For months, questions about Bell Canada’s new ad platform and agency partners have met with nothing but busy signals from both the client and suspected agencies.
But tomorrow Bell will unveil its new branding with a 60-second television ad during the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Summer Olympics.
“This is a significant rebrand from the basement up,” said Rick Seifeddine, senior vice-president, brand strategy for Bell during a conference call on Wednesday.
The spot shows athletes from various Olympic sports passing a baton while competing on large blue surfaces, which are revealed as the revamped Bell logo at the ad’s conclusion.
In anticipation of the launch, Bell has been teasing the public in its major English-language markets since last week with outdoor media executions showing only the letters “er” with portions of larger blue letters at the edges. The number of executions increased over time, appearing in transit and on billboards. Those ads will now be replaced with full Bell ads with “er” becoming the final letters of its new tag line—“Today just got better”—and used in words like easier, music lover, gamer, texter and multitasker alongside photos of people using Bell products in those ways.
The tag line will be also be adjusted for each individual creative execution to reflect specific products and services (e.g. Internet just got better, HD just got better).
“We believe this tag line is laser-guided,” Seifeddine said. “It allows us to hug our particular ad execution up against whatever the benefit is of that product or service.”
In Quebec, the slogan will be “La vie est Bell,” a play on the French expression “La vie est belle,” meaning “life is good.”
Many of Bell’s products and services are also being rebranded as of Friday. Its Internet service, Bell Sympatico, will now be known as Bell Internet, while satellite TV service ExpressVu will be called Bell TV. The residential phone service will now be called Bell Home Phone.
Several new products are also hitting the market in conjunction with the renaming of the business units, including the Samsung Instinct touch-screen phone (which will be advertised with the line “Apple eater” in reference to the iPhone) an unlimited global long distance plan for Bell Home Phone and a PVR with expandable memory.
The rebranding is the work of four agencies working in concert: Cossette Communication-Marketing, Leo Burnett, LG2 and Zulu Alpha Kilo. There has been much speculation on who had the account since Bell announced in April that Cossette was no longer its exclusive agency.
“We feel pretty proud about the unique, collaborative model that we’ve created between the four agencies and the client,” Seifeddine said. “We are breaking new ground… There are no traditional rules within that framework. The assignments are not vertical. We do not stick one of the dream-team agencies on one portfolio. The dossiers are handed out in a fluid, flexible and different way each time.”
However, a release announcing the brand launch today said the brand platform was “conceived by” Zulu Alpha Kilo, the new agency of Zak Mroueh—who worked with Bell’s marketing leadership team of Seifeddine and Wade Oosterman when the pair were at Telus and Mroueh was at Taxi. Cossette is credited with designing the new logo and handling the media buy for the teaser campaign, and LG2 handled the French-language elements of the launch campaign. Seifeddine would not elaborate on how the remainder of the launch work was divided.
