I just got through listening to President Obama’s speech about the BP Oil Spill. When I wrote the blog What the BP Gulf Oil Spill Means to BP Solar in May, who could have imagined we’d be where we are now? Around that time government officials were estimating that oil was leaking at a rate of 5,000 barrels a day (a five-fold increase from initial estimates). A few days after that blog was written, NPR began reporting that the spill rate could be closer to 70,000 barrels per day. That set off a controversy, with BP’s COO disputing the NPR oilspill estimates. A month later, a US scientific team has fixed the estimates of the oil spill rate at between 35,000 to 60,000 barrels a day.

We are in day 57, with no end in sight. We’ve gone from “the largest oil spill in American history” to the “worst environmental disaster in American history.” We continue to hear about the chaotic manner in which BP has handled the crisis. We’ve gone from what was described in that earlier blog to the realization that the BP spill was turning the gulf into a dead zone.

In the earlier post that I’m updating here, I explored the branding repercussions affecting BP Solar. Since then, I as able to access a talk given by a BP Group Vice President of Marketing on April 26, 2001 at The CNN Fortune Time Global Marketing Forum in Rome, Italy. Her talk was titled “Branding in the 21st Century; A BP Perspective.” She points out BP at that time was “a company made up of 100,000 people thrown together as a result of a series of mergers and acquisitions. Almost overnight the new BP became:

•  One of the biggest companies in the world with over 100,000 employees worldwide   
•  The largest oil and natural gas producer in the US and UK
•  The largest non-OPEC oil producer in the world
•  The world’s largest solar company
•  And a company with more than 28,000 service stations world-wide.”

In somewhat of a sad foretelling manner she stated: “I believe at the end of the day, the strongest brands still result from powerful emotional connections that companies are able to make with the general population.” She went on to identify three themes that identify “what people expect, and demand, from great brands:

• Great brands deliver not what a company makes, but what customers need.
• Great brands make a positive impact in people’s lives.
• Great brands demonstrate alignment between external words and internal actions” 

Fast-forward from 2001 to 2010 – I’m reading articles titled You Don’t Trust BP? It’s Too Late, BP and Big Oil: Shut Down America’s Greenwashing Machine and Americans Don’t Care if BP Goes Bankrupt Paying for Oil Spill, Poll Shows. Somehow I doubt this was the branding goal BP had in mind.

So, again I ask, where does this put BP Solar? There hasn’t been a lot of press on BP Solar since the the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Distaster. Renewable Energy World tells us:

BP Solar With over 35 years of experience and installations in over 160 countries, BP Solar is one of the world’s largest solar companies and has manufacturing facilities in the U.S., Spain, India, and China.

As I wrote in the earlier blog, Home Depot has exclusively carried the BP Solar brand. Since I wrote that last blog, Home Depot in California has thrown out all of its long-time loyal solar installers and replaced them with Solar City. Perhaps this is a play to replace a tarnished brand with the Solar City brand. In any event, anyone buying solar panels at a California Home Depot will get BP Solar AND Solar City. This might apply in Home Depot Warehouses outside of California as well. Will it work for Home Depot, Solar City and BP Solar? I guess we continue to wait and see.