Youth Culture Telecom
Halebop is the telecom giant Telia's youth brand. It was one of Honesty's first clients, and the work that put Honesty on the map in 2010. While the re-branding and communication was initially considered strange and ugly by the industry, the same industry made a 180-degree turn over the 6 years that followed and awarded Honesty's work for Halebop with the "Golden Egg" film award in 2011, the effect award "100-Wattaren" for long term brand-building, and their finest honor "The Titanium Award" in 2015.
Client
Halebop
Industry
Telecom
Services
Brand Strategy
Design
Communication
Film Production
Overview
Halebop is the telecom giant Telia's youth brand, one of Honesty's first clients, and the work that put Honesty on the map in 2010. While the re-branding and commiunication was initially considered strange and ugly by the industry, the same industry made a 180-degree turn over the years that followed and awarded Honesty's work for Halebop with the "Golden Egg" film award in 2011, the effect award "100-Wattaren" for long term brand-building, and their finest honor "The Titanium Award" in 2015.
The Challenge
Back in 2010 Halebop was a small niche low-price telecom brand in Sweden. The product was as good as any, essentially being the Telia product with a pricing strategy more adapted to the younger audience, and felt like it deserved a much larger customer base. The the brand had a young and friendly tonality and a distinct illustration style but lacked the emotional component to really start connecting with an audience, grow in size, and build loyalty. It also felt like brands aimed at the young audience were all adults talking to young people. There was no "real" youth brand, created by the young for the young.
The Solution
The pitch deck that we brought to the meeting was probably one of the rawest and ugliest ever shown to a client. It was hand drawn stick figures, texts and logos, photos and videos shot in the wrong orientation on iPhone 3Gs, cropped and turned black and white, and a positioning diagram where we had left out the Halebop logo. "You are not on this diagram because you're not one of them" we said. Being a brand new unfinanced agency, we were sitting in an actual garage at the time, and the then CMO of Halebop still to this day comments on how we had dead Petunias in our tiny basement windows. Perhaps it was the Petunias that gave them empathy for us, but after a moment of uncomfortable silence they said "would you perhaps want to sketch this out a little nicer to give your idea a better chance?". No no, we assured them, these are not sketches, but the actual final art that we want to run as is on TVCs, OOHs and on all other expesive media placements. After another longer silence, you could see a smile creeping up on the face of the CMO, "...because we're not one of them", she said.
The Result
The Halebop re-branding was launched in 2010 and quickly became a cultural phenomenon. It was like kids had taken over the expensive adult advertising spaces and just gone bananas playing with it. Halebop became a brand not just for the youth but by the youth, even for real when audience-produced TVC was aired after a competition pre-dating much of the UGC-hype. Paired with a great product, the "ugly" Halebop concept took off like a rocket and Halebop quadrupeled the customer base within the first two years of its release. Over the 6 years that Honesty worked with Halebop there were countless things aired where people just stared in disbelief at the audacity of it all. And it worked. Boy did it work. While the concept turned quickly turned from being hated by the industry to receiving their finest awards, the numbers spoke for themselves and the concept was awarded the 100-wattaren effect award for long term brand building in 2014.
