Good branding can’t help a company if that company sucks

As a designer/marketer/word-of-mouther, I find that building a strong brand can be hard work. But all this hard work on a brand means nothing when the company behind the brand actually stinks. If the company you’re branding it for can’t back it up, people are going to find out, and sometimes in insanely dramatic fashion.

Take everyone’s favorite punching bag these days, British Petroleum.

When their green “helios” branding came out, I thought that BP maybe started trending towards greening their business. Obviously, this is all a crock of shit, especially seeing how the BP oil disaster has become the worst oil spill in US history (suck it, Exxon!).

There is a finite amount of oil in the world, and as the concept of peak oil explains, once we’ve found all the easy-to-find oil, the remaining oil will become harder and costlier to find and extract. Predicting when we’re going to peak is tough, but it sounds to me that it has already happened or is close to happening. I predict that as oil becomes harder to get to, we’re at an increased risk of further destroying our world, all in the name of Texas Tea (oil, that is).

If BP wants to sincerely apologize to us, they should immediately start transitioning to developing renewable energy sources. Their branding is a huge lie, because the company can’t back up the “green” strength of their brand identity. Fast Company has a great article with some amazing visuals about what BP’s logo should actually look like, given that they’re still an oil company destroying the world, all in the name for a bigger annual profit.