BP Amoco today unveiled a new, unified global brand and announced plans for a radical update of its service stations
around the world.
The re-vamp – which comes 12 years after BP’s sites were last modernised – is part of a major drive by the company to
grow its world-wide retail business by over 10 per cent a year.
The move to a single brand follows a series of mergers and acquisitions which, over the past two years, has brought
together the former British Petroleum, US oil companies Amoco and ARCO and most recently Burmah Castrol, to create a
combined group with a market value of more than US$200 billion.
Today’s announcement reveals that the enlarged group will in future be known simply as BP, with the BP shield and Amoco
torch replaced by a new symbol depicting a vibrant sunburst of green, white and yellow.
Named the Helios mark after the sun god of ancient Greece, the new logo is intended to exemplify dynamic energy – in all
its forms, from oil and gas to solar – that the company delivers to its ten million daily customers around the world.
BP Amoco Chief Executive Sir John Browne said: “Put simply, we have adopted a single brand to show our customers around
the world that, wherever they see the BP sign, they can consistently expect the highest quality of products and
services.
“We also believe it will greatly strengthen the sense of identity and common purpose of our 100,000 staff in more than
100 countries on whom we depend to produce and distribute those products and services in a way that meets our aspiration
to be a progressive, responsible company.”
The new logo will be rapidly introduced at company offices, manufacturing plants and on company stationery. Its
appearance at service stations will be phased to coincide with the updating of the company’s retail network, currently
28,000 sites around the world, which will take around three years to complete.
New Zealand will be among the first countries to see re-branded service stations within the next few months. Other
cities on the early re-brand programme are London, Cleveland, Indianapolis in the US, and Sydney. Their design will be
based on a radical prototype service station perfected over the last three months at a secret warehouse location in
Atlanta, Georgia.
The new sites, liveried in green, white and yellow, will offer customers a radical new concept in refuelling and
shopping. As well as having Castrol lubricants, the retail shops operating under the name BP Connect will feature
in-store e-kiosks where customers can check weather and traffic conditions, pay without cash or credit cards and call up
directions to local destinations.
While filling their tanks, customers can use a touch-screen monitor to order sandwiches, pastries and snacks which will
be waiting for them inside the store. The screens will also offer sports scores and the latest news headlines.
In line with its commitment to environmental improvement and its major investment in solar, BP’s new sites will be
partly powered by energy from the sun, through solar panels forming the transparent canopy above the pumps.
The company spent around US$7 million on researching and preparing the new brand and plans to spend a further US$25
million a quarter in support of the brand change, mainly non-retail signage and additional advertising. The cost of
re-vamping the service station network was expected to be broadly in line with investment already earmarked by the
pre-merged companies to upgrade their sites.
The company said that although BP will be the single global brand, it intended to retain the value of its strong product
brands with Castrol becoming its premier lubricants brand world-wide.
Sir John Browne said: “We expect the move to a global brand and the introduction of state-of-the-art retail sites to
bring a significant increase in sales and to make a major contribution to our recently-announced target of growing
underlying earnings for the group as a whole by at least ten per cent a year over the next three years.”
ENDS
For further information, please contact:
Jane Diver, Communications Manager
Phone: 04 495 5656
Pager: 026 105 169
Mobile: 025 575 668