Bell Canada

New:  logos, visual system, nomenclature

Launched:  August 8, 2008

Story in brief:
A lot of change here, including a private equity takeover (by the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan) and the June ascendency of CEO George Cope, a leader hired in 2005 to turn this ship around.  (Cope earned his stars at Bell competitor Telus and earlier, wireless startup Clearnet.) The problem: new competition, and rapidly declining share.  From its 1880 founding (with Alexander Graham Bell roots) until deregulation in 1997, Bell enjoyed monopoly status. Aggressive competitors (notably Rogers) then took some business, but the wheels didn't fall off until 2005/2006,  when Bell Canada lost over 400,000 local lines to cable companies, Internet telecom and accelerated growth in wireless.

To survive and prosper, Bell would need to hold its land-lines base while profitably growing TV, wireless and Internet businesses. This in turn would require a renewal of confidence among customers and employees alike. With restructuring and refinancing in place, a rebranding could muster that confidence. As CEO Cope put it, "The new Bell brand underlines that we are moving forward as a company and as a service provider, with new services, a new strategy and a new goal. It's a straightforward and customer-focused brand that directly supports the Bell team's goal: To be recognized by customers as Canada's leading communications company." 

Cope set this rebranding in motion in October 2006, when he recruited former marketing colleague Wade Oosterman (now Chief Brand Officer, as well as President of Bell Mobility) and Rick Seifeddine, now Bell's Senior VP, Brand; both had worked with Cope in brand-building at Clearnet and later, at Telus Mobility.

To rethink "Bell," Oosterman and Seifeddine assembled their "dream team" of agencies. Among them, Zak Mroueh's Zulu Alpha Kilo is credited for 'brand platform,' and the Cossette  agency group's Identica unit for logo and visual system design.

The new logo is a wordmark indeed strikingly "straightforward," intimately kerned (and with a modestly pregnant B) but otherwise is virtually generic. This gives greater importance to a new visual system and its disciplined implementation.  The visual system (see www.bell.ca/brand) includes graphic devices called 'Bell-ements,' pieces of the logo (an idea that echoes Michael Bierut's Saks system - see Noted, 2006).

On the verbal side there's a wow tagline, "Today just got better" for English speakers; for French, Bell couldn't resist "La vie est Bell." More importantly, many business units got more straightforward names: for example Bell ExpressVu is now Bell TV, Bell Sympatico is now Bell Internet, and Bell Residential phone service is now Bell Home Phone.
 

Credits:
C.E.O. - George Cope
Brand - Wade Oosterman, Chief Brand Officer; Rick Seifeddine, SVP Brand
Brand platform - Zulu Alpha Kilo (i.e. ZAK)
Identity design - Cossette Communications Group (Identica Montréal)
 

First Impressions:
Strategy: A timely and preemptive expression of leadership intent. It may not yet be tomorrow's, but Bell is no longer yesterday's telephone company.
Logo: Such simplicity takes guts, and shows guts. I don't see this as a new mark of beauty, simply one of confident presence: "We are Bell. There is now no other Bell: we have outlived them all." And we mean business. Beauty, if any,  will have to come from the good taste,  creativity and especially discipline of visual system implementation.

A personal qualm, perhaps as a New Yorker:  roman sans serif double l's have become problematic for me. This will pass. Someday.
 

Secondary story:
Also rebranded, the parent holding company Bell Canada Enterprises, as  BCE. In its glory days it was diversified, the parent of Nortel/Northern Telecom and satellite operator Telesat, and other companies now mostly sold. BCE's migration to initials effectively signals its present irrelevance, as  the focus shifts more exclusively to the core communications business; whether "BCE" is a now placeholder for re-diversification or merely a distraction remains to be seen.

Other Comments:
The launch was timed for 08-08-08, both for good fortune and to underscore Bell's long-time sponsorship of the Canadian Olympic Team. We can expect to see much more Bell at the next Olympics, the 2010 Winter games in Vancouver, Canada.

Corporate Brand Matrix (est.) ratings:  
0% structural,  100% strategic,  0% functional