternative, ah,
energy sources, I guess. (BP 2005d)
The answer perfectly encapsulates the progressive and green values articulated by
the BP brand image which incorporates a variety of consumers: the public, the
environment and the shareholders will all benefit from BP’s progressive thinking
and investment strategies. BP’s response in the advert is to agree, presenting solar
power and natural gas as the progressive alternative energy resources. It claims that
“over the last 30 years, we have brought solar power to 160 countries worldwide”.
The benign paternalism of this statement masks the profit-driven incentives of the
company and the reality that solar along with other renewables constituted
approximately 1.6% of the company’s capital investment in 2005.5 BP states that
“[a]lmost 40% of our energy portfolio now consists of cleaner natural gas”. Gas is
offered as an alternative energy source for future generations. Alternative here
means not oil, rather than renewable. Yet gas is conferred with renewable qualities
through its placement next to solar as part of future cleaner energy. Whilst natural
gas does have fewer CO2 emissions than oil (around 20% over a 50 year period
according to the World Energy Council 2006), it is still a fossil fuel and therefore
cannot be part of an energy plan that is straightforwardly carbon neutral.
Furthermore, given the estimates of increased energy needs over the next 10 to 20
years, any benefits from a 20% reduction in CO2 emissions as a result of using gas
rather than oil would be counteracted by the world’s growing energy consumption.
Like the TV adverts, the print advertisements present gas alongside renewable
energy forms, and in doing so set all of these up as equivalents. The low-carbon
diet consists of “cleaner fuels, natural gas, hydrogen, solar, wind” (BP 2005g).
“Cleaner fuels” actually refers to BP Ultimate, a petroleum product which has had
some of its pollutants removed. The purported clean qualities of this product are
communicated in the ad as: “It’s time for fuels to come clean” (BP 2005i). The
statement plays on the notion that companies are dishonest about their practices,
but instead puts the blame upon consumers for not using their product. So: “If all
drivers in the UK were to use BP Ultimate, the reduction in harmful emissions
CHAPTER EIGHT
would be equivalent to taking 1 million cars from the road”. Consumers are
targeted for bad practices, with BP figuring as the responsible company providing
environmentally-friendly products. It reverses the tactics of consumer boycotts by
castigating consumers for not buying the right products. The advert does not
question car use, nor the fact that if all UK drivers were to use BP Ultimate then
BP would be an even more profitable company. As Holt argues, “the cultural
structuring of consumption maintains political support for the market system,
expands markets, and increases profits” (2002, 71). In this instance, the
environmental credentials of consumers, rather than those of the company, are
critiqued in an effort to increase profits.
The question posed by this chapter—“Where has all the oil gone?”—appears to
have been answered in two British broadsheet advertisements that appeared in May
2006. Given that BP’s recent campaign has been promoting every form of energy
CHAPTER EIGHT
other than oil, the latest adverts re-establish oil as part of the company’s energy
activities. The first advert states “Exploring new ways to find oil”. By using the
same visual format as the earlier adverts, this one is discursively linked with the
discourse on climate change already established. The advert tells us that:
Fossil fuels won’t disappear tomorrow, though they will get harder to find. By
developing innovative technology like BP’s Advanced Seismic Imaging, we’ve
been able to make discoveries that were unthinkable only a decade ago … Most
importantly, with more accurate data we can drill fewer wells, reducing our impact
upon the environment. (BP 2006a)
The advert shocks precisely because it identifies BP with oil production. However,
by referencing innovative technology, the advert makes discursive links to the
discourse of climate change in the previous adverts through the belief in
technology as a solution. This is further reinforced by reference to the environment
as the beneficiary of technological advancements.
The second print advertisement, “Exploring new ways to live without it”,
follows on the next page and acts in conversation with the first. As in New
Labour’s discourse of the “Third Way”, two seemingly incompatible activities and
ideals are brought together.6 BP is continuing with oil exploration and production,
whilst also exploring ways to live without it. Here, living without it means using
gas, which is “the cleanest form of fossil fuel” (BP 2006b). These adverts quite
explicitly identify the main activities of the company as oil production, but do so in
a way that presents them in light of future progress. In doing so, climate change
becomes a future event rather than a present reality and one that will be fixed by
technology developed by BP. Such a commitment to the recuperative potential of
technology is characteristic of the paradox that underpins risk society (Beck 1992):
that modern environmental risks such as climate change are technologically
induced, yet science and technology are offered as the means of addressing such
risks. Furthermore, these two adverts articulate the real substance of BP’s
commitment to tackling climate change hidden behind the rhetoric: a view
explained in its annual report, where we find that “BP has contributed significantly
to the evolving public and policy debate on climate change. We support a
precautionary principle, even though we recognise that aspects of the science
remain the subject of expert debate and are not fully proved” (BP 2005, 19). There
is, however, scientific consensus over the reality of human-induced climate change
(IPCC 2001). BP’s high profile advertising campaign thus disingenuously presents
an image of the company as accepting the fact of climate change, when this
acceptance is clearly ambivalent, and subject to economic self-interests, where the
power of technology is both poison and cure:
Fossil fuels currently supply the majority of all the primary energy people use and
will remain fundamental to global energy supply for at least the next 20-30 years.
Innovation to reduce the CO2 emissions from the use of fossil fuels will be a major
contributor to stabilisation during this period. (BP 2005, 19)
BP BRANDING AND CLIMATE CHANGE
of home within the national psyche in order to promote BP’s activities in a positive
light, and to lend further credibility to the company’s environmental credentials.
Overall, the US print adverts differ from those for the UK by giving more
specific examples of BP’s US activities. In doing so, climate change is figured as a
national concern where national endeavours, from BP and consumers alike, are
fundamental to combating climate change. Given the context of mainstream US
politics during this period, with George Bush’s removal of the US from the Kyoto
Protocol in 2001, it is significant that in the US adverts the audience is
interpellated through more specific references to home and nation, in order to
frame climate change within a national context and create a cultural relevance for
the audience. The more specific deployment of consumerist discourse also links in
with US economic development and establishes citizen participation in combating
climate change through consumption processes. Interestingly, the global BP print
adverts combine examples from the UK and the US in order to cement the global
ideology of BP’s activities.
BP BRANDING AND CLIMATE CHANGE
In contrast to the UK, US and Global print adverts, those targeted at a German
audience are significantly different in their visual format. Both of the adverts
feature people in specific locations: one is of a petrol station owner outside his
petrol station; the other is of an architect on the roof of Munich airport. In the first
advert, the BP brand is specifically localised through its affiliation with the
national German brand Aral: “In Germany BP puts deliberate emphasis upon the
Aral brand” (BP 2005t).7 The premise of the advert is to promote the consumption
of BP Ultimate, not as an explicit means of combating climate change (as
portrayed in the global, UK and US adverts), but as a means of consuming the BP
brand values: “Apart from filling up with premium petrol like Ultimate, you also
fuel up the international know-how of BP. Exactly like 2.5 million other customers
daily”. Thus, in contrast to the other adverting campaigns, these adverts start on the
basis of an existing national identity to which BP can contribute through its global
knowledge. The more explicit reference to the BP brand is deployed as a means of
helping a national audience access a global identity and community.
Being a responsible business means taking steps to improve the things we can control
and contributing to wider issues that we can only influence, such as climate change
and social and economic development” (BP Global c).
indeed emerging as a dominant discourse, astute actors recognise that the terms of
this discourse should be cast in terms favourable to them” (1997, 124).
We have to understand what the world expects from large companies and respond
accordingly. In our sector those expectations are focused upon the environment.
Can we demonstrate that our business is not caught in a desperate trade-off
between the desire for economic growth and improved living standards and the
imperative to protect our natural environment? We believe that we can transcend
that trade-off (BP 2002, 12).
We start from the view that the purpose of business is to satisfy human needs and,
in doing so, to generate profits for investors. For BP, that means providing energy
to fuel human progress and economic growth. It also means satisfying the need for
a sustainable environment (BP 2006, 4).
Human needs and economic growth are the orders of priority in a discourse of
teleological progress which casts the environment as secondary. By figuring
energy as a human need, BP is able to legitimise its continuing exploration for oil
as a means of satisfying this need. In doing so, any critique of our increasing
energy consumption is erased. At the same time, any real commitment to
addressing the urgent reality of climate change—in which some of the central
ideological assumptions of capitalist modernity, such as economic growth, might
be questioned—is evaded.
The BP brand, which includes the logo, advertising, corporate literature and
website, are forms of capital which have become socialised. The values
CHAPTER EIGHT
When understood in the context of the history of the denial of climate change
by oil companies, BP’s acknowledgement of the existence phenomenon in its
advertising is a form of action, if only through the manipulation of existing
discursive opportunities. The explicit recognition of climate change would appear
to mark BP out as doing something about the issue. Yet an examination of the
climate-change mitigation activities promoted in the advertisements and in the
annual reports reveals that very little is actually being done. As already stated, the
promotion of gas as a means of tackling climate change draws attention away from
BP’s minimal commitment to renewable energy sources crucial to combating
climate change in the long term. Although a global environmental issue, BP
localises its climate change messages according to national context. For the UK
audience, the financial aspirations of individual workers are invoked through
recourse to reflexive identity. For the US audience, a sense of national identity is
expressed through reference to consumption and the home. For a German public,
an existing national concern for the environment means that participation in a
global community is promoted. Despite the differences across the national
campaigns, all the advertisements target the public as consumers. The only real
action offered by BP to the public to help combat climate change is through the
purchase of BP Ultimate fuel, and a benign trust that BP is working to mitigate
climate change further.
Conclusion
An important task for brand management is to ensure that the ongoing production
of a common social world on the part of consumers proceeds in ways that
reproduce a distinctive brand image, and that strengthens the brand equity—the
productive potential that the brand has in the minds of the consumers—which is
understood as the most important factor behind brand value. (Arvidsson 2006, 74)
Brands will no longer be able to hide their commercial motivations. (Holt 2002,
87)
BP’s brand equity has been based upon an image of environmental leadership
and progressive thought. I have tried to show that, for BP, going “beyond
petroleum” does not mean embracing renewable forms of energy needed to prevent
catastrophic climate change. Instead, BP is committed to increasing oil production
and exploration, developing further markets in Russia, Angola, China and Egypt,
to accompany its existing resources in the North Sea and Alaska. In fact, BP’s
intentions have never been to invest in renewable energy. The company’s branding
and advertising activities, I would argue, constitute a way of creating a new
discourse of energy that draws upon existing discourses of the environment and
sustainability in order to deflect attention away from its dominant ethos, in the
context of a common social world increasingly aware of global climate change.
The fallacy of BP’s espousal of the common environmental good is revealed in the
words of John Browne, the former Group Chief Executive, 1998-2007: “We need
to reinvent the energy business; to go beyond petroleum. Not by abandoning oil
and gas—but by improving the ways in which is used and produced so that our
business is aligned with the long term needs of the world” (quoted in Wheeler
2003, 177). Douglas Holt argues that in the post-postmodern era, brands will
increasingly be made accountable for the reality behind the rhetoric: “Postmodern
CHAPTER EIGHT
branding is perceived as deceitful because the ideals woven into brands seem so
disconnected from, and often contrary to, the material actions of the companies that
own them” (2002, 88). Whilst the actions of BP are increasingly being exposed,
not least as a result of the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, its deployment of
green marketing strategies has wider implications. By equating environmental
politics with branding tactics, environmentalism may become devalued as a mere
marketing strategy and lose the political support of the public. Addressing climate
change requires changes in practices, as well as beliefs and values. Analysing BP’s
branding strategies urges us to think about the broader consequences of equating
environmental (and climate change) politics with corporate capitalism, and the role
of green branding within this.
BP BRANDING AND CLIMATE CHANGE
Notes
1. ExxonMobil is the biggest non-state-owned oil company, with BP second. See
Christopher Helman, “The World’s Biggest Oil Companies”, Forbes.com, July 9, 2010.
http://www.forbes.com/2010/07/09/worlds-biggest-oil-companies-business-energy-big-
oil.html (accessed July 13 2010).
2. This re-branding was criticised by Greenpeace and the Free Tibet campaign in 2001, in
relation to BP’s lack of an explicit strategy for phasing out fossil fuel production and sales,
as well as in its investment in PetroChina, the Chinese oil company attacked for its
involvement in Tibet and human rights abuses. See Barker 2001 and Buchan 2001.
3. A high-profile Stop Esso campaign was launched in 2001 by a coalition of environmental
NGOs including Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and People and Planet, backed by many
celebrities. Its purpose was to expose ExxonMobil’s financial contribution to George Bush’s
election campaign, and the subsequent withdrawal of the US from the Kyoto Protocol
following Bush’s election.
4. The US TV adverts are very similar to the UK ones. The Global TV adverts draw upon
the UK and US versions. Because of similarities, I will analyse the UK TV adverts.
5. My own calculation based upon figures presented in the BP Annual Report and
Accounts (BP 2005, 12). Included in the 3% is a whole range of activities that come under
the heading “Gas, Power and Renewables”, listed as “the marketing and trading of natural
gas, natural gas liquids (NGLs), liquefied natural gas (LNG), LNG shipping and
regasification activities, and low-carbon power development, including solar and wholesale
marketing and trading” (BP Alternative Energy, BP 2005, 8).
6. The ideology of the Third Way brings together the seeming incompatibilities of left-wing
social democracy and right-wing economic neo-liberalism to produce an apparently
compatible discourse committed to social justice and the operations of the free market. BP’s
purported commitment to climate change mitigation, at the same time as increasing its
extraction and sale of crude oil (a major producer of CO2), is an example of a similar desire
to resolve or conceal structural and ideological contradictions. On the Third Way, see
Fairclough, 2000.
7. My thanks to Irmi Karl for the translation from German to English in both adverts.
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ownloads/A/Advertising_UK_improve_capital.pdf (accessed May 21, 2006).
BP 2005l. “Capital gains”. UK print advert.
http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/STAGING/global_assets/d
ownloads/A/Advertising_UK_capital_gains.pdf (accessed May 21, 2006).
BP 2005m. “What on earth is a carbon footprint?” US print advert.
http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/STAGING/global_assets/d
ownloads/A/ABP_ADV_what_on_earth_is_a_carbon_footprint.pdf (accessed
October 15, 2006).
BP 2005n. “Reducing our footprint: here’s where we stand”. US print advert.
http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/STAGING/global_assets/d
ownloads/B/BPOTS05_reducing_our_footprint.pdf (accessed October 15,
2006).
BP 2005o. “What size is your carbon footprint?” US print advert.
http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/STAGING/global_assets/d
ownloads/A/ABP_ADV_what_size_is_your_carbon_footprint.pdf (accessed
October 15, 2006).
BP 2005p. “What’s in store for solar?” US print advert.
BP BRANDING AND CLIMATE CHANGE
http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/STAGING/global_assets/d
ownloads/B/BPOTS05_in _store_for_soloar.pdf (accessed October 15, 2006).
BP 2005q. “Solar energy, aisle four”. US print advert.
http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/STAGING/global_assets/d
ownloads/B/BPOTS05_solar_aisle_four.pdf (accessed October 15, 2006).
BP 2005r. “For finding energy there’s no place like home”. US print advert.
http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/STAGING/global_assets/d
ownloads/B/BPOTS05_no_place_like_home.pdf (accessed October 15, 2006).
BP 2005s. “For saving energy there’s no place like work”. US print advert.
http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/STAGING/global_assets/d
ownloads/B/BPOTS05_no_place_like_work.pdf (accessed October 15, 2006).
BP 2005t. “In Germany BP puts deliberate emphasis upon the Aral brand”.
German print advert.
http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/STAGING/global_assets/d
ownloads/A/Advertising_DE_retail.pdf (accessed October 15, 2006).
BP 2005u. “Munich Airport’. German print advert.
http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/STAGING/global_assets/d
ownloads/A/Advertising_DE_solar.pdf (accessed October 15, 2006).