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It’s not always been easy to keep abreast of the various twists and turns in what could honestly be described as the Everything Everywhere saga.
Since the network operator was formed from a merger of France Telecom’s Orange and Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile two years ago, there has been a whirlwind of reports speculating about the future of the company and whether that would result in the demise the T-Mobile and Orange brands and even Everything Everywhere itself.
Chief executive Olaf Swantee, who announced a management restructure on his first day on the job in October, immediately fanned the flames when he said the name Everything Everywhere was “silly” in a Daily Telegraph interview.
At that time Everything Everywhere was rolling out a high-street presence and said it had no plans to drop the name. But at the start of 2012 interest in the story peaked when Everything Everywhere issued a bond issue prospectus proposing a “substitution for one or both of the existing brands”.
Everything Everywhere attempted to pour cold water on the reports, saying in a statement it was considering a range of options. But this did little to calm the speculation, especially after Marketing revealed in May that it was paring back its sponsorship programme for Orange, dropping its association with the Prize for Fiction, RockCorps and National Business Awards. While Orange did renew its Bafta sponsorship for next year, and maintained that it was part of its continued investment in film, the rumour mill was already turning.
The abandonment of the Orange brand became all the more plausible when a source told Marketing that the company’s brand teams were readying a new campaign for Everything Everywhere, created by Saatchi and Saatchi. Although the Everything Everywhere name has popped up in T-Mobile and Orange’s advertising before, this is the first time it will be at the focus of the campaign.
Marketing has now been told the October campaign will focus on Everything Everywhere’s 4G network, which yesterday [21 August] was given the green light by Ofcom to roll out from September. A well-placed source told us that plans were in place to drop both T-Mobile and Orange by mid 2013, backing up a report by Sky News yesterday morning.
An Everything Everywhere spokesman replied that it would continue to invest in the “highly successful” T-Mobile and Orange brands “for the foreseeable future”. Just an hour later, the company revealed that it would be creating a third brand, to sit alongside Orange and T–Mobile, but not compete with it.
The spokesman stayed tight lipped about the name of the new brand, arguing that Everything Everywhere was “never intended to become a customer brand, nor will it become one”. But a source hinted to Marketing that it will be based on the Everything Everywhere name and confirming it will centre on a 4G proposition.
A quick search on the Intellectual Property Office website shows Everything Everywhere has trademarked names including ‘4G Everything’, ‘4G Everywhere’, ‘4G Everything Everywhere’ and ‘4GEE’ in May. Take your pick from those trademarks for the name of the new brand.
The application for the trademarks are dated after Everything Everywhere approached Ofcom proposing it should become the first mobile operator to launch 4G by using existing 1800Mhz spectrum to run LTE. The October launch date for the new brand and the fact there is a dedicated team already working on creating the 4G brand suggests Everything Everywhere believed the controversial 4G decision was a forgone conclusion.
With both Orange and T-Mobile having carved out strong brand identities over the years, creating memorable advertising such as Orange’s tongue-in-cheek movie idents, to T-Mobile’s ‘The Royal Wedding’ spoof, the suggestion that these brands would cease to exist will seem ludicrous to many – particularly given the fact Everything Everywhere spent an estimated £100m on marketing the brands in 2011.
If the Orange and T-Mobile brands are to be dropped, it will be a gradual process. With competition for new customers so fierce, Everything Everywhere cannot waive the brand association which has helped it build it 27m-strong network.
But with the industry rapidly evolving, as consumers spend ever more time on their smartphones and tablets, a fresh brand identity could help close the gap on rivals, as well as dialling up its superfast broadband offering, which will give it a distinct advantage over Vodafone and O2.