| OCR Text |
Show 276 about the gas they sell. In an article titled "Generic vs. Brand-Name Gas: Are They Different?" ABC News reported that even though all refined gasoline is almost exactly the same, "some people feel more comfortable dealing with a particular brand" (Leamy, 2007, para. 8). While oil companies work hard to create comfortable affects for consumers, one challenge they must confront is the perception that oil companies are inherently environmentally destructive. In 2000, BP attempted to overcome this perception by changing its logo from a shield, with the letters "BP" inside it (see Figure 5.1), to a "helios" that displayed a colorful, green and yellow sun (see Figure 5.2). This created a corporate persona that was energetic, clean, and environmentally friendly. BP, which previously stood for "British Petroleum," became bp,31 short for "beyond petroleum." bp began propagating its new brand with a $35 million global campaign for service stations, also known as retail networks (Stevenson, 2007), that used advertisements to create brand loyalty. bp released two animated commercials that used music to create rhetorical affect. The first, and probably most popular advertisement shows an infant driving a car with three infant passengers. They are all singing to a "Say 31 When bp changed its logo in 2000 it also lowercased its letters, and "bp" is now the official name, and form, of this corporate entity. This dissertation chapter uses "BP" to refer to BP/bp as a multiple corporate subject before 2000, and "bp" to refer to the post2000 BP/bp subjective multiplicity. This decision also comes with political implications, as it may be read that the choice to use both BP and bp when talking about this corporate subject performs the articulatory function of this subjective form. As such, the name BP may refer to BP/bp in the context of publics articulating BP as an environmental devastator, a foreign colonizer, and a corporate greenwashing machine, and the name bp may imply subjective relations from the corporation's perspective. This author is not doing this as an act of solidarity with one particular side of the many arguments; rather, I am just mapping the argumentative situation. But because subjectivity is a schizophrenic event, an articulation, and a "happening born" (DeLuca, 1999, p. 134), it seems suitable to reflect this subjective process when writing about the multiple corporate subject. |
