Telecom relaunch aims for the heart

By RICHARD BRADDELL utilities writer

Telecom is taking its lead from the brewing industry in a brand relaunch that will put human values ahead of price or services.

Marketing general manager Kevin Kenrick said Telecom's brand had stagnated in recent years. A successful relaunch was pivotal to its future as it was increasingly pitted against New Zealand offshoots of large overseas telecommunications carriers.

The veteran of 5 1/2 years at Lion Nathan said the adoption of brand values, as opposed to marketing on the basis of services and price, was new to Telecom, but well-entrenched in the brewing industry.

The brewing industry had learned that few customers could tell the difference between beers in blind testings, but were fiercely loyal to their brands.

Likewise, telecommunications customers wanted the job done, but cared little about the technology underpinning it.

Telecom would have to sell the romance of its brand in the same manner as Speight's.

As for price competition, "If you put the focus on price it makes it more important for customers," Mr Kenrick said.

Instead, Telecom will have to sell itself as the place for converged communications services, whatever shape that ultimately takes.

Mr Kenrick was with Telecom in the early '90s when the Jack Russell terrier Spot was launched as the standard-bearer for Telecom advertising.

Mr Kenrick's goal is to recreate the affection implicit in the Spot (an acronym for services and products of Telecom) advertising and move Telecom away from the hard-edged positioning of existing advertising.

The rebranding campaign, which could run for three or more years, reflects the vastly changed New Zealand market with Telecom now pitted against foreign-owned Clear, TelstraSaturn and Vodafone.

In television campaigns, the images will be more complex, giving the advertising greater life as the messages become more obvious on repeated viewing.

One commercial shows a pregnant woman communicating by sending a scanned image of her hand to her partner, who is away in China.

Telecom's long-time advertising agency, Saatchi & Saatchi, will continue running the account.

The way in which product-specific Telecom 2Go prepaid mobile advertising will fit with the wider brand image has yet to be worked through with the mobile division.