A NatGas Ad from Life Magazine – the Issue with Jane Fonda on the Cover…

Along with noticing the cover photo of Jane Fonda, titled “Busy Rebel,” on the April 23, 1971 issue of Life Rachel unearthed in her old bedroom closet, I found this American Gas Association print ad.

What interests me is that you rarely see an organization like this tabbed as a consistent brand advertiser. Yet the AGA has stayed true to its product, promoting natural gas to this day as “Clean. Efficient. Safe. Energy.” The headline and visual of this ad is just one element of a very long-running advocacy and marketing program.

(It’s in good company, even though some other ads in the issue represent brands that are gone with the wind: American Motors, TWA, Pan Am. There are plenty of stayers. In Life’s four-decade-old pages are advertisements for long-timers Chevrolet, Volvo, Gilbey’s Gin, Jarman Shoes and Kretschmer Wheat Germ among many others.)

The natural gas advertising program has worked well over the years, I think, building recognition and acceptance of natgas as a responsible fuel among consumers particularly. As part of the API ad program, for example, a current energy efficiency ad is here.

These days though, industry ad emphasis has shifted to American job creation in a big way; and to lining natgas up with renewable energy. Tim Sullivan has tied natural gas to renewables and said on the Great Energy Challenge blog that “Natural gas and renewable energy are domestic energy resources in abundant supply throughout the US. They are a secure domestic supply of energy.” So there’s both “natural” and “energy security” in the mix right now.

All good stuff, right? Natural gas wins. Well, no – it’s hard to escape the current demonization of natural gas extraction among certain public and environmental stakeholder groups. As in leave our Marcellus shale alone. This is one more demonstration of “dueling advocacies.” Without a national energy policy, we all end up losers in the 40-year struggle symbolized by this clean-air ad.

BTW: As far as Fonda’s brand is concerned, it has undergone a whole lot of change over four decades. The Life story about her comes 14 months before she shows up in Hanoi, hanging out with the North Vietnamese and sitting on one of the NVA’s antiaircraft guns. Anyone remember that? Talk about demonization.

R&B@OTC: Along with 78,000 Other People, We Came to See and Be Seen.

We forget. We all forget – and fast, too. When I wrote here about the 2008 Offshore Technology Conference, oil was $128/barrel. Today, after the close of this year’s OTC, the price is $97.30 – down from a high of $113 a month ago. In the middle, there have been ups and downs, spills and chills and drilling moratoria. Plus constant predictions of “the end of civilization as we know it” in terms of a bleaker, far more expensive energy future.

So why, in the face of so much negativism and angst, did more than 78,000 of us go to OTC 2011, generating another record-busting year? One reason is our recognition (at least as far as I can tell) that oil and gas aren’t the end of us; but rather, they’re Western civilization’s guarantor.

That’s a big word but no less true. Hydrocarbons not only fuel our present lives, they assure the quality and durability of what we have achieved financially and culturally.

This is not to say our industry doesn’t have its tin ears and big mouths. Transocean’s boneheaded safety bonus announcements a month ago are just one example of how to make an entire business segment look real bad.

OTC is energy – the thrilling buzz of making things happen, of participating. It only took me and Brian Bearden sitting together in the PSR Group booth for five minutes, getting this caricature drawn, to also draw a cheerful crowd of lookers…and sitting ducks for the PSR people working the booth. (Thanks and you’re welcome to the PSR gang!)

George Foster of Foster Marketing answered me this: “What’s the marketing value of exhibiting at the Offshore Technology Conference?”

Trade shows are the last bastion of building personal relationships in this digital age. The opportunity to reacquaint with clients and prospects from all over the world at OTC is  phenomenal. Not only the relationship-building, but to know that making one sale pays for the show makes OTC well worth the expense.

I have pushed the same query to other colleagues, veterans of working in or visiting clients at this year’s OTC. When I get more answers, I’ll post them and let you know. Meanwhile, newly headlined Barrett-Wehlmann-Proctor principal Jim Proctor splits being seen five ways:

From the optimist’s perspective, it’s keeping your brand relevant in the context of the global industry’s biggest event of the year.

From the pessimist’s point of view, it’s not being conspicuous by your absence.

For the salesperson: “I can see 40 customers in a day, not get on a plane and it only costs $1.7 million.”

For the marketer, it’s accumulating those pesky exhibitor points and improving location – year after year.

And from the CFO’s perspective: “What else are we going to do with all these profits?”

Thank you to Tuesday’s wingman Bearden, principal of web design consultancy Upstream Marketing. Thanks to Signalwrite clients here and abroad, and to everyone who made a great OTC 2011 possible…nothing cartoonish about any of ‘em but great colleagues all.

Petrophysical Solutions’ New “Discoveries Drive Value” Brand Comes True

A new brand look - and words - for Petrophysical Solutions, Inc., starts with a map.We started rebranding Petrophysical Solutions – PSI – this past spring. You may have read this post about early phases. Now the Houston-based consulting firm’s just-launched website puts the cap on its public presence.

Wikipedia points out that petrophysicists help oil and gas engineers and other geoscientists understand the rock properties of the reservoir. PSI is clearly in the value-add business, though, and there’s more to the PSI brand than the basic nuts and bolts of petrophysics:

In every Age of Exploration, discoveries drive value. Even if these words never appeared in ancient maps or Renaissance geographies, they’re what PSI petrophysicists do today and every day.

We used antique maps to connect with value-driving discoveries. Watch this new site – every month, PSI’s president will create a new post about a particular map and its impact on the Age of Exploration. We’re calling this blog section CARTOLOGY.

I’m grateful to have helped invent it and write it. But even more: Thanks to Kay Krenek for the outstanding conceptualization-and-design partnership that has led us to this unusual visual approach. Thanks to Brian Bearden and Michelle Webb of Zephyr Salvo for the web development work.

Above all, thanks to the client for a chance to bring something special in the way of a marketing approach to oil and gas consulting.

Rebranding PSI…

I don’t often get to use a 450-year-old map as part of a rebranding campaign. Now, in one headline, Petrophysical Solutions, Inc has launched a fresh brand platform. One headline and that antique map, which displays the Gulf of Mexico, now appear together in the Houston company’s first new ad.

Petrophysical Solutions, Inc (PSI) delivers single-well analysis, integrated field studies, seismic petrophysics, interpretations of large petrophysical databases and old log sets and other geophysical consulting capabilities.

The map comes from the cartographic collection of PSI’s President, Bill Price. It was created by Sebastian Münster in 1540. Titled “Tabula Novarum Insularum,” it holds the real key to the company’s rebranding. You see, Münster’s map was the first to name the Pacific Ocean (Mare Pacifum). First to show one of the earliest depictions of Japan (Zipangri). That ship? It’s Magellan’s Victoria, the only vessel of five to survive his round-the-world voyage. But Münster relied on accounts of the New World by Giovanni da Verrazzano to create that part of the map. That’s where the “Great Mistake” began. According to Price:

Verrazano sailed by the Outer Banks of Carolina. When he observed the sounds on the other side of the barrier islands, he mistook them for the sought-after Northwest Passage. Such was the desire of Europe to find an alternative route to Asia, they would grasp at anything that seemed to lead in that direction. Had Verrazano taken the time to investigate, he would have discovered his mistake.

It’s what can happen in the oil industry today: Too many companies buy into a “sail-by” or quickie interpretation. They’re misled by the fast (or pretty) look, then waste their valuable money on completing zones that shouldn’t be tested or worse.

The new PSI brand campaign takes “Petrophysics that Pays Off” vividly to market. The company devotes more time – and expertise – coming up with a consistent, comprehensive interpretation that represents all the information gathered.

We’ve just begun to roll out the message that better, more informed discoveries drive value. Thanks to the clients, as well as to Kay Krenek for design and art direction. There’ll be more to come…

“Petrophysics that Pays Off” and “Discoveries Drive Value” are trademarks of Petrophysical Solutions, Inc. All rights reserved.

‘Energy Park’

What this is, is a powerplant…a 30-megawatt gas-fired combined-cycle operation that opened last year in Faribault, MN. It’s now known far and wide as one of the most environmentally friendly power plants in the state.

It’s also received a “Best Practices” award from Combined Cycle Journal for environmental stewardship. It’s a fine-looking green-oriented facility that overcame huge local opposition by being sensitive, being community-involved, and being a smarter marketer.

As a marketer, you can truthfully say this is all about the community. The facility is planned to be a “working classroom” to help students and residents from the region understand energy generation, especially environmentally-friendly ways to generate electricity.

What’s even smarter is in the magazine’s award write-up: “Even the nomenclature was important, calling it an ‘Energy Park’ instead of a powerplant.” The write-up points up the fact that it’s not enough to just be the right things in a community. You also have to be known in the right ways.

Like calling yourself ‘Energy Park.’ Remember what Shakespeare said about names? “A rose by any other name still smells as sweet…” So, in the exemplary case of Faribault, is a powerplant renamed for marketing purposes.