Rufus Leonard implements new brand identity for BT

26 June 2003

The announcement this week that BT is unveiling a new brand identity showcases the long-standing and successful relationship between leading brand development consultancy, Rufus Leonard, and the communications giant.

Through a seven-year relationship that has encompassed on and off-line work, Rufus Leonard has worked extremely closely with the internal BT brand team on numerous projects throughout the BT group of companies.  Central to this has been the development of BT’s extranet ‘brand centre’, launched three years ago.  This enables employees and approved external suppliers to gain access to a set of downloadable resources and guidelines on the graphic brand elements and core brand values of BT. Brand centers are at the heart of Rufus Leonard’s brand expertise having produced similar facilities for Royal Mail, Shell and QinetiQ, with the Shell Handbook winning the Award of Excellence in the customer division of the Communicators in Business (CiB) Communications Excellence Awards last year.

Their strong relationship placed Rufus Leonard centrally in the latest development to the company’s brand identity.  Over the past six months a dedicated specialist team from the consultancy has worked in conjunction with the BT brand team to research and plan how to best implement the identity across the group.  It is the first such change since 1991 and only the second since becoming British Telecom in 1980. 

BT is keen to emphasise that the new mark will be gradually introduced over a three-year period and no big advertising campaign or launch will take place.  Their relationship with Rufus Leonard very much underpins this approach and demonstrates how a carefully managed and integrated campaign can be successfully implemented without huge expense.

Steve Howell, Executive Creative Director at Rufus Leonard, and Client Director for the BT Group account, comments:
“We were delighted to have the opportunity to work so closely with the BT brand team on the development of the new BT identity. Our design team explored many different visual options, but the Openworld mark came out as clear favourite with both internal and external audiences.”

”This project is definitely the highlight of our seven year relationship with BT. We are now looking forward to working with them on bringing the new identity to life through a rolling programme of implementation activities.”