A fresh identity was unveiled today at the Beijing Olympic Games by Bell Canada, the largest telecommunications company in Canada with a storied history. The company debuted the brand with a TV spot this morning at the Olympics, featuring just music and images, sans voiceover.
Bell goes back to basics with a stripped down, decidedly straightforward logo.
Ditching their familiar identity in use since the ’90s — a blue and yellow logo with a pair of swooping ellipses orbiting a face — the company has opted for a simpler logo with slimmer letters and a lighter hue of blue.
“Canadianites” can expect to see the new logo plastered prominently in print and TV.
The new campaign is a joint effort between four prominent agencies. Most notable is the role of Zulu Alpha Kilo, an agency started by Canada’s respected Zak Moureh, who created classic brand and advertising campaigns for Mini/BMW, Nike, and Pfizer. The remaining trio is comprised of Leo Burnett, LG2, and Cossette Communication Group, the latter having provided the new, simpler logo.
Combined with the new logo is a new slogan, “Today just got better.” This tagline is moldable to the context of a particular ad — in the case of an ad for HD PVRs, the tag reads, “Recording just got better.”
Not 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 logo, often rotated — into the company’s advertising.
The new TV spots feature a backdrop of a huge Bell logo. Zak Mroueh, Zulu Alpha Kilo’s creative director, explains:
Bell has such a rich history, so we decided to make the biggest honking logo there is and tell all these stories on the logo itself.
Francine Jones, a marketing professor at Concordia University, said the debut TV ad, depicting Canadian Olympic athletes performing on a giant Bell logo, relates Bell Canada to the high-caliber performance demanded of Olympic atheletes. The spot, according to Jones, “creates a graphic link between global and diversity though with the Bell name. It’s simple and packs a powerful message.”
Today’s launch coincides with the rollout of a slew of new products and services from Bell, including a range of new smartphones (such as the Samsung Instinct), an unlimited world long distance plan, an HDTV PVR with expandable media storage, and a new wireless home networking special.
The rebranding also means more straightforward names have arrived for Bell’s core product lines:
Bell ExpressVu becomes Bell TV
Bell Sympatico is now Bell Internet
Bell Residential is now Bell Home Phone