Battling bigger competitors with consumer-sized budgets, business-to-business telecom Allstream has launched a rebranding campaign from the Toronto-based boutique design firm Concrete.
Concrete became the company’s agency of record last March, but aside from a handful of small projects, the new "All" campaign represents its first full-scale campaign work.
"Allstream doesn’t have the name recognition in the marketplace compared to some of their competitors who have large consumer businesses and benefit from spill-over of consumer [ad] spend," said John Pylypczak, partner and creative director at Concrete. "Our challenge is to develop more name recognition."
Launching in late February, the campaign is focused on media in the downtown business centres of Montreal and Toronto, as well as the Calgary International Airport. In the past Allstream has targeted up-market businesses, but Pylypczak said they’re broadening their target to include mid-level businesses.
"Previously there were a lot of one-to-one relationships where they could do a lot of their marketing. Now they have to talk to a broader range of people so [the marketing] needed to be a lot more scalable."
The campaign also attempts to change the tone of Allstream’s communication from a "very B2B voice" to a more consumer style.
While the logo has changed slightly, the campaign’s visual focus is a long, orange, handwritten treatment of the word "all."
"We wanted to own the colour orange, so we have this orange stream. It’s a metaphor for connectivity… We’ve used black and white photography so the orange [graphics] stand out."
The company’s employees have also been brought to the fore to give the brand a more approachable vibe.
Allstream.com has also been re-skinned and now includes videos featuring employees talking about the brand. Concrete is expecting to do a more substantial web redesign in the coming weeks.
