Digifone hunts for success as O2

Advertising and Marketing: Hot on the heels of Eircell's name change to Vodafone comes the rebranding of Digifone, its main competitor in the Irish mobile phone market, which from May will be called O2.

The Vodafone change is a fairly straightforward one, with Eircell's name being replaced by a well-known brand name. That campaign, which started last year, stepped up a gear last month with the launch of a television advertising campaign devised by Ogilvy & Mather.

Digifone's changeover is quite different in that O2 is a new brand created to market the four mobile phone operators in the MMO2 group of companies, which includes BTCellnet in Britain, VIAG Interkom in Germany, Telfort in the Netherlands and Digifone. All four will be changing simultaneously.
"It's a 100-day strategy that began on February 2nd," said Ms Edel O'Leary, head of marketing operations at Digifone, adding that the change in Ireland would be incorporated into the company's normal advertising budget of around €7.5 million (£5.9 million).

The timing might be ideal in other markets but, in Ireland, the campaign peaks in the second week in May, which is widely thought to be election week.

"The Vodafone campaign that we're seeing now is a very good, clear, straightforward message," said Ms O'Leary. "In our case, it's a very different proposition because O2 as a brand has no legacy, or no brand attributes, so for us it's a very different message to communicate."
For cost effectiveness, the new branding will roll out on a phased basis, with the O2 livery replacing signage on vans, shopfronts, and other places when required. The company sponsors the Cork GAA football and hurling teams and is currently consulting the county GAA board as to the best time to redesign the jerseys.
"There are a lot of details that will have to be ironed out, which is why the 100-day strategy was put in place," said Ms O'Leary. "However, we've always been very careful with our marketing budgets so it's not a question of changing everything overnight."

The first phase of the name change campaign has already begun, with a direct mail shot to each of the company's 1.162 million customers. The next phase will begin in April, when a multimedia campaign devised by Digifone's Irish agency Owens DDB will break.

According to Ms Jan Richards, a director at the agency, the focus will be on "high frequency, high impact media" so, while the campaign will run across all media, the weighting will be on outdoor and TV. Mindful that it is the run-up to an election, the media has already been booked by the accounts planners MediaWorks.

The first time Digifone changed its name - when it dropped the Esat prefix - there was no specific advertising campaign advising customers and the market because, according to Ms Richards, "the change didn't really make an awful lot of difference to consumers". This new brand is quite different and, as soon as the local name change campaign is complete in May, a glossy TV branding campaign created by British agency VCCP will begin.