Yipes! Stripes!

The things I discover when I take a road trip: a total rebranding job southwest of Houston that I’d not been aware of before. (And no, it’s not an excuse to put a pretty girl up on the blog…merely an example...really.)

As I headed southwest for Mexico, to hunt the wily whitewing, I ran across my first Stripes© store in Goliad, TX. It’s a C-store (convenience store) hiding under a Valero gas canopy, my first sight of a new trade dress campaign that’s a year old. Apparently, I don’t get out enough.

I asked the counter clerk who operated Stripes. She could only tell me that the chain sold Valero gasoline and she thought its headquarters was in Corpus Christi. It is.

Susser Holdings Corporation tapped Houston-based BrandExtract to: help define and launch the new brand. BrandExtract crafted a complete identity package, including new logos and exterior store signage. The new look and feel will be taken to market via outdoor boards, weekly radio spots, in-store point-of-purchase signage, Stripes cups and other packaging. (It’s very thoughtful of Susser to mention the agency on its website.)

Then I arrived (with six of our eventual 10-man hunting party) in McAllen and found Stripes everywhere – the eastern Valley area alone has 60+ stores in the phone book. According to Susser, it’s one of the Top 20 operators of C-stores nationwide…and Stripes is the “new face” of the old Circle-K brand.

It’s a very good job – despite the apparent dissonance between the Stripes and Valero trade dressings. It doesn’t seem to hurt the company’s business at retail. And there may be some not-really-hidden reason behind the brand change.

According to a company press release, Susser began re-branding its convenience stores from the Circle-K licensed brand to Stripes in the second quarter of 2006. At approximately the same time, Susser began re-branding its fueling islands to Valero from CITGO after signing a new 12-year supply agreement in July 2006 – in the third quarter.

All the retail stores that were supplied by CITGO were to be supplied by Valero. It looks like Susser was one of the breakaways from CITGO in the wake of the remarks by Venezuelan President Chavez that so upset CITGO marketing partners here in the US.

The same February 2007 press release quoted Ron Coben, Susser’s CMO: “The main goal of this campaign was to transfer the goodwill that we have earned over the last decade as Circle K into even stronger customer loyalty as Stripes.”

One valid reason to re-brand a company or operating unit (especially one long-established) is to signal a change in direction – in this case, leaving behind old or no-longer-appropriate marks (Circle-K and CITGO) for new offerings (Valero).

Whether you agree that Valero’s teal-and-yellow looks a bit odd against the Stripes red-and-white, Coben’s team and BrandExtract have come up with a very strong identity – and you can see executions in addition to “Bikini Girl” here.

On the one hand, Wall Street doesn’t seem to have given Susser much credit for this particular effort. But given that it’s a year after the new brand’s rollout and every Stripes store I saw was crowded, I’d have to say the campaign is very successful: Customers have picked up on the brand transference. What’s the disconnect among Susser stakeholders? I’ll write Ron Coben to find out.

And hats off to Jonathan Fisher and the BrandExtract team for a neat ongoing campaign.

PS: Circle-K is still a going concern. Susser was a major licensee.

Opportunity Ads

Did you find yourself in a conversation about HACs and BOBs at last night’s art gallery opening? Didn’t think so. How about “High TAN crudes?” Not those either, huh?

Up and down every value chain, there are corners, segments and niches where the language gets arcane and the buzzwords turn mysterious. But somebody is working in these areas and that’s how these new print ads for Baker Petrolite came to be created.

The basic subject is crude oil. In the oil-refining business, operators have to control the costs of the crudes they process: the hydrocarbons that are turned into gasoline (among many other things). Crude oil streams are big cost items; so when refiners can get them, the least expensive crude oils really help margins. These are “opportunity crudes.”

They could be bottom-of-the-barrel stuff (BOBs) or high-acid crudes (HACs). They can be refined but they cause their own set of problems, like unanticipated corrosion. The cost of the crude will be lower, but the cost of refining them could be much higher unless you control the effects on your plant.
That’s the problem with opportunity: you can get a really good deal on something, but you ought to be prepared to deal with the consequences.

I’ve had an opportunity myself: to help Baker Petrolite create fractional-page ads that let refiners know and understand what the issues are – and how to be prepared. Controlling the potential damage caused by high-TAN or high metals crudes is one of the Baker Petrolite specialties.

“Be Prepared” is the main message of the ad series, in which we demonstrate one approach to conveying messages: headlines and copy say one thing while the photos portray a different but complementary theme.

Visually, we borrowed interest. We portray teamwork and partnership in challenging situations – specifically, alpine sports like ice-climbing or competitive bobsledding. Working with its customers is another Baker Petrolite specialty and we convey this with photographs. Visually, we borrowed interest.

Our copy, however, is specific: each of the ads in the series reveals a solution to the challenges of processing a particular kind of opportunity crude. The benefits are bullet-pointed.

It’s the headlines that generate the targeting in this advertising approach. Aside from appearing in specific magazines, this series is designed to (and will) attract readers who know what refining high-TAN crude, for example, entails.

Recognizing the specialized knowledge that’s involved in this niche creates “targets of opportunity” for the advertiser. No head-scratching over HACs and BOBs…just good readership.

Creating the ads was a team effort as well. Thanks to the Baker Petrolite team here and abroad for the opportunity to produce interesting work for marketing to refineries.