Most of the petroleum companies operating on the domestic market have "eyed" a new strategy to increase their fuel sales: branding the products sold in their own filling stations.
Instead of descriptive names for a certain product, the players on the petroleum market currently prefer a single name to personalise the respective type of fuel in the series put on the market. Once this decision has been made, large budgets are being invested in product promotion that, in the end, reach their goal: sales up by 10% - 20% against a no-name product. In the petroleum industry, the branding of a petroleum product is usually equivalent to an improvement in its quality.
"The branding of petroleum products is a trend noticed on the fuel market," says Corina Vasile, marketing manager with Rompetrol group. The group run by businessman Dinu Patriciu, has recently launched on the market the first brand in the company's fuel portfolio: Efix. The campaign for the launch of the new product, according to the Euro 4 pollution standard, cost Rompetrol 1 million euros for the first couple of months when the product was promoted through all media. But these were not the only costs.
Branding means, most of the times, costs for refineries. In this particular situation, the refining costs amounted to 80,000 euros and consist of the payments made for the acquisition of the additive necessary to produce this type of fuel, as well as for the automatisation of the refining processes. Once this new product launched, Rompetrol announced it replaced the Euro 3 fuel range, sold through its own distribution network, with Euro 4, in compliance with the European standards. Efix is not a completely new product, but it is based on other products sold by Rompetrol, namely the Euro Plus unleaded petrol and Euro 3 diesel oil respectively. These products have been eliminated from the group's petrol stations, while the new brand is expected to boost sales by 10 - 20%, a month after it has been launched.
"Over the last couple of years, Petrom has significantly raised the budgets earmarked for product promotion, while it simultaneously improved the quality of the fuels. This caused sales to rise by 7% against corresponding period of last year," say Petrom representatives, the largest domestic company that was taken over by Austrian petroleum group OMV.
Two of the products sold in Petrom filling stations are brands, namely Top Premium 99( and Top Nordic Diesel. The former is an unleaded petrol, launched in May 2005, while Top Nordic Diesel is a type of diesel oil for the cold season, launched in December 2005.
"We have annual marketing budgets set aside. The campaign for the launch of Top Nordic Diesel used all the media: TV, radio, outdoor, print, as well as promotions in all petrol stations where the product was put up for sale, and was carried out in December 2005 - February 2006 period," added the representatives of the company that developed two other promotion campaigns for Top Premium 99, as well as for the entire series of products sold.
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