Telstra refreshes its logo and positioning: Life in full colour
http://youtu.be/lPgOZvUTDX0
Telstra has unveiled its new brand positioning which sees it its blue and orange logo move to multiple colours, along with a promise from the brand to speak to consumers in everyday language.
The new positioning launched with multiple pages in the Sunday newspapers telling readers “Welcome to life in full colour”. The telco has also uploaded a video to its YouTube account explaining its new positioning.
http://youtu.be/XjG_R9CyZRA
Telstra's original 1993 logo
The logo does not ditch all aspects of the original Telstra logo first registered by the company more than 18 years ago, based on a stylised antenna dish.
The “It’s how we connect” line also remains in the new positioning.
Telstra has also uploaded a video asking consumers what their favourite colour is.
http://youtu.be/vSk7PI_Qh_g
A further video using the multicoloured logos, which it describes as “experimental”, has also been uploaded by the telco. According to its description of Connections: “It is up to the viewer to decide what they see in it. It could be connections in cyberspace, it could be about the anticipation of connecting with someone special.”
http://youtu.be/FuarORS3lVw
The Weekend Australian reports that Interbrand, part of the the DDB group, is behind the project, with 60 staff working on it for several months with a budget of more than $3m.
Today's print ads
The brand refresh project is the latest in its repositioning under chief marketing officer Mark Buckman, who joined earlier this year. In a posting on Telstra’s Facebook page this afternoon, he said: “The look and feel of how Telstra is represented is just one aspect of our brand that is undergoing transformation. We have implemented hundreds of improvements to our service to our customers over the last year.”
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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I honestly don’t get what they’re trying to do. But then, as a price-sensitive consumer, I’m not really in Telstra’s demographic.
The tagline makes me wonder if they’re an erstwhile printer manufacturer.
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Love it!
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Look how friendly we are!
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Mark Collis and Kate McKenzie deserve the credit for this as the brand strategy and new identity was all in place pre Mark Buckman or Inese Kingsmill’s arrival.
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Tim – I think you’re mistaken. The T logo was meant to represent a telegraph pole with the blue sky and brown earth. The missing descender on the T had numerous design advantages, especially for mono and relief versions.
GPY&R filled in the descender for the meteorically poor Next G brand update during Sol’s tenure. The old logo is still more common than the new one, outside retail – a sign of a poorly executed brand migration.
In the version of the design guidelines I saw (a few months ago, mind) there was a phone on one page with a Vodafone logo on its screen. Dolts.
Do I like it? Meh. Like Julia GIllard reinventing herself in Daisy Dukes and bikini.
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Hi Adgrunt, I got the antenna reference from the original trademark registration on the IP Australia website which describes it as “antenna, dish”.
http://pericles.ipaustralia.go.....ec_all=167
Mind you, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if other interpretations have sprung up internally over the years.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
The green ad in todays age looked like a bp ad at first glance. Looks poor.
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I can’t understand it and i think it will completely mess with the consumers mind, it would have made sense if they split off the brands/services based on colour but even more sense if they tied it to a logo/graphic to make the connection….
can you imagine the trouble now consumers will enquire about the aqua when in fact they meant to enquire about the blue or the lime green product….
any thought to the 5% of the population that has some level of colour blindness??
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Has anyone let Wolff Ollins know that there award winning AOL videos have been ripped off?
http://vimeo.com/13134724
http://vimeo.com/13134693
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Ah – that is a technical ATMOSS indexing note, not an indication of design development. Hence the other indices, such as “notched” and “incomplete” !!
There is actually an uglier story around the “dish” inclusion and early rivalry with the then AUSSAT, now Optus. Let me know if you’re bored enough to hear it…
I can reassure you that the “story” behind the logo is as I’ve indicated.
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Tell me more Adgrunt! I’m always open to hearing an ugly story…
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
One of their new commercials just came on, the one which decided to take the rapidly-shifting triangle approach. I have no idea what I just saw; if I hadn’t read this article beforehand I doubt I’d have realised it’s a Telstra ad until the end.
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All this for the paltry sum of $3.3m…
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I love the multicoloured approach away from the staid colours. We hope to see more from Telstra in the coming months…..
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This campaign was well underway before Buckman even left Comm Bank. Credit where credit is due. Collis was a large driving force. I like it, and about time!
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Groovy technicolour aesthetics aside, what are Telstra trying to tell us? That they’re now more relevant to me because they’ve upgraded their livery? Pfft. Also, the copy in the TVC is so category generic it could be for any business involved with the web. Epic fail.
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Hey Tim,
The very dull story revolves around the creation of Telstra and Optus. Ugly may be overplaying it, but some in the nascent Telstra were miffed at the “space-age” image of Optus and its satellite fleet.
Storm, meet teacup.
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@anonymous 5:35pm – think you’d find that Buckman would be the first to acknowledge that the new identity was well in train when he arrived and give credit to Collis and a lot of others who’ve been involved
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Isn’t it great to see all the nay sayers of the industry come out and have their say rather than support things that are being done have a crack. Good to see xome balance though.
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is changing the colour the marketing equivalent of shuffling the deckchairs on the titanic?
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Outrageously expensive new multi coloured shirt, but still has dirty underpants.
Get the bloody service right, get the price right, stop ripping of customers with ridiculously complicated plans. Who on earth approved a spend of 3m to produce this 1980s design failure.Another example of admen with their heads up their backsides. Now using language the man in the street can understand, what gibberish. Fix the product not the packaging.
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Dropped my taco when the ad came on. A big change for Telstra. I like it. I think.
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Great products and customer service matter. Logos and branding do not.
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If you think that all there’s going to be is a change of colour and logo to this brand launch then you’re in for a very unexpected surprise, which is the whole point. An identity does not a brand make.
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If one of Telstra’s most recognisable brand assets is the colour blue, it will be interesting to see how the masses cope with a multiple colour scheme. Good old Apple is a good example of a brand which doesn’t really ‘own’ a colour, but, they deliver through strong, consistent style and messaging. I doubt Telstra has the discipline to pull something similar off, especially over time.
Looking forward to seeing the roll out. Hope I’m proven wrong.
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Oh .. so the agency did this for Telstra? Not Telstra’s staff?
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I believe a figure of $70 million was roughly agreed (give or take $10 million) as being the cost to update the Telstra logo and roll it out in all forms necessary – buildings, both office and exchange -all new signs, stationery, bills, packaging, collateral, etc.
And seriously $3m for the big T is nothing
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Come on guys – look at the 2nd video – if you are going to roll out a new logo claiming its more relavant to us, try using stock footage from Australia for all the video not just some bits
At 0:29, the Aussie florist looks a African-American stock footage florist
and at 0:34 the girl on the phone on the bus seems to be driving in a country where they drive on the right ..
so 2 yanks (at least) to make it more relevant to us… FAIL..
And not all those colours are equally attractive, so i can see employees already getting pissed off if their employee pass is purple or olive green…
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Tell us about some of the hundreds of improvements if you have made them – most of your customers would be unaware
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They ditched Ern?
One of his TVC’s was the 2nd most liked TVC in Telstra after rabbits…
SOM did a great job creating him before Telstra got BWM to do the Ern ads
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The most successful ern ad in terms of likeabilty and effectiveness was smartphones created by bwm. Both agencies deserve credit.
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I really don’t see how this will resonate with the general public. “Who cares if the T is mauve?” will be a topic of discussion if this was even a good enough reason to talk around the water cooler.
It all comes down to the product and service and it seems that Telstra are still not listening. The topic around the water cooler will still be the rubbish service offering. They haven’t even rolled the T for Telstra turd in glitter here, but tried daubing it some watercolours which will wash off very quickly.
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Looks like Telstra has simply ripped off the old 3 Mobile approach:
– white space
– splashes of vivid color
– bold headlines
– changing colour logo
Worked beautifully for 3 – lets see how it goes with the big T.
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This updated logo is obviously aimed at the gay community as it is based upon their coloured flag! Expect Telstra to make inroads in the Darlinghurst area.
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Looks a bit Mardi Gras to me. Not that there’s anything wrong with that….
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Since I consider the average consumer to be a bit mindless, I think this is a mistake. Products/publications/websites/vehicles/anything that were blue and orange were immediately and unequivocally identifiable as Telstra. Red is vodafone, yellow is Optus (two colours conspicuously absent from Telstra’s pallette).
Don’t underestimate the trust that people place in Telstra (for all their flaws) and the connection they owned with Blue and Orange.
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If the service meets the promise – great job. The perception of Telstra is poor and dusty. They need to change how they communicate and how they do business. If this is part of that process – well done, it got my attention, and says to me, Telstra is changing. But they must live up to this now. I’m assuming there is more to come with this story.
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I really like this, it is meant to be a ‘re-fresh’ and it certainly does that, nice and retro but in a clean fresh way, great work from a brand that is often seen as stuffy
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What a wonderful powerpoint presentation.
Now, where’s the actual work?
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Reminds me a little of BT (British Telecom)
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What a load of ad agency creative crap.
Life is already in full colour, and I don’t need Telstra to see it that way.
And, as far as I know, no Telstra service allows me to see anything in fuller colour than any competitor’s service.
Telstra’s always been a fairly straight-down-the-line company with a focus on quality engineering, and this drop-a-tab-of-LSD stuff doesn’t exactly sit with that.
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And how does this fix the issue of having to deal with people in call centres in India or the Phillippines?
I have to call up about an account error shortly and dread having yet again to deal with these people who are completely useless when it comes to understanding what the problem is let alone making a decision and resolving it.
You can put lipstick on a pig but it’s still a pig.
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everyday language? from an outsourced call centre somewhere in Asia? pfft
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And the alternative to living life in full colour is??????????
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It looks like they took a leaf out of the recent AMEX rebrand.
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Telstra need to get their priorities straight. If they took 5% of their marketing budget and put it into customer service more people would use them. Having more colours in your ad doesn’t make up for the muppets you have to deal with when your phone/internet stops working
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Aol rip off? Looks like British Telecome? Powerpoint Presentation? Ripped off 3… Guys seriously get a grip. People have put endless hours into this and this is the best comments you have. No one sits at their desk trying ripp stuff off.
People work their asses off and you discard it in 3 words. This is simply great work.
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Love the refresh, hate the condescension of ‘Welcome to life in full colour’.
Overall, super impressed with the work by DDB / Interbrand (or whoever the hell I’m meant to be crediting) but understand that these projects rarely coincide with a change from any other (read: important) department. Like many, I’d love to be proved wrong!
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I love it how every new marketing puppy needs to mark out their own territory using by spraying over predecessors’ work. The cycle will go on and on. It’s hard to teach new dogs to not to misbehave.
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@Third guy on the left of a bloody long boardroom table – Yes, it is a delightful PPT presentation. It certainly has that feel.
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The colourblind demographic get ignored again
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Contemporary.. good.. it makes them feel younger I am OK with their service too.. my phone works pretty much everywhere
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Um, WTF.
How have the colourblind been ignored again?
How do they know if we don’t tell them?
It’s still all shades of blue / brown for them like the rest of the world they see, no?
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One of the ads asks people an interesting question – what colour are you? I notice the question wasn’t asked to any coloured people…it might have led to much more entertaining answers if it were! One can see the you tube spoofs already
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things are changing at one of australia’s biggest brands? Sounds like a marketing presentation not an ad that’s going to connect with people.
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Everyone knows this new positioning/logo treatment would only make sense if Telstra actually spoke & acted in sync with the everyday. Interbrand/DDB, more than most, should know this but of course they’re happy to take the ($3m) and keep taking it. And as others have noted..it’s so not original. HP, BT et al they’ve all done this.
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The mark feels like it got the Microsoft Office accent colour treatment… http://postimage.org/image/271nlxfus
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Come on. Is everyone serious. Give my five year old a job. He would of done this for a paddle pop. I’m glad mark wasn’t responsible for this.
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Don’t understand how it’s like bp? Because one of the colours is green? Has to be more than that otherwise it’s clutching at straws.
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Robert,
I have no doubt there was thousands of head hours by Interbrand and DDB in this work. It must be said that Telstra or Sensis is difficult work. Long, multi layered levels of approval and a conservative approach to work makes it all the more challenging.
However, at the end of a two hour presentation and drinks on Friday afternoon, Monday comes along and the public don’t care how many hours you spend, or weekends you gave up, or the countless versions or revisions. They look at the work fresh. In 5 seconds and think, ‘Meh’, or ‘Cool’.
Honestly, this is not great work. Cliched ‘life’ sentiments and stock footage makes any brand throw up a little inside and this isn’t any different. Finally, there is nothing unique in the work that any of the other telco brands couldn’t say.
It’s a lovely internal presentation to the board, and sitting here it makes me hope that next weeks presentation where we see the outworkings of the brand not just the packaging on boxes or the decals on cars.
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like it… it was time for a chance and definitely towards something more colorful… as we all know this multicolor concept will have so many advantages when it comes to positioning their different products to different target markets… also it’s always cost effective (and reasonable) to invest in graphics rather then celebrities or stories that may loose relevancy… cheers…
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That isn’t the original Telstra logo from 1993. It looks like someone has tried to recreate it from memory.
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By producing a TVC that looks like a typical colourful PowerPoint devoid of any human insight, Telstra failed to take heed of their own advice. Check out this video we helped produce for them, a little more monochromatic but a lot more engaging, see why I’m laughing http://youtu.be/J5QsO-tgMGc
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Look new management does not do insight. Look at previous roles for banking and Microsoft and graphics over substance. Different model, but ultimately the punters will decide. Personally I’m waiting for restructure 3, when insight and retail work together as opposed to extreme opposites.
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Complete rip off of the idenitity we crreated for the Inspire Foundation last year http://www.behance.net/gallery.....ion/754314
6 colour themes, strong brights, dymanic identity system etc. 60 people and $3m won’t necassarily get you anything original!
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cplx
Telstra’s new branding may be a tawdry effort, but claiming that use of the colour spectrum and type as a rip-off is building your part up somewhat.
It also implies that your work is tawdry, too.
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Whether you like it or not, (and I do), this rebrand certainly says that this organization is on the move. Getting a tanker like Telstra to change the way it looks is some feat. With great respect to all of Telstra’s agencies, I don’t believe that without a creative sitting inside the business, it would have been possible, certainly with the speed this was done.
Hiring creative directors is not new for big global business – car manufacturers like Toyota have done it for years. It is a fairly new concept though for Australia and it would require faith and patience on both sides. I think Kate McKenzie should be credited for having the foresight and Mark Collis for being brave. It can’t have been easy for either of them but I believe that it has certainly paid off. I feel that there is a lot more to come from Telstra and I look forward to seeing how the colours develop.
More importantly for the rest of us, this has demonstrated to other big business, the value of creativity from within. This can only be of benefit to us all.
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Here’s the Telstra re-branding question. The brand now looks happy! But the customer experience often isn’t. Does advertising still have the power to emotionally sway a cynical public, despite their everyday experience of the brand , with preschool-bright colours and corporate lines? Or, will a savvy public see it as manipulative as in “They’re trying to make me like Telstra”.
The first thing you learn entering this business is not to over-estimate the intelligence of the market. Then you learn not to underestimate it. Then you learn no-one knows anything for sure, not even big shots like Mark Collis. That’s quickly followed by – and this is the hard one – you learning that you know nothing either. You do your best, you put it out there and it’s in the lap of the gods.
This is a classic lap-of-gods moment in Australian advertising. It will be interesting.
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THIS IS AN AD CAMPAIGN, NOT A REBRAND
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Was anyone else annoyed by the hyperactive hyper-coloured shirted teenagers handing out “free music” cards to commuters in the Sydney CBD today? I think one of them asked me to jump through a hoolah hoop!! But seriously the ads are more like an aimless acid trip and sorry, but I am not convinced to come back to Telstra after being treated badly by reps in their call centres when I was a customer, and am happy with other service providers….just saying.
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Telstra launched their 4g network today. Makes me wonder if today should have been the amazing day….
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So far Telstra has told us:
“Today is amazing”
“Welcome to life in full colour”
“The fun has just begun”
So what exactly are they trying to say I wonder
The ads still have the tag “It’s how we connect” and have blue end frames. The web is still blue (beyond the colour promo pages).
I do however commend Telstra for moving forward and will be interested to see how this rolls out.
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First impression: BP and BT (uk telco)
Second impression: Did that just really happen? Did i just drop some acid and witness that?
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The ad seems a little too abstract and cluttered. I guess the overall message is strong, but everything else is a little cluttered. None the less, it’s nice to see Telstra promote itself in a new way. In conclusion, the ad’s still creepy.
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I like the Thai Thanachart Bank rendition of the big T…:-) http://www.thanachartbank.co.t.....intro.aspx
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Maybe Telstra should concentrate on providing some customer service and investing in some locally based call centres with people we can understand, rather than spending $M ‘s on a rebirthing ad campaign that has no key message!
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I tried to contact Telstra marketing to tell them how for the same money I was spending with them to get 25GB of broadband and maybe 50 calls to mobiles I could get infinite broadband with TPG and a new infinite iphone4s with Vodafone. The receptionist went away and asked someone if they would take my call. She came back and advised they suggested I talk to the complaints department. Mmmm, no thanks. The Telstra campaign? Its a lift music cover of Apple 2004.
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I thought the swirling colours were an ad for paint at first.
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Cool ad love the colours and the catchy tune . . . . . . . Does that mean my telstra internet is going to start working properly now?
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