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Bell Canada is launching a new corporate look tomorrow, one that promises to be … “clear, bold and instantly recognizable” …
Key to the look are three elements:
From what I can tell, the logo will be a nice blue “Bell” in a sans serif font (is that a Tahoma?). I always like a look that returns to simplicity and graphic clarity …
But the brand will retain an edgy and innovative feel by being sliced and diced into nearly unrecognizable graphic treatments, which will then be inserted into ad copy piece by piece.
It’s a lot like a Word Jumble or the old I Spy word game.
In an internal branding move that will never translate to the real world, these snippets are called “Bell-ements”:
“The Bell-ements are a fun and constructive way to put the Bell logo to
work in every possible way. All of our television ads actually take place on a
gigantic Bell logo while many of our print ads carry portions of the Bell
logo,” [said the senior Bell brand honcho]
As well, advertising campaigns will offer plays on the adverb “better”:
“To tie the advertising even more closely to the concept of “better” and underline the range of product and benefits Bell offers, the English campaign also makes liberal use of words ending in “er” - faster, easier, music lover, gamer, worker, talker, texter, multitasker - which was also the basis of the company’s recent advertising teaser campaign.”
In case you don’t appreciate the subtle nuance of the “er” tag, the ads will use a different coler every time things are meant to be better.
Finally, Bell has abandoned the faux futuristic names assigned to its product lines back when the big dream was to be a new media conglomerate. So, the transformation begins:
Bell Sympatico = Bell Internet
Bell ExpressVu = Bell TV
Bell Residential = Bell Home Phone
Aw hell. Why didn’t they just hire Brian Regan to do their voiceovers? Everything could be “more gooder”!
There was a great clip from the Opie & Anthony show, where Brian Regan uses the phrase “more gooder” over and over. If only I could link to it.
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12 Responses to Brian Regan - brand advisor for Bell Canada
Bell’s marketing campaign just got bett”er”……. « The Simon Tonekham Statesman
August 7th, 2008 at 8:44 pm
[...] Brian Regan, a brand advisor for Bell Canada stated that the corporate brand is clear, bold and easily recognizable. More on that can be founded here. [...]
steve portigal
August 8th, 2008 at 1:16 am
And Frank and Gordon are gone as part of this revamping…
http://flickr.com/photos/steveportigal/2742745485/
Collaborative Branding (CB) » Blog Archive » Ringing in the Olympics with a new Bell
August 8th, 2008 at 4:06 am
[...] one to succumb to the dullness of corporate typeface, Bell tries to stay edgy by inserting so-called Bell-ements — practically unrecognizable bits and pieces of the Bell [...]
One Degree
August 8th, 2008 at 7:30 am
Beavers, eBooks and BitTorrent: August 4, 2008 Week in Review…
Popular On One Degree This Week One Degree: Frank Gordon (because of their last hurrah?) Five Observations on Marketing to TTC Riders Add 2.8 Million Readers With Accessible Writing Canada’s Web 2.0 Pioneers Cuil, Kewl or Cool: July 28, 2008…
Bad Boy
August 8th, 2008 at 11:27 am
Bell has a new corporate rebranding ad campaign which uses only the letters “er”. They took the letters from the word suck”er”. Wherever there’s access to Bell’s new “er” ads, use a big black marker to print “suck” next to the “er” or “Whatev” or something else more appropriate to what Bell service consumers think of Bell.
Bad Boy
August 8th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
“er” is the only part of the word one hears on Bell’s cell phone network.
Judy Gombita
August 10th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
As learned from (retired) Bell Canada employees (who are kept in the internal branding loop by former colleagues):
“The ‘e’ in the new Bell word/logo is supposed to look like it’s smiling.”
http://www.bell.ca/home/
phillip j. fry
August 15th, 2008 at 1:04 am
this has got to be the lamest ad campaign yet that I’ve ever seen. first you have the abstract ads posted everywhere on the subway system which an “intellectual” few can decipher. then you have to wait for the olympics coverage to find out what that mystery is all about, only to disappoint that it’s just the new look of bell. to spend heavily on posted billboards that nobody understands, then with a follow-up on television to tell you what the latter is all about, apparently, only wastes the ever shorter attention span of the masses. from my personal experience of this new campaign, first i got pissed off more than intrigued the longer i see those “er” billboards all over the TTC. then when I figured it out from watching the olympics that it’s just bell (ho hum), i realized that this new ad campaign sucks big time even more than the two dingdong beavers. and it took creative teams to come up with this campaign? what a joke for bell canada!
Melanie
August 19th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
The Bell tag line in french: “La vie est Bell” Why didn’t anybody think about this before??
Daniel
September 3rd, 2008 at 4:15 pm
Too bad. I guess they paid someone a lot of money to take a really small word and squish the letters together so it’s even smaller. Is it supposed to look modern? It just doesn’t look very good.
Next time, I’d advise Bell to put their money into fixing their awful accounting, customer service and account tracking services.
Ghazi
March 31st, 2009 at 8:30 pm
The white background with enlarged Bell sign seems pretty simple yet innovative to me. It doesn’t give the boring vibe that many of Bell’s campaigns had before but rather pulls of an image they are ready to change the way they do business. To top it off they’re making names of their services simple: Bell TV, Bell Internet this gives Bell the brand image and possible loyalty they are looking for, emphasizes their name, keeps it simple yet they are innovating their technologies. This could prove to be a great success if only Bell can provide the change in customer service they are promising with this “innovative” look. But from a Marketing prospective I think this definitely gives Bell the edge they have been looking for.
Canuckflack » Blog Archive » Bell employees get man purse
April 18th, 2009 at 9:38 pm
[...] I did have a thought or two when this new logo came out in August [...]