Orange, T-Mobile create Magenta Telecom

1st April 2010

Orange and T-Mobile today announced that the new branding for their UK joint venture will be called "Magenta". Although the switchover to the new name won't be complete until sometime next year, both T-Mobile and Orange intend to familiarise customers with the new branding immediately.

In an exclusive interview with Mobile Gazette, joint branding directors Jess Kidden and Jina Linaloundwa explained the reasoning behind the new name.

JK: Sometimes the simplest ideas are the best! We've spent the past six months looking at different names and ideas, and ultimately this is the one we liked the most.

MG: What drew you to the name Magenta?

JL: Well, we had two very strong and recognisable brands. The shape and layout of the Orange logo is instantly recognisable to customers, as is the colour scheme that T-Mobile uses, which is Magenta. So we combined the two to come up with the new name and logo.

MG: It's not the world's most exciting logo, is it? How long did it take to make.

JK: Hahah.. looks can be deceptive. We worked with our outside consultants to come up with the visual identity. They found the ideal shape, a regular quadrilateral polygon and an exactly complimentary colour combination.

MG: How much did that cost exactly?

JK: Ten million pounds.

MG: That sounds like rather a lot.

JL: Well, you have to understand that they had to choose the exact proportions of the regular quadrilateral polygon first.

MG: You mean the square shape?

JL: Yes.

MG: Wouldn't that be sort of.. square?

JL: Apparently so.

JK: Don't forget the colour. They needed to pick the correct colour for the logo.

MG: Was this before or after you called the company "Magenta"?

JK: After.

MG: I would have thought that the colour was obvious then.

JL: Apparently so.

MG: So, when are we going to see this new branding in the real world?

JK: Very soon, we will start with in-store ads carrying the new "The Future Together" strapline that we have developed. Orange branding in the past has stressed the future, T-Mobile has stressed sharing and togetheress. So, this branding combines both of the philosophies while remaining forward looking.

MG: And how must did that cost?

JK: I'd sooner not say.

JL: Well, there are a lot of cost savings that we can make by doing it this way. For T-Mobile stores we won't need to change the colour scheme, and for Orange stores the new signage will simply fit in place of the old ones. The changes needed to websites are quite minimal too.

MG: Out of interest, which names did you reject?

JK: There were some strange ones! T-Orange and O-Mobile were two early ideas that we dismissed..

JL: ..then there was one2one..

JK: ..yes, one2one. We almost went with that name because people still remember the ads from more than a decade ago. Unfortunately the one2one.com domain is now a porn site, so we thought that we'd give it a miss.

JL: And Tomroabniglee. The consultants came up with that.

MG: Tomro.. what?

JL: Tomroabniglee. It's the words "Orange" and "T-Mobile" merged together. They also tried some anagrams and came up with "Garble Emotion", "Rebate Looming" and "Terminable Goo" which we didn't think would test well with consumers.

MG: These consultants sound top notch.

JK: No comment.

MG: So where can we see the new branding?

JL: Well, we've done a test fitting to one of our stores in Kensington which looks great.. you should go and have a look! There's also the web site at magentatelecom.com which is just a teaser really. We have some more TV and film ads coming out soon, and look out for a major sponsorship deal of a football team who have agreed to change their strips to the new colour.

MG: Interesting. Well, thank you for your time and good luck!

Image of Kensington store courtesy of Orange UK