Building a new brand for NZ: Vodafone NZ rebrands to One NZ and launches new campaign
At the end of last month, Vodafone NZ announced its rebrand to One NZ – a journey that began three years ago when Infratil and Brookfield bought Vodafone NZ off Vodafone Group and appointed Jason Paris as CEO.
Since then, the question has always been when, not if, Vodafone NZ will rebrand. This change needed to take place when the time was right.
Paris brought in Andrew Stone from TwoViews to lead the team through the rebrand. Industry veteran Andrew was tasked with developing the strategic direction of the project as well as to build and lead the team that would be required to deliver the transformation.
With a focus on finding the right people to bring the rebrand vision to life, Stone seconded Nick Worthington from Tuesday Club to be the creative lead. The appointment of Georgia Mahaffie as the new head of brand and marketing at Vodafone NZ, completed the senior line up of the core team.
Says Georgia Mahaffie, incoming head of brand and marketing, One NZ: “The challenge was for the new brand to be more reflective of a NZ company and drive a simpler and better experience for everyone.
“To deliver on the brand promise, I wanted to create an environment where we would welcome the smartest creative minds, the best specialists, work collaboratively and challenge ourselves to deliver, big audacious work. Egos were parked – great ideas were developed and the best ones picked up and backed.
“We took a different approach and formed a wider team based on individuals instead of companies.”
The unorthodox approach resulted in a team of talented specialists from across Vodafone (including brand, retail, business, employee, digital, in-house production, experience and legal) and a stellar team of external individuals and businesses including:
- Nick Worthington and team from The Tuesday Club – Creative leadership
- Derek Lockwood and Blake Enting from MisterWolf – Identity and brand system, digital build
- Terri Collier and the team from FCB Media – Media strategy and partnerships
- Matty Burton and the team from DDB Aotearoa – Creative development and support
- Sarah Munnik from Pead – Public relations
- Greg Forsyth from Makebits – Digital builds and management
- James Polhill and Damon O’Leary from Hello Limited – Business
- Craig Muller and the team from Uno Loco – Events and experience
The sculptures and films were directed by The Glue Society with production completed by Revolver.
Working under a tight NDA and complete secrecy, the team was briefed to create a brand-new world for One NZ and to make sure that 90 percent of New Zealand knew about it.
In the lead-up to the rebrand announcement the team built and installed a 40m wide Vodafone sign at Deer Park Heights in Queenstown. This installation served two purposes. It acted as the set for an awe-inspiring TVC and it served as part of the pre-announcement campaign. When letters started to disappear from the sign, speculation began as to what was going on.
At the same time, the letters were removed from the physical activation, letters started to disappear from Vodafone NZ’s network banner which reaches more than 1.5M phones across the country. This tease generated wide reach and awareness across a range of channels and created unprecedented online engagement.
In keeping with the ethos of One NZ, sharing the rebrand with staff first was a key component of the announcement strategy. Customised launch events in more than 70 retail stores and care centers across Aotearoa went live ahead of the external announcement, as well as three simultaneous launch events in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.
The through-the-line launch was carefully curated to reveal more information every two hours on the day of the rebrand announcement. This also saw the clever transition of the Vodafone logo into a Kiwi and ultimately into the new One NZ logo to tell the story of change. Appearing in all major media titles, on all major TV stations, multiple page take-overs and out of home placements meant that One NZ couldn’t be missed.
The team also announced a new business strategy, ‘The one for business’ to show One NZ’s leadership in safety and security – along with the announcement of a new business security offer.
At the same time One Good Kiwi was launched, a digital giving platform that is giving $1.2 million a year to good causes supporting rangatahi. Designed to be interactive, fun and easy to use the One Good Kiwi app was #1 for downloads in the app store on the day of launch with engagement continuing to grow.
Says Mahaffie: “I’m so proud of what we’ve created. We have a new local brand that truly reflects who we are and it has been immensely satisfying to share this news with New Zealand. This is just the start of what is to come.”
32 Comments
Is this a press release designed to promote the agencies behind the rebrand, or to explain the rebrand itself?
Okay so now we’re PRing how we got to the work, rather than the work itself?
Seems a bit early to be doing the ‘how we did it’ piece… maybe we should see if it’s good and works first?
Yep seems like an odd thing to do – either PR the work itself (and sure list the agency credits), or have a great story in a few months/years time about the journey and results.
I think the name is solid. Fine. Not wrong. But it lacks a little Spark…
There’s a missed opportunity to name the company something bolder, brighter and more distinctive here. One isn’t wrong, but it’s doesn’t ping the heart…
‘Egos were parked’? What was going on before then?
Did anyone even notice the letters dropping off the Vodafone name?
Normally the list of agencies is at the bottom of a release about the campaign. But in this case, the agency list is the release?
This is written as if working without egos and with good people around the table is a revolution. It’s always been about having the right talent around the table, and creating the right environment for them to do good work. It’s irrelevant if they’re from a company or are a freelancer, what matters is talent and attitude.
This stunning new way of working (gathering good talent and being big enough to work with each other) has only delivered solid work so far. I guess there’s more coming.
An awe inspiring TVC, from the sign letters disappearing…?
I presume the big audacious work is what’s coming?
Pretty huge changing a company’s name, and this is a good change. Agree they could have been more interesting with the name, but it’ll work fine.
I’ve separately had glorious lunches with most of those people. A fine lot.
As for this? Well, it’s amazing what a truck load of money does for suppressing egos. But for how long?
Individuals instead of companies? Yet most of those individuals have people and companies behind them. What nonsense.
Hardly a new or ‘unorthodox’ model; almost every major client now has some form of agency ‘village’ helping them, made up of various specialists, individuals and agencies. This model ain’t anything new.
There’s been some pretty big calls made, not least of which is choosing the same name as a well renowned tv station. For a brand that’s about ‘no ego’ and being built on NZ values, knowing that you will just ride over the top of another established brand with a larger media spend and louder brand presence doesn’t seem like a great start…
We’ve got Wortho on drums
Burty on the bass
Locky on the triangle
Sez on vocals
Jimmy P on the lute
and Jase himself as thirsty groupie #5
I don’t hate One. I don’t love One. The biggest risk here is that it remains bland, just like this launch work. Better be some heart-connecting work coming.
I kinda agree.
But I think the biggest call made is having three different logo’s in market at once perhaps?
Never seen that before!
Will take a bucket load of money to bring that back down to one in people’s brains.
Pretty strange to me but if you have heaps of cash to waste I guess it might work?
This is a proper rename.
Well said. I don’t hate it. I don’t get excited by it. The way it’s currently being brought to life ‘One Good Kiwi’ ‘The one for business’ etc seems very one dimensional. Spark at least has some jeopardy in the name and where the work could lead the brand. For One, I get the feeling we’ll see a lot of slice of life advertising with a Hills Hoist washing line somewhere in the background of shot.
Here’s onederwall
I’ve spoken to actual humans who don’t work in ad land or marketing land, they think it’s boring, because it is.
bright Spark thought it was a good idea to do a PR release about this? What a fail. There is nothing new in this way of working… ignoring your big brand agency in favour of working with a plethora of smaller ones and individuals would have cost twice as much.. and the result? Bland at best.
Ownable. Quintessentially NZ?
The multiple teams for me shows one thing. Inconsistency. From the unsightly wide tracking on the logo sculpture, to the multiple logos (one can presume the Kiwi wasn’t signed off) to the reveal and PR, to the end final bland end result that to me lacks a big idea. Yea multiple teams can work, but I can see where it’s failed this time.
The little turn of the logo to a kiwi is quite nice (feels very ex-College Hill CCO-esque). Maybe that should have even been the logo? Struggling to see any audacious bold work though…
Press release reads like ‘TwoViews’ appointed the head of brand. Can only imagine who’s controlling it all in there.
When you pull in everyone like that, to one table, under NDA, working on an exciting project with a big deadline, you become more like an internal team. And like all internal teams, you start to lose perspective and get caught up in your own enthusiasm and biases. Like thinking this work is audacious and bold (when all you’ve really done is take some letters away from a sign and filmed it). And like sending out a press release of this nature (full of self congratulations). Maybe an ‘outside’ perspective to that table, maybe even from a big successful agency, might be useful?
Interesting absence of dedicated planners / strategists credited in this team. Who was responsible for asking uncomfortable questions to avoid this industry A team becoming a self-congratulatory circle-jerk delivering a costly omnishambles? https://businessdesk.co.nz/article/media/tvnz-files-trademark-opposition-against-vodafone-over-one-nz-brand