Telstra gets animated to shake off corporate image

Telstra’s chief marketing officer, Brent Smart, shares an exclusive first look at the company’s imaginative new image which he hopes can get consumers to rethink the brand.

Telstra's imaginative new brand positioning was created by +61 which includes Bear Meets Eagle On Fire, TBWA and OMD.

Telstra has unveiled its latest advertising platform, Wherever We Go, as the telco giant launches a major marketing offensive in a bid to become a loved brand.

Telstra chief marketing officer Brent Smart told The Growth Agenda that the new positioning, which kicks off this week with a national advertising campaign, aims to surprise consumers and encourage people to reconsider the brand.

“I always say that if you want to change how people feel about your brand, you have to change how the brand feels,” Mr Smart said. “There’s a group of non-customers who judge us on what we used to be, not what we are. The job is to get those non-customers to reappraise.

“If we want to be a brand that has a really strong reputation and if we want to be a brand that is, and I use this word with great trepidation, loved, then we need to get that big group of non-customers to change how they feel about the brand so that they will become customers sometime in the future.”

To achieve this aim, the market-leading telco is pulling out all the stops with a major marketing blitz that will see Telstra take over close to 3000 outdoor locations across the country. An animated TVC will launch during the AFL grand final and the campaign will include a strong media presence across broadcast, digital and social platforms.

It comes on the back of a mixed year for Telstra. The organisation’s mobile business added 560,000 customers to the existing 26 million services on its mobile network. The strength of the mobile division helped the business post profits of $1.8bn for the last financial year, despite the impact of a restructure that resulted in 2800 job cuts. The campaign will aim to win over customers following a hike in mobile price plans, which rose by as much $4 a month in the midst of cost-of-living pressures.

Telstra's new brand positioning ‘wherever we go’ aims to get customers to rethink the telco.

“The brands that we are willing to pay more for are the brands we have an emotional relationship with,” said Mr Smart. “There are rational reasons, like we have a better network, but you need both rational and emotional. I think we have great rational reasons in our network, but I want to add more meaning than just the great network to our brand.

“Our job as marketers is to create future demand with that group of people who aren’t yet customers. The way that works is we need to create memories, so that when they come into the market – it could be next month, it could be next year – they’re more likely to choose us because they have a connection to us.

“The job of a brand is to move someone, to surprise or intrigue them; its more about how it makes them feel, and less about how it rationally persuades them. There’s a time for that, but not when they haven’t even entered the funnel. That’s where we want to try and move people, connect and capture their imagination,” Mr Smart said.

Telstra chief marketing officer Brent Smart wants consumers to view the telco giant as an imaginative brand. Picture: Jane Dempster

The whimsical animated TV campaign features two characters on a journey together and aims to serve as a metaphor for the partnership Telstra wants to create with customers. Created by Oscar-nominated animation duo Smith and Foulkes, the film features a whistling composition of the iconic Bee Gee’s song Islands in the Stream.

The outdoor activity incorporates 40 bespoke installations and painted wall murals, comprising graphic illustrations by Ben Hassler and paper sculptures recreated by artist Kyle Bean and photographer Carl Kleiner.

The new platform has been created by Telstra’s bespoke agency partnership +61 that comprises creative agency Bear Meets Eagle on Fire, advertising agency TBWA and media agency OMD. It’s the biggest marketing activity from +61 since its appointment in October last year.

Telstra's outdoor advertising campaign will incorporate close to 3,000 locations nationally.

The work marks a significant departure from previous activity under the Australia Is Why platform and aims to shift the brand away from its corporate image and create a more imaginative place in consumers minds.

“I think being distinctive is the No 1 job for any marketer,” Mr Smart said. “I look at a lot of big brands in this country, and I think they all look the same, they all feel the same, and they’re all telling the same stories: its all real stories about real people living their real lives.

“We’ve tried to elevate out of that with something that’s a bit more imaginative and very distinctive and looks like no other brand. It’s deliberately very different and distinctive. Why can’t the biggest brands be the most imaginative brands?

“This work captures the spirit of optimism and promise of partnership that we want the Telstra brand to be all about. We want to show that the biggest brands can also be the most imaginative.”

This activity will be followed by a Christmas campaign that will not be animated.

“I don’t want to be an animated brand all the time. I’m a big believer in brand cohesion versus executional consistency,” Mr Smart said.