Corporate Brand Building at Shell-Mex Ltd in the Interwar Period

This paper is an analysis of corporate brand building at Shell-Mex Ltd in the inter-war period in Britain. While there has been some historical analysis of product brand development in the UK, this has not been the case in corporate or institutional brand building which has remained neglected. This paper outlines this process at Shell-Mex, the distributive arm in Britain for the Shell Transport and Trading Company, part of the larger Royal Dutch Shell Group. The paper argues that Shell consistently and coherently built up its corporate brand in the inter-war period through a series of strategies which included publicity, sponsorship of record breaking flights, links with empire, use of prominent artists, documentaries, road guides and association with the British countryside. This development of its corporate brand had multiple benefits for the group, both internally within its organisation, and externally in relation to its product brands and overall competitiveness.