EE Bursts Telecom Bubble With a Bold Business and Ad Overhaul

When you think of U.K. telecom giant EE, Kevin Bacon might be the first thing that comes to mind.

The Footloose actor has fronted the brand’s marketing campaigns for over a decade, where he’s been shown attempting everything from skydiving to being shaved by a robot, all in the name of positioning EE as the U.K.’s best mobile and broadband network.

Now, Bacon’s era as the highly effective face of EE is coming to an end. Instead, he’ll serve as the voice of fresh creative work from longtime agency Publicis Groupe U.K. that puts real people at its heart, underpinned by a very British soundtrack featuring music from Fatboy Slim, Faithless and Bloc Party.

“It’s was a massive decision for us to make that change,” Peter Jeavons, EE and BT’s director of marketing comms, told Adweek. “But we’ve got a desire to be much more audience-led and audience-driven.”

The shift comes as the EE unveils a complete marketing-led business overhaul that will see it expand beyond traditional mobile and internet services to become what its chief executive, Marc Allera, described as a “personal and customer-focused technology brand.”

As part of this, EE (which BT Group acquired for £12.5bn in 2016) will become the flagship consumer brand for the business; giving way to legacy brand BT, which has been responsible for some of the U.K.’s highest profile ad campaigns over the past three decades.

Allera told press at an event on Oct. 18 that the business was excited to “take the wrappers off” the refreshed brand proposition, some years after quietly announcing that EE would become the dominant brand.

“We’re evolving to play a much more important role in customers lives beyond the essential connectivity that we provide today,” he said.

A multiplatform campaign will underscore EE’s new mission, showing how it can show up for customers across four verticals including: home, learn, work and game. These categories were identified following comprehensive research from the marketing and insights team which underscored “customer need points,” said Jeavons.

Rethinking the brand’s architecture

The brand’s new ad blitz has been two years in the making, with Publicis agencies Saatchi & Saatchi, Digitas, Boomerang, Publicis•Poke, Zag and Prodigious, leading the charge.

EE has announced a host of new business endeavors to support its brand transformation and open up revenue streams.

Included in this is the launch of a sales platform called EE ID, which will take on the likes of Amazon and Curry’s to grow the company’s retail offering by selling gaming consoles and other electronics to people via a dedicated app, even if they’re not existing customers. EE ID will also offer customers cyber security, home security and insurance products.

“This is about giving customers more reasons to be with EE more often, to create more stickiness with the brand,” Allera said.

Elsewhere, EE TV will also replace BT TV, having inked a deal with Apple to offer an enhanced package and refreshed set-top box.

These changes, and a desire to bring to the fore other little-known services and products EE offers—from parental controls to educational tools—have informed the narrative of the new brand work.

The “New EE” platform is launching with a series of three TV ads starring members of the UK public, which are all woven together by mixtape of British anthems including “Faithless” by Insomnia and “It’s Not Over Yet” by the Klaxons.

The first spot “Home” shows how parents can use EE Wi-Fi controls to limit screen-time. The second, “Sunday Funday” underscores the brand’s dedicated gaming Wi-Fi offering. The third focuses on the brand’s learning platforms, showing how teens can use the tech in class. The first two were directed by Daniel Wolfe and the latter by Elliott Power, all through production company Art Practice.

The ads have tested well among consumers, proving what Jeavons said was the “elasticity” of the EE brand name.

He explained: “We found it encouraging that people didn’t perceive us as being pigeonholed into a particular technology or, or vertical. And actually, there was a lot of love for the brand stepping out into new verticals. So once we had the confidence with that, we knew we were on to something.”

Ben Mooge, chief creative officer at Publicis U.K., said the hero ads had to build an authentic connection with consumers:”Giving real people a stage and elevating the every day with the music is what makes this creative stand out,” he said, adding the cross-agency approach was a testament to Publicis’ “power of one” model which draws talent from across the business to service clients.

EE’s brand identity has had a subtle overhaul too powered by Zag, with cohesive markers in each spot—including a refreshed logo and a clock—building a visual language that connects the dots between the different executions.

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.”