Optus extends its campaign and brand overhaul with ‘Declaration of Yes’ via M&C Saatchi, Sydney
An extensive campaign for Optus My Plan – the “smart plan for smart phones” – via M&C Saatchi has launched.
The campaign is a proof point of Optus’ ‘Declaration of Yes’, a return to the history of the company where it focused on connecting with people. The Declaration illustrates Optus’ commitment to its customers by putting them at the heart of everything they do. This includes a comprehensive brand overhaul revealed last month – developed through Re, M&C Saatchi’s brand consultancy.
Incorporating the brand’s fresh new look and disarming tone, the multi-channel campaign explains how Optus My Plan is the first mobile plan made for how we use our phones today. The plans are designed to help customers keep excess fees on their phones to a minimum by:
– changing the charges for customers who use extra data or calls
– flexing to keep excess fees down
– charging in minutes rather than ‘mysterious’ dollar values
– providing unlimited standard national SMS and 
MMS every month.
Featuring the helpful and endearing Optus character, the campaign involves a large scale, integrated media roll out that includes TV, digital, social, press, out of home and radio.
Work across the vast media landscape has been tailored to the medium, time and the context in which it is viewed to maximise impact and strengthen the message.
For example the spots in Fairfax’s Good Weekend headline with: “Hello Weekend, (or as we like to call it, 2,880 minutes).”
Other examples of bus and train interiors demonstrate how easy it is to fall down a YouTube wormhole on your mobile phone during your morning commute.
Says Nathan Rosenberg, head of brand at Optus: “This is not about a new logo, it’s a new way of doing business. We’re bringing ‘yes’ back to the core of everything we do. We want to be better for our customers by giving them easier to understand plans with fairer charges.”
Says Ben Welsh, M&C Saatchi executive creative director: “This campaign, indeed the broader new look and feel for Optus, was bigger than a creative challenge, it was about a philosophy of customer service.
“Borne from a highly collaborative process, all three parties: M&C Saatchi, our branding specialists Re, and Optus worked seamlessly to get this charming new presence across the line. Charm, wit and a little yellow character with stick legs. Yes!”
14 Comments
Start with a one word manifesto with all its language ideas lifted directly from Horton the Elephant. Add a budget animated character from Dumb Ways to Die and you’ve got yet another M&C ‘Tribute’ ad.
“endearing Optus character”?
Really?
It is a ball with eyes.
Making it at best, lazy.
I think the little guy’s quite cool, in keeping with the chatty tone
You can’t say it’s not a campaign without legs, sticky ones, the beat type. And that plan’s actually pretty bloody good. Clever.
If you’ve spent twenty years and tens of millions of dollars of marketing dollars on making people subconsciously know that animals=and Optus ad, why the hell would you piss that all away for this? I could understand if there was something manifestly wrong with the animals (and none that I, the uninterested observer could spot), but why pour it all down the drain?
Don’y Woolworths have a very, very similar character that looks like a pea with arms and legs? Just sayin’ it’s a coincidence.
Feels very global. Is it a Singtel campaign?
In a complicated, ugly category I reckon it’s a breath of fresh air as long as they don’t clutter it up with retail crap.
Dumb ways to dial.
Optus is represented by a pig’s snout? Yeah, I guess that makes sense.
Dr Doolittle. Sounds like you do little and stay for ideas forever. All good things come to an end. Personally I’d have killed the animals years ago.
M&C pitched & beat a conga line of agencies. Enjoy the moment guys.
Secure
Beneath
The
Watchful
Eyes
Just a knee jerk reaction to the Telstra re-brand. They’ve got cutsie characters so we better get some too. Sorry.