Bell Canada's Identity Crisis
In Canada's wireless landscape, Telus and Rogers are cool while Bell Mobility is not. This distinction has made hammered home in recent weeks by a series of bad, but memorable, television and billboard ads for Bell created by Cossette. The billboard ads feature cartoon animals trying to play Olympic sports with the tag line “Bring on the Real Athletes”. The TV are two-pronged: one campaign features cheesey, pixellated characters such as this one, which has prompted a lawsuit from Rogers, while another has two beavers, Fred and Gordon - auditioning to be spokesmen/spokesbeavers, which are far too close to the animal-themes used for years by Telus. I'm not sure what Bell is trying to achieve but if it's attention for bad advertising, it's working. Bell's fundamental problem is it's “Your Father's Wireless Service” because it has this stodgy businessman cache. This is great if you're looking to sell Blackberrys to senior executives and the proconsumer, but not so good if you're aggressively pursuing the high-growth youth market that see their wireless phones as an extension of their lifestyles. Telus and Rogers have been successful in developing brands that resonate with young consumers, while Bell simply isn't there and won't be with this advertising campaign unless it's plays into the “so bad, it's good” school. (It is difficult to tell how well or badly Virgin Mobile is doing because they don't release sub numbers). I'm no advertising expert but if Bell wants to score with young consumers, it needs to reload.
February 12th, 2006 at 9:21 pm
Hey Mark,
Long-time reader, first time commenter.
When I read the title of your post in my feedreader I thought it was going to be about the whole frankandgordon.ca vs. gordonandfrank.ca thing I've inadvertently started.
Talk about an identity crisis!
The ironic thing is that I'm blogging regular updates at One Degree on what's happening with the domain Bell forgot to register (over 1000 page views a day at the typo domain) but so far I can't see that Bell has reacted in anyway to what we're seeing.
February 13th, 2006 at 6:59 pm
It really isn't about being cool - it's about what works. And lemme tell ya, if I was either the CMO at Ma Bell or the Strat dude at Cossette I'd have a heck of a time coming up with the answer here. As long as they are trying to do the Ma As Overall Umbrella Brand thing, which you can certainly understand why they would, they have to address the mushy middle. They *are* the phone company, after all, which makes their market, uh, everybody. Clearly, the private label stuff like PC and Virgin is an attempt to fill wireless capacity at a different price point and type of offer, going after other markets with a different message without sullying Ma's “overall” approach. Same with Solo, which is obviously Ma going after that emerging demographic with a different offer and brand position, while not impacting Ma's overall approach. But here's the hard truth about the potential of those types of efforts. When running a multi-brand strategy, it is the Big Fish that gets to do whatever it wants while the others get constrained to playing where the Big Fish isn't (to wit: my former approach with Expedia vs. Hotels.com vs. Hotwire. They are all the same company - Expedia as a brand does what it wants, and the others don't get that privilege). It's Marketing 101. So unless Ma decides to walk from the “overall” approach and it's obvious mass market efficiencies, what you see now is likely what you'll get - though maybe there will be more white label and house brands.
– Stuart