I’ve just checked my UK Brands page, and it turns out we have about 229 objects in the uk tagged with brand:wikidata=Q5617505. Presumably these are mostly petrol stations. I don’t know how many are currently still branded as “Gulf” though.
Assuming there are quite a few, it would be good to agree on the brand tagging for them, if necessary create a new wikidata item for the UK brand, ensure editor presets reflect the agreed tagging, and then ensure that the UK tagging is consistent.
I could see an argument that if those petrol stations are using the same “Gulf” brand - even if it’s under licence - then they should have the main Q5617505 brand tag. However, if the brand in the UK is being managed by a completely separate company, it might well make more sense to have a separate wikidata item and use that instead.
I can conform the petrol station I drive past every day is still Branded as Gulf. I didn’t realise though until it came up on a Fuel comparison website. Locally it has a different name but there is Gulf branding still on the station.
This seems to be broadly the same principle as the TUI thread from a few weeks ago. The question fundamentally distills down to: is the brand tag intended to describe the corporate operator of a POI, or does it describe the brand?
The name of the tag (and the conclusion in the previous thread) was that it transparently should be the latter.
The linked wikipedia page seems to suggest that the current use of the Gulf brand in the UK is under license from GOI. Therefore the Q5617505 tag is correct.
Pedantically, every chain or brand should have an item separate from its operating or holding company’s item, corresponding to the distinction between brand=* and a theoretical brand:owner=* in OSM. For most brands, that kind of split would disrupt OSM quite a bit, but in a few cases we do need to coordinate a change to make room for less confusing Wikidata items. This would include brands of shared parentage, like Westfield (Q106623253), as well as brands that nominally remain under a single corporate parent but have diverse operating structures in practice, such as Shell (Q110716465) and the various chains owned by Best Western (Q830334).
Gulf reminds me of Mobil (Q109676002), which I split out after the Wikipedia article became an awkward “is a former company ……… but by the way is still a major brand” article. Q5617505 is fine for now, but a separate item should probably be split out at some point. Speaking from experience, whoever does that will get incorrectly reverted by Wikipedians unfamiliar with that level of detail, and might also face some blowback from people who don’t like the NSI validator warnings.
True, but it wouldn’t really work for the example over in the other thread, as the operator is someone else again. The name isn’t obvious from the road outside, but the brand is Gulf, which as that page makes clear is licenced by Certas, which is part of Irish company DCC. The rights to the Gulf name outside the US are owned by the Hindujas (an Indian company whose owners live in the UK), and they licence that to DCC/Certas.
The operator is Tyke Petroleum, who own a bunch of similar garages across the region.
A similar operator is Penny Petroleum / Penny on the Move - taking one of their location websites as an example, the fuel supplier is just one of five brands listed. Many of their forecourts sell jet branded fuel; the story behind that brand is even more messy.