Business columns: Time for BP to retire its slogan

Rance CrainAdvertising Age

If your company’s slogan is “Beyond Petroleum,” you had better live up to it, said Rance Crain. For several years now, BP—formerly known as British Petroleum—has splashed the slogan in bright shades of green and yellow across advertisements and corporate banners to herald the company’s “lofty environmental ambitions” and its focus on finding alternative energy sources. Now, in the wake of the ongoing disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, where millions of gallons of oil continue to pour from the crippled Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, it’s time for BP to retire the slogan.

Not only does it stand in brutally ironic counterpoint to the environmental catastrophe in the gulf, it creates the unfortunate impression that “the oil business is no longer BP’s first priority.” That’s not a message that BP, with its long and sorry history of safety violations at its drilling rigs and gasoline refineries, wants to send. Instead of promoting its “environmental striving,” BP “should get off its high horse and concentrate on being a better oil company.”