For Jeavons, the first three films serve as a springboard to add more layers on to the campaign, which will run across online, social, retail and more, complemented by addressable first media, audience planning from EssenceMediacom X.

As the campaign gets deeper and more granular, product demonstrations and relevant editorial content will pop up for customers in response to the initial creative, with more executions set to launch before the end of 2023.

“Working out how to creatively weave that consistency through all that was a huge piece of the puzzle for us,” the marketer said.

EE already counts 25 million customers in the U.K., but its operating in an increasingly tough market following the merger of rivals O2 and Virgin Media.

Analyst Paolo Pescatore, of PP Foresight, said this shift would put EE in “pole position” to compete.

“Other [competitors] have their own challenges and will fall further adrift given the need to be more flexible and agile in a radically converged and cut-throat marketplace,” he said. “This will force them to accelerate their own efforts, platforms, mindset, and strategic vision.”

A telecom for the future

CEO Allera said EE was “playing with what the brand can become.” In the process of reinventing itself it will replace BT as the group’s consumer facing brand.

However, this doesn’t mean the British brand, which throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s, delivered some of Britain’s most-loved ads featuring actors such as Maureen Lipman and Bob Hoskins under its “Good to Talk” tagline, will disappear from view entirely. What it will do, is offer a more focused portfolio of standalone broadband and telephone landline services.

Existing BT customers will be encouraged to switch to EE products while renewing or upgrading, said both Allera and Jeavons. The latter said consumer advertising for BT would “diminish” long-term. In 12 to 18 months, he added, the BT brand would be geared more towards B2B customers.

For Jeavons, the success of the EE’s biggest campaign since its debut into market in 2012 will be measured carefully over the coming year.

“We’ve got a whole dashboard of KPI’s which range from high level brand metrics to master brand credibility,” said Jeavons. “Two key indicators will be broadband sales and how the brand steps out of being associated with mobile into a much broader world.”