Case Study: Marathon Oil
How to stand out in a downturn
To go from a virtual unknown to a competitive player during a downturn, Marathon Oil needed an energetic brand that delivered results.
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Delivered strong operational and financial performance for shareholders
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01.
The Brief
When Marathon Oil and Marathon Petroleum parted ways in 2011, Marathon Oil became a small fish in a big pond, with a name that led to brand confusion.
Whilst corporate restructuring can make perfect financial sense, it can create brand confusion in the marketplace which is what happened when Marathon Oil announced the spin off its downstream refining and retail operations. Whilst this was a shrewd strategic move financially, calling one company Marathon Petroleum Corp. and the other one Marathon Oil Corp. created genuine brand risk as people wondered which Marathon is which.
The new CEO had an audacious vision: to transform Marathon Oil into a Premier Independent exploration and production company headquartered in Houston, Texas with a strong portfolio of assets delivering defined growth leveraged to crude oil production with exploration upside, with principal operations in the United States and Angola, Canada, Equatorial Guinea, Norway, the United Kingdom and other international locations. The business needed a confident, striking brand, and a true partner to help them get there.
“Establishing a strong brand identity requires the development of a foundation of real values and a relevant corporate culture to support it. To navigate through that process, we partnered with Hundred Brand and they have steered us to success”
Bobbie Pritchett
Creative Services Manager, Marathon Oil
02.
The Approach
Working closely with Marathon Oil, a review of the brand showed a level of complexity and inconsistency that did not reflect the organization.
The team decided it was pragmatic to retain the logo and name, while pushing the brand to the max to reflect the ambitions of the Executive team. The cost of rebranding sites, terminals, transportation vehicles etc. would have been quite substantial and the risk of alienating core constituents was also a concern. As well as the marketing cost and time to build any new brand, Marathon already had positive brand equity in the markets they operated in which would be lost with a complete rebrand.
The challenge then was to move perceptions from ‘so, so’ to ‘wow!’ without spooking the market; amplifying the brand position so that every message consistently promoted the new strategy both internally and externally.
The process began with an employee survey. Results of the feedback emphasized eight key attributes of the Company: focused, energetic, innovative, nimble, socially responsible, ethical, driven and global. The brand needed to reflect these key descriptors and offer a version of Marathon oil that could compete and inspire its peers.
By the time the brand was rolled out internally in 2016, employees readily embraced it and could see the positive changes it embodied reflected in their reality. Now Marathon Oil is succeeding as a top performing organization, with a brand to match. Anecdotal feedback from other companies in the same space highlights that many now look to Marathon as an example of fantastic branding that they use to improve their own marketing materials.
The company ranked at the top of Statista’s annual survey of America’s Best Employers which asked workers to rate their company on 30 attributes – Marathon ranked exceptionally well on Image.
03.
The Results
The new Marathon Oil brand:
