Business Challenge
The brief was to support WPP planning the launch of BP’s new corporate narrative. This was the first iteration of the brand since Deepwater Horizon and the biggest campaign they have launched for over a decade.
Since 2010 the brand had suffered reputational damage, losing the trust of key opinion leaders. The new positioning was designed to communicate the fact that BP’s future business outlook was bright needed to rebuild trust, credibility, and ultimately generate advocacy, among its global key opinion leader audience – politicians and policy-makers, investors, academics, journalists and C-Suite business leaders.
The Approach..
Research and analysis
The complexity of modern digital communications has had a profound effect on brands and their interactions with key opinion leaders. The rise and importance of digital influencers; the notion of peer-based trust; how filter-bubbles shape opinion and understanding; content creation and sharing. These are drivers of our digital world.
Blackbook London’s first step was to work with WPP research agency, Added Value, to scope and conduct a detailed research and insight analysis to inform our strategy and support the launch objectives.
Using digital tools Blackbook London cast a modern lens on BP’s traditional audiences by redefining them to include valuable digital influencers and developing new targeted audiences. Additionally, we identified new opinion leaders and formers who would amplify the campaign and, through advocacy, contribute to its success.
Media Strategy
Working with WPP’s media agency, Mindshare Worldwide, I designed the overarching global media strategy for BP. This combined the original research and insights developed above with third-party publisher data and internal brand studies to set the audience and media context for the campaign.
From this a comprehensive strategy was created defining campaign objectives, appropriate brand tone of voice, role for media, channel priorities, flighting structure and creative rotation. Importantly, we worked closely with WPP’s Ogilvy and Purple Strategies to ensure that the creative development was fully aligned with the media activation strategy to deliver the campaign objectives successfully.
In partnership with WPP’s brand consultancy, Landor, I created a measurement framework for the campaign. This integrated both brand and media evaluation in order to evaluate the short-term media effects of the launch campaign as well as the longer-term health of the BP brand.