I'm Evan Davis and thank you for downloading this program.

In this edition of the bottom line, we're looking at corporate sponsorship,

what companies get out of it and how it sometimes goes wrong.

Hello and welcome to the program.

Corporate sponsorship is so ubiquitous these days.

Most of us would find it strange to visit an exhibition or sporting event

without being assailed by brand names,

trying to bask in the warmth of the feelings we have towards fit athletes or cool artists.

On occasion, of course, it all goes wrong.

There's no warmth towards FIFA, and sponsors may regret their association with that name.

But for better or worse, sponsorship is an important phenomenon, and it's our topic today.

My guests are all enthusiastic corporate sponsors, so let's take a few minutes to meet them each.

And first up is Peter Mayther from BP.

He's their group vice president for Europe and head of country here in the UK.

You're a sort of oil person. Does oil pump through your veins? It does, green and yellow oil. Yes, I've worked for BP all my career, actually, in a number of different countries in lots of different roles for a long time now. Right. I mean, in the last few years, BP's had a pretty rocky time, all coming from that Gulf of Mexico catastrophe, really,

that just wiped out, well, tens of billions of value in the company. How much has the rebuilding

a BP been dominating the kind of the company's agenda? Yeah, I mean, it was a very difficult time,

and it was a tragic, you know, industrial accidents, and we still think about the people that lost their lives

and we'll do, you know, as long as we're all around.

It caused us to have a pretty major rethink

about what we were doing, how we were doing it,

and clearly it has changed a lot of the practices within the company.

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