In Ireland, there’s a new type of budget mobile sector, with brands such as Tesco Mobile, GoMo, 48 and Eir Mobile. But despite being a very competitive market these brands have a lot in common – their brands are brash, with loud colour palettes and imagery that scream cheap – creating a sector that is often patronising and youth focused.

Vodafone asked us to develop a new brand that would compete in this market but differentiate as a value-led brand, appealing to the savvy bargain hunter, both young and old.

Inspired by the insight that consumers want to know exactly what they are getting and can’t stand paying for anything they don’t need – we developed an approach that plays to the savviness of the bargain hunter and created a brand identity that directly reflects its ethos: Stripping back mobile to its bare essentials, to give the consumer everything they need and nothing they don’t.

We started by stripping out colour to the bare essentials, to create a visual statement that immediately differentiates the brand.

For our logo, we stripped back a SIM to create a ‘C’ monogram. And, by cutting a few corners here and there, we also stripped back our font to echo the diagonal in our SIM logo.

We pared back our tone of voice too, to just three guiding principles: Deadpan, Dead simple, Dead honest.

And to avoid any confusion, we called it Clear Mobile.

Fundamental to the brand is it’s messaging and imagery.

For the messaging, we developed two approaches: one for the brand and one for the product. In both approaches we are consistently unapologetic about what you get from Clear Mobile. Brand headlines like; ‘Cherry not included’, ‘Good enough and that’s enough’ – reflect what the brand stands for with a touch of wit, while ‘Add ons: Off’ and ‘No frills or thrills’ reflect the simplicity of a SIM only offer. Brand and product headlines are signed-off with ‘Everything you need. Nothing you don’t’ – to resonate with bargain hunters and also reflect the brand’s ethos too.

A series of images were created, using a combination of CGI and extensively graded live action – with the objects being stripped of all their colour, and special attention being paid to lighting and texture to ensure they looked as real as possible.

The new brand identity for Clear Mobile breaks away from all the conventions of the Irish ‘low-cost’ mobile market. Rather than a visual identity that shouts ‘cheap’ with bright brash colours, we developed a stripped back approach that is unapologetically honest. And, with a bit of humour and wordplay we created a brand that resonates with smart, savvy shoppers from all walks of life to sign up with the brand - positioning Clear Mobile as the smart choice.

Our digital advertising campaign for Clear Mobile launched in Ireland in January 2021, targeting specifically GoMo, 48 and Tesco Mobile customers – in the first three months, the campaign achieved 9.5 million impressions and Clear Mobile attracted and converted significantly more customers from those targeted brands than anticipated.