BT revamps its brand as it goes in search of an identity

Telecoms giant BT is set to launch a major marketing and branding campaign next week (October 18) as it admits right now the name “stands for nothing”.

The company’s name will return to UK high streets for the first time in 25 years. The brand will appear on store fronts in an attempt to transform EE stores – a mobile phone business that BT owns – with BT co-branding.

The campaign, dubbed Beyond Limits, goes further than reintroducing a name, however. As well as focusing on improving the public’s perception of the BT brand, new products will be introduced and customer service improved by bringing it closer to home and small business customers, and making experts easily accessible.

Speaking to Marketing Week, BT director of marketing communications Peter Jeavons described the campaign as an opportunity for BT to become more than merely a broadband and phone company – a company with a brand that Jeavons admitted “stands for nothing”. Right now, he said, “nobody knows what we do”.

“What we want to do is step out of that eclipse and start to play a much bigger role, both from a national and societal perspective, and also on an individual products and services point of view,” he said.

“What we’ve done is find all the amazing things we do, that if I’m honest even I didn’t know we did, but when we started to talk to consumers about them, they were like ‘that’s amazing’.”

Jeavons is frank about current consumer perceptions of BT and said the company is “not in a great place” despite people’s familiarity with a brand they have grown up with.

“Most important is for us to stand for something. And for that to resonate with people because at the moment we stand for nothing,” he said.

“When you look at our brand attributes, at things like ‘technology’, ‘trust’, ‘price’ and ‘service’ we are a fairly nondescript blob in the middle that doesn’t particularly spike in any of those things. Trying to create a purpose for BT that people get is the ultimate goal,” he added.

But campaign will be “more than comms” with BT regarding it as an opportunity to rally the company’s staff as well as consumers. The company hopes the Beyond Limits messaging will give BT’s 107,000 employees “a reason to get out of bed every day”.

Sourced from Marketing Week; additional content by WARC staff