A shortlist of names, a clever logo that had to be rejected, a quest to bring Elon Musk to NZ and a trademark tiff with TVNZ. CEO Jason Paris lifts the lid on the massive project to turn Vodafone NZ into One NZ. A special Easter Media Insider interview, complementing
Vodafone to One NZ: CEO Jason Paris lifts the lid on the multimillion-dollar brand, marketing refresh - Media Insider interview with Shayne Currie
Opinion by Shayne Currie
Editor-at-Large Shayne Currie is one of New Zealand's most experienced senior journalists and media leaders.
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It followed a similar recent message from another customer, Margaret, after the rebranding was first announced and Paris emailed customers introducing himself as the incoming CEO of the new One NZ.
Her email response: “Congratulations on your new role. Thank God they’ve got a new leader because that last guy was bloody useless”.
“I went back and said, ‘hey, Margaret, you know, it’s the same guy’ and she was mortified: ‘oh my God, I didn’t mean to offend you’.”
For a man who doesn’t drink coffee, Paris is remarkably energised as he reflects on the multimillion-dollar brand refresh, from Vodafone to One – it officially came into existence on April 1 but the seed was sown several years earlier.
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Some marketing experts believe the move carries risk, as the business decouples from an instantly and internationally-recognised brand and icon, replacing it with a local brand: stylish and elegant but somewhat generic at first glance.
Paris is adamant the business has it right. For starters, it will no longer pay a reported $20 million-$30m annual fee for the privilege of using the Vodafone global brand. Paris won’t comment on or confirm the size of the fee but that money is being reinvested back into the business.
“The gloves are off,” Paris breezes, as he talks about the conscious uncoupling from Vodafone, four years after the purchase of Vodafone New Zealand by Infratil and Canada’s Brookfield Asset Management in 2019. The two businesses have a 49.95 per cent share each; Paris and a clutch of managers hold the rest.
“I can’t overstate how important it has been that the ownership change happened and we can now focus on New Zealand 100 per cent of the time.
“It’s cool and we get our mojo back. Vodafone at its best, 15 years ago, was that challenger brand. Even though it was the number one mobile player in the market, every day it was, ‘how are we going to disrupt ourselves?’
“And that’s the kind of mentality that we’re trying to bring back into the organisation, which is starting to feel that way now, in a uniquely New Zealand way.
“I just love this country. I think New Zealand is the most amazing place to live and work on the planet. I think New Zealanders are amazing. I said to my team, you think about Air New Zealand at its best. How do we ensure that New Zealanders are prouder of us and have a better experience than Air New Zealand at its best? So, it’s kind of a target.”
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This is not Paris’ first rodeo. He was chief operating officer (and before that, chief marketing officer) at Telecom when the company switched to Spark in 2014. At the time, there were many grumbles – what on earth did that name mean, and what about that squiggly asterisk logo that had been already in the market for some years?
“Everyone’s a marketing expert,” says Paris.
Similarly, much has been made of One’s new name. Early on, commentators pointed out that it shared the moniker with the defunct One New Zealand political party. Lawyers for both One and TVNZ are still manoeuvring through a trademark tiff, given the similarities between One New Zealand and 1 News (previously One News).
Paris admits he thought the trademark issue with TVNZ would be resolved much faster, but says there are no major hurdles, and he’s had just the one chat about the matter with his TVNZ counterpart Simon Power – on the day One was announced.
“I think it’s just the lawyers trying to dot the i’s, cross the t’s and making sure that everyone is happy with exactly what we’re committing to forever.
“Nothing has come up from TVNZ which has in any way stopped us from launching on the date that we decided to… we’re in completely different categories. They rebranded, I think in 2015, to the numeral 1 TVNZ, and we don’t intend to be a free-to-air broadcaster any time soon. I don’t think they intend to be a telecommunications player anytime soon.”
Paris reveals the business had a shortlist of five names before settling on One.
He said he had a preferred name: “My favourite didn’t get chosen, but I think they were right. They didn’t even want to put it on the shortlist,” he laughs, without revealing the name, or the others.
He took it to his wife for her view. “Yeah, it’s nowhere near as good as One,” came the response. She’s right 100 per cent of the time, says Paris.
One NZ corporate affairs senior communications lead Nicky Preston says One was an early, clear winner and the shortlist wasn’t dwelled upon.
Ultimately, Paris says, the name “doesn’t really matter as long as you don’t completely screw it up”.
“It’s more around what you’re doing in the business around network performance, service performance, better pricing, all that kind of stuff.”
Staff also need to buy in, he says, and see and believe that it’s more than just a name change and a fancy marketing campaign.
“If someone from One New Zealand [says] it’s just a bunch of jazz hands with no substance behind it, then it’s stuffed. If they go, actually, here’s a whole bunch of examples of what the change has enabled – you know, call centres back to New Zealand or cheaper prices for buying mobile phones or the SpaceX collaboration. Then you’re normally pretty successful.”
All of those things are happening. The collaboration with Elon Musk’s SpaceX was announced this week. The Starlink satellite-to-mobile service will provide 100 per cent NZ landmass and territorial water coverage for text messages from late next year - for those with a recently purchased smartphone. Voice and data will follow at an unspecified later date. In light of Cyclone Gabrielle and the resulting communication challenges, the announcement is timely in many ways.
Paris is keen to get Musk to New Zealand. “That’s definitely the plan. Nothing confirmed yet but we’d love to get him out to New Zealand when the service goes live and, you know, have him on the top of some mountain peak making a call or texting.”
Internally, experience and commercial director Joe Goddard – who was with Paris at Telecom for the Spark project – and head of brand and marketing Georgia Mahaffie have led the charge for the One rebrand project.
A range of agencies has been involved including The Tuesday Club (Nick Worthington), Mister Wolf, DDB and Two Views (Andrew Stone). FCB has been the media agency.
When it came to a new logo, there was a standout early idea, says Paris.
“Nick was sitting at the lights and he goes, you know what …? If you turn the Vodafone logo 90 degrees – it goes from a speech mark to a kiwi. We were like, jeez, you creative people – it was bloody genius.”
But they knew they’d have a hard job convincing the global Vodafone Group – they tested the waters, and their instincts were right: “It was a very hard no.”
Nevertheless, Vodafone Group did sign off on its existing icon and the kiwi logo being used for some transition marketing - Dick Frizzell emulated his famous ‘Mickey to Tiki Tu Meke’ artwork, and Worthington’s idea came alive.
Insiders say Vodafone Group became irked when the artwork started appearing more frequently. “They thought it was clever and so they agreed [to it] for a period,” says Paris. “We probably used it a bit more. They just said it would be really nice if this wasn’t all over international LinkedIn profiles and all that kind of stuff.”
Paris says the separation from Vodafone has been smooth. “They’ve been really reasonable. Joe’s been leading and engaging with them and it’s still a very positive, good relationship.
“Every time we’ve made a misstep, they’ve just sent us a note and we’ve responded and changed it straight away. We haven’t been intentionally poking them with a stick.
“We’ve just been trying to push the boundaries to make sure that we can show this is coming from the right place. The foundation of Vodafone has enabled us to do amazing things and we want to be respectful and show the transition.”
The company had to ensure the material removal of the Vodafone brand from April 1. With more than 60 stores needing to be rebranded, work has been going on for weeks to meet that deadline.
Otherwise, One would have had to pay that $20m-$30m annual fee for another financial year.
The Warriors league players have been wearing “One” on their jerseys already – even before the launch. It’s perhaps been a lucky new charm, given their sensational start to the year.
“The [historic] Vodafone Warriors jerseys will be around for the next decade. That’s not going to ankle-tap us,” says Paris, referring to the ‘material removal’ deadline. “There will be some kind of prepaid sandwich sign outside an Ashburton Dairy – that’s not going to ankle-tap us. But it’s stores, website, app, advertising…”
In fact, under a deal negotiated by Goddard, there will be just four locations in the whole country where customers will see the One and Vodafone logos side-by-side: the international airports at Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin.
“Probably the biggest risk for the change is people getting off planes and going ‘I don’t know One, I don’t know 2degrees and I don’t know Spark, but I do know Vodafone’. So at the airport you’ve got them co-branded side by side. That’s the only place where the brand will officially survive in New Zealand.”
Paris says he’s happy with One’s mobile market share – according to March 2022 figures it has around 38 per cent, compared with Spark’s 41 per cent and 2degrees’ 19 per cent. 2degrees, according to one source, has traditionally had the best customer net promoter score (NPS), and this is likely a focus for the other two.
Paris says One remains focused on its network resilience and devices and being a product aggregator, working with – rather than competing against – the likes of Amazon and Microsoft.
“You know, we’re not going to develop our own phones, we’re not going to develop our own Teams platform. We’re not going to develop our own Netflix. We’ve made a conscious decision that we’re not product innovators, we’re product aggregators.
“Spark’s historically focused on value-added services like with partnerships with Spotify and 2degrees is focused on price, so free roaming to Australia or whatever it is.
“So each one of us I think has our own lane that we’re swimming in to attract the customers. I’d like to see a 1 or 2 per cent [market share] increase, but this is not about getting a 10 per cent swing.”
Nevertheless, there has certainly been increased foot traffic at retail stores after the One brand was announced and even well before it launched.
“When you rebrand, it’s an opportunity to get massive reconsideration from customers that you’ve pissed off or let down in the past,” says Paris.
“When you announce a change, actually, New Zealanders are pretty reasonable and they’ll give you another crack. You need to make sure that you nail that crack though, right? You can’t have that first interaction and they go ‘oh, same old bloody thing’.”
Back, then, to Sharon, who emailed Paris about the “bloody useless” ‘former’ CEO.
He says she was unhappy over two or three different issues. “We resolved them,” says Paris, who told Sharon he was now her “dedicated account manager”.
“Any issues you come to me and I’ll get them sorted – I think she’s a customer for life.”
For more Media Insider columns:
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- ‘I have let you down’: Inside the fall of Today FM and why it went horribly wrong
- Barry Soper, Jacinda Ardern farewell Parliament: ‘Media didn’t understand her; she didn’t understand media’
- He’s a legend of New Zealand television: Peter Williams’ sudden and surprising media career change
* Editor-at-Large Shayne Currie is one of New Zealand’s most experienced senior journalists and media leaders. He has held executive and senior editorial roles at NZME including Managing Editor, NZ Herald Editor and Herald on Sunday Editor and has a small shareholding in NZME.
