BP Amoco Unveils New Global Brand to Drive Growth

Release date: 24 July 2000

BP Amoco today unveiled a new, unified global brand and announced plans for a radical update of its retail sites around the world.

The re-vamp - which comes 12 years after BP's sites were last modernised and 20 years after the refurbishment of Amoco's network - is part of a major drive by the group to grow its worldwide retail business by over 10 per cent a year.

The move to a single brand follows a $120 billion series of mergers and acquisitions which, over the past two years, has brought together the former British Petroleum, Amoco Corporation, Atlantic Richfield (ARCO) and most recently Burmah Castrol, to create a combined group with a market value of more than $200 billion.

Today's announcement reveals that the enlarged group will in future be known simply as BP, with the familiar BP shield and Amoco torch replaced by a fresh 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. It also echoes an original marble motif in the London headquarters of BP which was designed by the celebrated architect, Sir Edwin Lutyens, in the 1920s.

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 correspondence. But its appearance on retail pole-signs will be phased to coincide with the up-dating of the company's retail network, currently 28,000 sites around the world, which will take four years to complete.

The first new retail sites will open later this year in London and in Cleveland and Indianapolis in the US, 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 proprietary cleaner-burning fuels and premier Castrol lubricants, the novel BP Connect service 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 said it had had spent some $7 million on researching and preparing the new brand, principally on legal and copyright verification and protection in the countries where it operates or might wish to do business in the future. It plans to spend a further $25 million a quarter in support of the brand change, mainly non-retail signage and additional advertising. It said the cost of re-vamping its retail 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 worldwide. All the company's US sites east of the Rockies would continue to sell Amoco fuel products and feature Amoco Ultimate which is recognised as a leading quality fuel. It also intended to retain the ARCO brand and marketing strategy at its 1,800 retail outlets on the US West Coast.

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."

Further information:

Office: BP Press Office
Phone : 020 7496 4358/ 4624/ 4324/ 4851/ 4708

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