Big Oil Solves Its Branding Problem With Audience Insights

Big Oil Solves Its Branding Problem With Audience Insights

As big oil takes center stage–again–we were interested to understand how industry leaders could build good rapport with personalized customer communications. In this week’s product showcase, we took a deep dive into the audiences behind Chevron and ConocoPhillips. In order to assess content creation efforts, we needed to understand the nuances of the brands’ audiences. So we ingested data and put the People Pattern platform to work.

As we can clearly see by the follower overlap, folks don’t tend to be loyal to one brand over another: 65% of ConocoPhillips’ audience also follow Chevron. This is not particularly surprising. As oil is a necessary product and discrepancies in quality tend to be negligible, it appears that success to Chevron or ConocoPhillips is more a matter of public perception rather than differences in the product.

The majority of people engaging with oil companies online tend to be characterized as members of the Attentive Public persona. Folks within this persona are young, involved and tend to be male. These men live in high concentration in cities–in particular, Houston, Texas and Atlanta, Georgia. They tend to be interested in religion, geo-politics and the military.

Of course, catering messaging to the biggest segment within an audience is important, but as oil companies are largely in the business of winning hearts, communications should largely be focused on educating people who may be threatened by the companies’ business practices.

Although only 8% of followers analyzed fall into the persona category, folks within the Preservationist persona are influential and have the capabilities to generate significant buzz with relatively few resources. From the ingested sample, 63% of Preservationists are male. These men are socially conscious, tapped in to global news and sensitive to events happening around the world.

The Preservationist is outspoken and vocal, suggesting a key segment for oil companies to educate and align with for better brand perception.

Big oil has a branding problem. Campaign success is largely based on brands’ abilities to effectively communicate impactful messaging to the public that emphasizes the positive impact the brand has on communities around the world. Brands like Chevron and ConocoPhillips position themselves as community stewards, which stated commitment to responsible practices.

Oil companies will always be in the public eye. In an industry where accidents happen, companies have to prepare for the worst by banking enough positive perception to cash in on when disaster hits. Armed with deep customer insights, brands have the best available information to ensure the most effective communications in order to limit possible damage to brand reputation in the wake of disaster.

To uncover customer insights for your company, request a demo of the People Pattern platform below.