BP adverts look just like my site!
About a month ago I was watching television and an advert for BP appeared and goddam did their new advertising aesthetic look like my site. Now I'm not seriously suggesting that they ripped off the design of my site, but the synchronicity is pretty astonishing - particularly given that plasticbag.org used an exclusively yellow highlight for a few months early on. I tried to take a picture of the TV at the time, with no success (lots of banding and stuff) but last night I was on an escalator in a tube station and stumbled upon a huge block of billboards. And here are the pictures:
So it's all quite funny and entertaining and everything. We're clearly all meshed with the same zeitgeist or whatever, but in the spirit of accidental crossovers (particularly given the acronymic similarity between BP and PB.org) and inspired by a comment by Mr Paul Hammond, I've remixed their logo in return to make it fit with the various plasticbag.org colour schemes. Maybe I'll use it as a logo for a while sometime in the future... Hopefully they'll see the joke and won't sue me or anything:
Comments
Please stay on-topic, informative and polite. I reserve the right to remove comments for whatever vague capricious reasons seem reasonable at the time.
Is it an accident that while BP uses its design to emphasize its green credentials, plasticbag appears to be bigging up its lead (Pb) content...
→ Posted by: rob cave at November 17, 2005 4:55 PM
Shameful to relate, my first thought on seeing those was 'Ooh, that's a bit Plasticbagish/2lmc Spoolish'. (Well, second thought after, 'How can BP have the gall to advertise their touchy-feely eco-credentials?'.)
→ Posted by: Jack Mottram at November 17, 2005 4:58 PM
Whilst I must admire your aggressive land-grab in logo colour-space, four logos with different colour schemes does rather represent a lack of clarity of image - just what is it that you want to say?
→ Posted by: Tom Carden at November 17, 2005 5:01 PM
Yeah, I found that rather stunning too. There seemed to be something disingenuous about a major oil company using a sunflower as a logo, kind of like a burger joint having a happy cow for it's branding.
→ Posted by: Tom Coates at November 17, 2005 5:12 PM
I've seen the print ads in North American mags for a few months now. Funny, plasticbag.org was the first thing that sprung to mind when I saw them. Perhaps it's a "B" thing. =)
→ Posted by: Gord Fynes at November 17, 2005 5:13 PM
yeah, nice theory except playlouder.com has used a yellow highlight for about five years now.
→ Posted by: sinner at November 17, 2005 6:33 PM
In the States at least, these ads aren't new... They have been up at least a year. I love BP's branding. It's totally hypocritical, but they do a good job convincing American's at leat to buy more fuel for their big ass cars.
→ Posted by: Jim Renaud at November 17, 2005 6:35 PM
BP CI.
→ Posted by: Alexander at November 17, 2005 7:34 PM
Perhaps if you assured us all your plastic bags were fully recyclable, then BP couldn't possibly come after you?
→ Posted by: Aegir at November 17, 2005 9:01 PM
Lying oil bastards. They are spending millions of lying ad campaigns while they support the corrupt oil system and the war in Iraq.
→ Posted by: Jake of 8bitjoystick.com at November 17, 2005 9:51 PM
The yellow highlights have actually been around for some time. They appeared first in internal communications around 2003, they were also sort of applied to headers in the website redesign in that same year (Sapient design.
→ Posted by: Jared at November 17, 2005 11:44 PM
I'm not being funny, but there are other creative people in the world that get paid to think of things. Since when has a yellow highlight been original?
I like reading your blog, Tom, but in this instance I think you're overreacting a little!
→ Posted by: Matt Sephton at November 18, 2005 1:09 AM
Matt. Come on. Please. People tell me that when I do these posts I should just do the statement and not overly explain what I'm on about, but this is precisely why I fill them with clarifiers and qualifications. I couldn't really have been more clear about this one, surely? The following lines all appear in the original post:
"Now I'm not seriously suggesting that they ripped off the design of my site" / "So it's all quite funny and entertaining and everything. We're clearly all meshed with the same zeitgeist or whatever, but in the spirit of accidental crossovers..." / "Hopefully they'll see the joke"
→ Posted by: Tom Coates at November 18, 2005 1:27 AM
BP spend about 95% of their adverising budget talking about how green they are. And I suspect they have a big budget.
As for the logo, you know of course that they'd sue you into the ground :-)
→ Posted by: Sam Newman at November 18, 2005 9:31 AM
"kind of like a burger joint having a happy cow for it's branding."
I'd so eat at that place.
→ Posted by: Jamie Thingbox at November 18, 2005 10:14 AM
They should steal it back - pb is the symbol for lead in the periodic table...but I guess we're a few years out of date now that we've all gone unleaded.
→ Posted by: Rob at November 18, 2005 12:44 PM
Hey Tom, I don't remember how far back, but these ads have been appearing on the NY subway for more than a year, possibly two. Strange, because I still can't remember where I saw it first, but it has always reminded me of your site...
P.S. Are you ever going to reply to my email of the other week :)
→ Posted by: EiNY at November 20, 2005 4:46 PM
Yep, these ads have been running in the USA for about a year.
British Petrolium re-branded themselves as "BP" in the USA, then globally, as it had a lot of negative connotations outside of the UK.
→ Posted by: Martin at November 20, 2005 7:34 PM
Nice...I came to your site and was trying to figure out what the point of all this highlighting was but looks like its catching on...going to take me some time to get used to it. Good word!
→ Posted by: Jeremy at November 22, 2005 2:13 AM
hey come on people. it's just a yellow highlight. if you say that the ad was a rip off, you might be very wrong! and think about ads where they have black text on white background. i'd say, rip off. or not. cheers.
→ Posted by: finnishman at January 1, 2006 12:22 AM