Bell Canada Rebrand
August 10th, 2008
Design: Zulu Alpha Kilo
Client: BCE
Date: 2008
People in key Canadian markets have probably noticed a teaser campaign consisting of random cropped letterforms and the letters “er” popping up in subways and on billboards throughout their cities. After much speculation, we now know who is behind the campaign. Bell Canada has unveiled a new brand identity just in time for the launch of the (highly Bell-sponsored) Summer Olympics. Designed by Zulu Alpha Kilo, the new identity features a simplified logo (which I like) and an english-market campaign that uses abstracted “bell-ements” and a highlighted “er” as key identity traits (which I don’t like).
The “er” highlighting seems completely arbitrary, and while “-er” as a suffix is generally applied to nouns to denote a person or thing connected or involved with, belonging to, or having (‘teacher’, ‘runner’, etc) or used in comparative adjectives (‘faster’, ‘longer’, ‘bigger’), the application in this campaign is highly inconsistent – leading one to wonder how the concept came about. A read through the brand launch press release does little to justify ZAK’s angle.
On the positive, the french-market-specific campaign features the tag-line “La vie est Bell” (with the re-worked logo taking the place of ‘belle’) in lieu of the english-market’s nonsensical “er”-ing. I guess a french “er” campaign wouldn’t make any kind of sense – not that the english-market campaign is a paragon of logic and clear conjugation.
-John Ryan
Entry Filed under: Advertising,Brand,Gong Show,Logo
7 Comments Add your own
1. admin | August 10th, 2008 at 08:52
NICE POST!
2. Darcy McGee | August 10th, 2008 at 09:43
I was just reading the Globe and thinking that this should be posted here.
You like the new logo? The tight kerning between the B, e, and first l is jarring when juxtaposed with the space between the following l. Quite poorly done, I think.
The -er highlighting makes no sense linguistically or visually. It’s just annoying.
The new web site is a rip off of Apple’s to a degree one rarely sees anymore.
3. Canada » Gordon dou&hellip | August 10th, 2008 at 15:23
[...] Bell Canada RebrandBell Canada has unveiled a new brand identity just in time for the launch of the (highly Bell-sponsored) Summer Olympics. Designed by Zulu Alpha Kilo, the new identity features a simplified logo (which I like) and an english-market … [...]
4. mr. non-name | August 11th, 2008 at 14:31
Someone at Bell’s PR department needs to be slapped. Releasing the branding campaign a couple days before you go ahead and start doing stupid like charging for incoming text messages is just going to piss people off (obviously, I’m one of those people). I know that it was timed for the Olympics, but they could have survived with the loss of income from the text messages for another month, and they would have come across a little less smug and arrogant.
Apologies for hijacking the discussion.
5. huh | January 20th, 2009 at 15:10
Bell’s logo in 1969 designed by Saul Bass.
http://www.porticus.org/bell/images/1969_logo_blue.gif
Why did they not think of using this?
It can’t get any simpler.
6. Dave | April 20th, 2009 at 13:45
I believe the Identity work was done by Cosette and not ZAK
7. How to justify a logo. - &hellip | July 13th, 2010 at 15:44
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