With BP’s deadly Gulf of Mexico disaster making headlines all over the world—and the massive slick making its way to the coasts of Florida and Louisiana—experts everywhere are scurrying to calculate the damages to everything from fish and birds to jobs and revenue. And while it’s straightforward to calculate the $25 billion BP has lost in market value since the explosion, measuring its annihilated brand value is trickier.
“Since the accident, BP has gone from being No. 1 in its category in our brand loyalty index to dead last,” Robert Passikoff, founder of Brand Keys, tells Marketing Daily. “Today, reputation is your brand positioning minus what you’ve been caught doing. That is exactly what we are seeing here, and BP is in a lot of trouble.”
Branding expert Lisa Merriam agrees. “The much-admired green sun BP brand died this week,” she tells us. “This is a brand that never left the marketing department. No matter what they said the company stood for, they never lived it. Despite all those smug ads about wind farms and being ‘Beyond Petroleum,’ this shows they are just like any other oil company—their green brand is as dead as all of the wildlife washing up on Louisiana shores.”
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