ABOUT

Petronas wanted to shake its image as a legacy national oil & gas company and had aspirations to be seen as more innovative, more customer-centric and more global. Its downstream vertical businesses were not aligned to a unified positioning and value proposition and suffered from silo mentality. The previous branding had failed to get traction due to poor internal engagement and unclear external messaging.

Dragon Rouge engaged a wide cross section of stakeholders, internal and external, to get to the heart of the brand issues and opportunities. We added to this global benchmarking to help set the ambition for the brand.

We developed a new brand positioning for PETRONAS - ’Passionate about Progress’ - to reflect the company’s innovative spirit and commitment to customer success. We translated the brand positioning into a 360º brand experience through a brand identity system encompassing visual, motion and sonic that lives dynamically in digital, activation and more traditional media environments.

To bring the brand to life, Dragon Rouge created a comprehensive internal brand engagement plan and communications campaign which was rolled out to 37,000 employees across 30 countries and all businesses. This included: launch event + activation, internal comms campaign, gamified digital brand training tool, brand booklet, quiz cards, brand film, brand music video and a brand ambassador programme with induction workshop modules.
The CEO and leadership team embraced the new brand and championed its cascade through the organisation. The brand has seen a marked increase in internal brand engagement across verticals and markets and an improvement in key brand equity measures relating to innovative, customer-centric and human.

Dragon Rouge was proud to receive a Transform Award 2020 for the identity we created with our sonic partners Sixième Son.

Most recently, we created the brand (naming, positioning and identity) for a new entity, Gentari, to accelerate the adoption and commercialisation of clean energy. Petronas set up a brand new company that would be separate from the main Petronas company (operationally and corporate governance) so that this new company could be positioned as a legitimate and separate standalone clean energy business, and thus, be genuine and more climate-conscious to investors.

The final agreed positioning narrative “Passionate about Progress” and core brand strategy suite is supported by five supporting propositions. These explain our Petronas’ unique offering and the actions that it take as an organisation to deliver progress. All five are directly linked to its Statement of Purpose, beginning with “Progressive Energy and Solutions” and ending with “Sustainable Future.”

We summarized Petronas’ key brand challenge (a fundamental shift away from oil and gas toward new energy), brand direction, brand behaviors, brand edge and future actions, all of which culminate in the central idea. Many of the future actions were focused on internal engagement; engaging transparency, messaging ahead, training to engage staff, and preparing for future name and logo change.

We referenced the core brand narrative and summary, key business areas received a customised version relevant to their organisation/to their customers, and did the same on the retail side of the business too.

Once the new brand positioning and identity had been developed, we were asked how to cascade it through all 47,000 PETRONAS staff worldwide effectively.
The momentum framework is developed for the client for the brand cascade.
The momentum roll out plan takes place in 3 phases: 
- Ignition (to inspire and create awareness)
- Education (to instill ownership)
- Action (to bring the brand to life.)

A Momentum Task Force was established to ensure ongoing brand engagement post launch.

Most of Petronas’ business derives from oil and gas. The president of Petronas recognized that there was a compelling and urgent need to establish a credible clean energy business, separate from the main Petronas company so that this new company could be positioned as genuine and more climate-conscious to investors.

We looked at the energy market, including the emerging clean energy industry to determine where the opportunities could be drawn from in order to find a unique positioning and value proposition for the new brand. We then created a strategy for the new brand with purpose, positioning and brand experience principles.
Once finalized, we went through a naming process with the client, including the facilitation of several naming workshops.

‘Gentari’ is a unique name and a combination of two words: Generation and Lestari. Generation was used to symbolise a generation of clean energy, and a sustainable future for the next generation. Tari comes from the Malay word ‘Lestari,’ meaning sustainability in Bahasa Malaysia.