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MARKETING & SUPPLY BY KEITHREID Phillips 66 charges ahead downstream AFTER THE SPLIT marketing businesses of ConocoPhillips transfers to Phillips 66 and continues to operate under the brands Phillips 66®, Conoco®, 76® and JET®, as well as other specialty brands. With the split now formalized, NPN interviewed Andy O Viens, president of marketing for Phillips 66 and Mike O'Connor, manager of programs and brand image for Phillips 66, to see what these changes mean for the compa- ny's downstream partners. NPN: In a nutshell, what will be the impact for marketers and retailers? Viens: (Marketing) is significant all of a sudden. One of the things as we went through is that year one we did not want to have any humongous changes or surprises out there in the marketplace. We look at the complexity of unwinding two companies after working for 10 years to achieve all of those synergies and we want to make sure we have smooth sailing for our customers the first 12 months out of the box, and there's a lot of emphasis on that. Our customers can look forward to consistent billing, no errors, reliability of supply, having the same faces show up to knock on their doors and our programs are getting better all the time. We've gone from being the stepchild (of an integrated oil company) to being the only child. And we operate exclusively through market- ers and resellers except for the one site that we operate in house. O'Connor: We're all excited about being a pure downstream company. In one sense you don't have this large upstream business as a security blanket, but we should be a business that responds to the marketplace quicker and delivers better value to our customers. NPN: What does a split mean for supply expectations? Viens: The split, if you think about how it's occurred, should really not impact supply at all. But the feeling I get is that there is a greater emphasis on having reliable supply now and figuring out the best ways to do that, so that's been 18 JULY/AUGUST 2012 N JULY 14, 2011, CONOCOPHILLIPS ANNOUNCED ITS intent to reposition the company's explo- ration and production and downstream businesses into two stand-alone, publicly traded corporations. The consumer-facing kind of a fun thing. We talk about customers a whole lot more than we used to, and the supply has a big exclamation mark after it now. NPN: How do you view the relationship between branded and unbranded supply? Viens: We've always had good branded and unbranded business and we want to serve both markets. I don't get so hung up on which channel we're going through to get the market. I get hung up on having a good business partners to go to market with. On the branded side, we have some good offerings out there depending upon where you are, and we have the three different brands we can offer and we've got good programs. Unbranded is important in a lot of markets. We don't look at one as being better than the other—we always look to go with where the highest netbacks are, obvi- ously, like any company would. NPN: What are you looking for in a partner? Viens: It's really simple. We like people that know how to serve the consumer. At the end of the day, no matter what we have as programs and whatever deal we might work out between each other, if they don't have something to offer the consumer and give them service and make them come back and buy from them, they're not going to do well. So we're looking for people that can service the consumer and that have the business acumen to make money and know how to run their businesses. It does not get really complex. And when you go out there, it's pretty easy when you walk into somebody's site to extrapolate why we'd be interested in doing business with them or why we wouldn't. NPN: What programs would be of interest to potential mar- keters and retailers? O'Connor: We run our "Gas for Life" promotion and other incentives with the three brands, and we have our Kickback Rewards loyalty program, which will feature a drawing for a brand-new Corvette. We run the Phillips 66 Basket-Pong promotion for a $66,000 prize and hundreds of other instant prizes with the champion crowned during the semifinals of the Big 12 men's basketball championship. We have ticket promotions with the St. Louis Cardinals and the Los Angeles Dodgers that have been very effective. We have credit card NPN Magazine n www.npnweb.com