From black to green with a dash of New Nordic. The multimodal rebranding of a Danish energy company with global aspirations

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article critically examines the new brand image of Danish energy company Ørsted, which has recently gone through a strategic transformation from black to green energy and made its entry as a significant player on the global energy market. While acknowledging Ørsted’s green transformation and the well-designed nature of its new brand image, the author argues that well-executed corporate brands should not be allowed to divert attention from societal issues that need handling and that Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (van Leeuwen [2008]. Discourse and Practice. New Tools for Critical Discourse Analysis. New York: Oxford University Press; Machin and Mayr [2012]. How to Do Critical Discourse Analysis. A Multimodal Introduction. London: Sage) offers tools for assessing corporate communication in that respect. The article shows how three different discourses – a sustainability discourse, a corporate profits discourse and a New Nordic discourse – are centrally involved in Ørsted’s new brand image and how the discourses are realised multimodally. Analytical attention is given to wording, typography, colour and images and to the discursive strategies of inclusion, exclusion, addition and substitution. The analysis reveals how corporate interests are reflected by the discursive choices involved in the new brand, with its foregrounding of a sustainability discourse strategically spiced up by a touch of New Nordic aesthetics, while talk of profits and less sustainable aspects of Ørsted’s activities is discursively backgrounded.