New Branding for Bell, Sympatico Got Killed
August 7, 2008 — nicolask7
As seen today on their website, Bell is taking the Beijing Olympic Games kick-off as an opportunity to .
It didn’t take very long before a lot of people reacted to Bell’s move: there are already many very interesting comments in the feedback section of this . By reading some of these comments, such as ”Bell may be changing it’s names and ads, but if they don’t change their policies, it isn’t going to help them” or ”Changing brands doesn’t mean squat if they can’t improve their service offerings and customer support” or that one:” Improve your service and make the prices more reasonable and only then you can change the names to confuse the people”, the first thing that came up to my mind was this clip making fun of the whole advertising industry.
So you’re not selling the way you used to, maybe it’s time for a bigger logo, what about an extreme make over? , Bell’s brand senior vice president, the new visual representation of the brand was an attempt to “really clean things up.” I guess they’ll have to review this whole document ().
Sympatico got killed
So besides the new logo, Bell is getting rid of Bell Express Vu and Sympatico brands to renamed them Bell TV and Bell Internet. It took apparently four marketing agencies to find out these names and to process the upcoming campaign. I have to confess that I feel a bit sad losing Sympatico because even if I’m no Bell fan, I’ve always loved Sympatico. I probably still have 2-3 boxes with old modems that they sent me, each time coming with really nice softwares to install IE when the only thing I really needed was a username/password. I also think (not sure) that they used to send me a monthly magazine back in the mid ‘90 with helpful listings of websites to visit, that was nice from them. I finally remember their partnership with MSN, which was probably one of their best move ever (no Microsoft fan here but I still can recognize that it was smart). So, RIP Sympatico, I can’t wait to see the new Bell Internet ads and logo, any suggestions on the font they should use?
August 8, 2008 at 1:57 pm
[…] l’expliquent Nicolas et certains commentateurs, Bell peut bien changer de look, mais s’il ne change pas ses […]
August 8, 2008 at 2:53 pm
I’m at a lost for words… 4 agencies, 2 years… and the logo looks exactly like the 1970s one… Amazing!!! They fired 2500 management to save less money then this initiative probably cost them… And this morning, during the inaugural ceremony for olympics, because of the storm, their Satellite service was down! Very Sad!
August 8, 2008 at 3:23 pm
“So besides the new logo, Bell is getting rid of Bell Express Vu and Sympatico brands to renamed them Bell TV and Bell Internet. It took apparently four marketing agencies to find out these names and to process the upcoming campaign”
Hahahaha,
First, thank you for the news, I need to improve my media awareness skills. I finally understand the ads around town in black and (a darker) blue.
Second, I also think that Sympatico was the better service of Bell, however Videotron’s customer service and policies stole me away from Sympatico.
Funny enough, it seems that Bell’s marketing strategy is a la Rogers, gain as much market share and brand share as possible and neglict customer service and retention. I guess it is an unorthodox business strategy that is working for them (or is it just because of the lack of competition… I’m not sure!)
On an advertising point of view, the new Bell is very good. I love the La vie est Bell slogan (Why do I feel crazy that I have never heard nor thought about that before? Probably because of Bell’s inability to identify their name with “love”) and their new look is very clean, professional and energetic (doesn’t feel old and slow).
Like you reported, I really hope to see them change their business policies and not just their branding/image.
Are you on Twitter?
August 11, 2008 at 12:04 am
i think all of this is underwhelming. i guess there were too many stakeholders, and too many people who had to approve the design.
as they say, design by consensus is death of the brand.
August 15, 2008 at 9:38 pm
… and of course they’ve killed Frank and Gordon, whom many found the most appealing part of Bell.
August 18, 2008 at 6:10 pm
When I saw the commercial for the first time during the Olympics, I didn’t even realized it was Bell. It says a lot about this poorly executed transition. At least they will have bloggers like us talking about it. lol
October 10, 2008 at 11:05 pm
As I have told others that complain about the poor support service which has gone abroad. Bell is not in the business of supporting. It has become literally a pump and dump corporation that cares not about their customer.