Gulf Oil - Revival

Revival

GOI and GOLP continue to sell Gulf-branded lubricants worldwide through a network of official licensed companies, joint ventures and wholly owned subsidiary companies. Many of these official Gulf distributors carry out local marketing and sponsorship which help to raise the profile of the brand. Of these wholly owned subsidiaries Gulf Oil Corporation India has raised the market profile of the Gulf brand in the Middle East. GOCL have emerged as one of leading lubricants brands in India and run many marketing sponsorships targeted at the ever-growing youth sector in the country.

GOI licenses the Gulf brand and logo in the UK to the Bayford group, one of the largest independent fuel distributors. Starting in 2001, a new Gulf network of independent stations is slowly reappearing across the UK. At present, many of these stations are notable for offering genuine leaded four-star petrol, for which Bayford has a special dispensation to sell. At the same time, Gulf Lubricants (UK) Ltd was set up to market Gulf products (mostly manufactured by the Gulf Netherlands operation) in the UK. This return by Gulf to the UK after a four-year absence used the slogan "The Return of the Legend." The post-2001 Gulf presence in the UK is a wholly network-based operation. It involves almost no direct Gulf investment in fixed assets, corporate infrastructure, or manufacturing capability. This is a complete contrast to the pre-1997 presence.

In January 2010, after using the name since 1986, GOLP acquired all right, title and interest in the Gulf brand name in the United States and announced plans to expand the use of the Gulf brand beyond its parent company's Northeastern United States base. Its promotions have included sponsorship of major sporting events in the area with advertisements for Gulf in New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh. To take one case as an illustrative example of the Gulf revival, after Texaco's 2001 merger with Chevron, many former Texaco stations in Pittsburgh switched to Gulf since Chevron does not service the Greater Pittsburgh area. As a result, the Texaco brand name disappeared from the area in June 2004 when the nonexclusive rights agreement with Shell expired, with Shell itself expanding in the area by means other than Texaco but, on June, 2006 Chevron gave exclusive rights to the Texaco brand name in the U.S. and sold some BP gas stations in the southeast which were Gulf gas stations. In New England, former Exxon stations have been rebranded as Gulf, in accordance with the consent decree that allowed the merger of Exxon and Mobil. Many of the former Exxon stations feature a rectangular logo that fit into the existing sign standards used by Exxon. Gulf refers to the look as its "sunrise" imaging.

The Gulf logo is still used around the world by a large number of business interests. It is a widely recognized brand and many independent operators are willing to pay for the franchise rights to use it. GOI make use of this brand power by coordinating their marketing activities to focus on the sponsorship of Le Mans race teams (with the current team being Aston Martin Racing team) This sponsorship is used across the world by Gulf distributors, alongside local activity demonstrating the GOI company ethos of "your local global brand". In 2009, the clothing store chain Old Navy began selling T-shirts bearing the old Gulf logo, along with the former logos of Standard Oil and Chevron.

Between 1980 and 2000, Gulf moved from being a monolithic, vertically integrated multinational corporation to being more of a network of allied business interests. This has given the entire Gulf enterprise a high degree of strategic and operational flexibility. It is a move that reflects fundamental change in the economics of international business.

Alliances represent yet another shift in the organization of economic transactions from organizational hierarchies to networks; from mass to flexible production; from large, vertically integrated organizations to disintegration and horizontal networks of economic units; from "Fordist" to "post-Fordist" companies.