Opinion by Paul Vickers Posted BY Brand New

Go Joe

Launched at the close of 2012 by telecommunications company SFR, Joe Mobile is the latest in a growing family of second generation mobile providers in France. Joe’s offer is unique enabling you to customize your subscription to match your changing needs in text messaging, call time, and internet data capacity. The new brand and video by Paris-based Leg Agency is all about accessibility, flexibility and fun.

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Opinion BY Armin

Weve Drinks your Milkshake and Eats your Apostrophe

Launched this month, Weve is a joint venture between the (also newly launched) EE, Telefonica UK (O2), and Vodafone UK — the three largest mobile network operators in the UK that together account for 80% of its mobile customers. Weve is meant to “create and accelerate the development of mobile marketing and wallet services” and provide “the ability for advertisers, retailers, banks and many other organisations to connect to a large-scale mobile commerce platform via a consistent set of technologies and standards, without having to duplicate effort.” In other words, as I understand it, it’s a fancy way of easing the process for the three mobile providers to monetize their platforms. The name is explained in the tagline, “Weve joined up mobile”, as in “we’ve” as in “weve”. Clever, but a little odd. The new name and identity have been created by London-based SomeOne.

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Opinion BY Armin

Visualizing the 4G Network

Established in 2010 as the parent company for Orange and T-Mobile, Everything Everywhere is the UK’s largest communications company, providing mobile and fixed-broadband communications services to more than 27 million customers. Yesterday Everything Everywhere — who is making a big push to move the UK into full 4G service — announced it would rebrand as EE, a “superfast customer brand offering 4G mobile services and fixed fibre broadband, and it will open revamped EE-branded stores.” The EE consumer brand will be part of the Everything Everywhere family, along with the Orange and T-Mobile brands. EE plans to introduce 4G across 16 UK cities by the end of 2012, with 98% population coverage planned by the end of 2014. The new identity has been designed by Wolff Olins with EE.

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Opinion BY Armin

Tu, Me, and Everyone We Know

As part of Telefonica — one of the world’s largest providers of broadband and telecommunications services, with main operations in Spain — Telefonica Digital is a global business division of its parent company with the mission to “seize the opportunities within the digital world and deliver new growth for Telefonica.” Last week Telefonica Digital introduced TU — Spanish for “You” — a ” new umbrella brand for its direct to consumer services” and has launched its first product, TU Me, a free global communications mobile app, that puts all calls, texts, shared photos, etc. into one simple timeline and as long as you are on Wi-Fi or using your data plan you can use it wherever you are. The naming, identity, and visual system for TU and TU Me have been developed by London-based SomeOne.

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Opinion BY Armin

Smart is as Smart Dots

Established in 1991, Smart Communications, a subsidiary of the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co., is the largest mobile service provider in the Philippines — dubbed the Texting Capital of the World — with a reported 47.8 million subscribers. (AT&T, to put it in perspective, has around 95 million customers.) Smart introduced a new logo and new tagline, “In an ever-changing world, we lead you to a bold, new future.” earlier this November.

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Opinion BY Armin

Hi Pink

Last month, Telkom, the state-owned provider of landline phone services in South Africa, introduced a new mobile service that is only the fourth brand to enter the market — behind Cell C (which we covered in August), Vodacom, and MTN. To introduce the new service Telkom worked with McCann Erickson, who created a pre-launch campaign that inundated the public with cryptic and playful billboards and print advertisements with the word “Heita” (South African slang for “hi”), rendered all in black-and-white with the exception of a pink dot. The pre-launch campaign served to introduce the correct pronunciation of the new provider, 8.ta.

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