Our compatriots in the UK have launched a groundbreaking new competition, inviting designers, industry experts, and members of the public, to redesign oil giant BP’s logo to better reflect the company’s modus operandi. The competition was launched as Greenpeace UK climbers scaled a balcony of BP’s London HQ to hang a giant flag bearing a specially designed, oil soaked BP logo.
The banner was there to greet BP CEO Tony Hayward, as he returned to company’s head office for the first time since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico a month ago. Under Hayward's reign, BP's investment in clean energy has been slashed in favour of dirty sources of oil like tar sands and deep sea wells.
BP is planning to extract oil from the tar sands of Canada, a process that Greenpeace claims releases even more carbon dioxide than drilling for regular oil. Today’s advertisement accuses BP CEO Tony Hayward of cutting investment in clean energy in favour of dirty sources of oil like tar sands and deep sea wells. A company presentation delivered by Hayward in March this year shows that over the course of 2010, BP plans to invest US$19bn on its oil and gas business compared with less than $1bn on all alternative technologies combined (page 67).
Greenpeace UK says the winning logo will be used in ‘innovative and confrontational’ ways as part of an ongoing international campaign against BP.
See here for more information on the competition: www.greenpeace.org.uk/behindthelogo