Services, General–Gold
Sustained Success–Gold

Entering Canada’s wireless services market as its fourth player meant facing entrenched and widely recognized brands with much deeper pockets and far greater penetration. Yet despite what appeared to be overwhelming odds, Clearnet was the most successful PCS launch in North America. But that was act one. What did Clearnet do in act two? With a brand position of "The future is friendly" and a solid foundation of brand awareness to build on, the challenge for the company was to keep the brand familiar but fresh: familiar because Clearnet wanted to build trust and strategic consistency; fresh because that was the expectation the company had created from the very beginning.

By the third quarter of 1999, Clearnet had chosen to support its future-friendly positioning by being philosophically provocative, asking such questions as "Why have a home phone?" If, as the company asked, consumers could have the freedom of free evening and weekend calling, why would they want to be tied to a land line?

Clearnet’s TV spots focused on a tropical frog in a jar. While screen supers asked that question, the frog removed the cap from the jar to express its independence by leaping from the jar and out of the TV shot. This was to follow with another similar message: "Inside every home is a phone waiting to get out."

By spring 2000, Clearnet’s message was familiar, but the frog image needed a change. So the amphibian was swapped for a reptile, a lizard clinging to a phone cord asking, "Why hang on to your home phone?" Still, the final-and most difficult-part of the 2000 campaign remained to be addressed: The company had delivered against the "friendly" part of Clearnet’s brand position, but the "future" had to be dealt with in a tangible way. That required a technological breakthrough as well as a fresh variation on the advertising imagery. They came together by bundling prepaid service with Web access and selling it using the much-remarked-on "Disco Duck" execution. The association with the Web was reinforced by the duck’s webbed feet, demonstrating the strength of verbal and visual puns.

Consumers responded to the campaign with a very friendly embrace of Clearnet. Between third quarter 1999 and third quarter 2000, Clearnet achieved remarkable growth in subscribers and market share. Clearnet zoomed from 288,373 subscribers to 435,641, an increase of 147,268, or a whopping 51.1%. By contrast, Bell Mobility had a growth rate of 27% and Rogers Cantel grew by 18%. During that same 12-month period, Clearnet’s market share saw 18.5% growth, versus a 1.8% share growth rate for Bell Mobility and a 0.8% decline in share for Rogers Cantel.

Few in the wireless service industry missed what Clearnet was up to. Telecom giant Telus came knocking in August 2000 with $6.6 billion to hand over, an enormous sum to pay for a company launched from scratch just three years before. But then, Telus wasn’t so much buying tangible assets as buying an idea: the power of the Clearnet brand.

Credits

Advertiser: Telus Mobility, Toronto
Agency: TAXI, Toronto
Heather Fraser, director of strategic planning, TAXI
Paul Lavoie, president and creative director, TAXI
Clark Smith, art director, TAXI
Donna McCarthy, writer, TAXI
Terry Drummond, writer, TAXI
Alan Madill, art director, TAXI
Gary McGuire, account director TAXI
Jennifer Macneil, account manager, TAXI (no longer working at TAXI)
Rick Seifeddine, VP corporate & marketing communications, Telus Mobility
Lise Doucet, director, marketing communications, Telus Mobility
Mark Daprato, manager, brand, Telus Mobility

-By Marketing Magazine