Telenor Yng

Stripped to the core.

Insights from several in-depth focus groups and discussions indicated that the target group responded best to clear, concise and direct messages which they perceived to be more honest and engaging. They were tired of the usual marketing tricks brands tend to use to attract their attention.

With this in mind we developed a stripped down visual universe with effective, useful and simple tools. We even went so far as to remove the iconic blue colour, which is at the heart of the main Telenor brand. Telenor Young’s identity is built upon the idea of ‘unbranding’ as a design principle. This is a concept that makes room for those aspects that the target audience believes to be most important: the offers themselves and their unique benefits.

By stripping the communication elements to their core across all touch points, we made each offering clearer and more candid, using concise and plain language. We combined a stripped-back colour palette and a cut-and-paste aesthetic with no-nonsense copywriting, devoid of corporate smalltalk. Texts are presented in a monospaced font that’s reminiscent of bare-bones coding itself. Even the word Young is abbreviated to yng, to bolster its no-time-to-waste attitude.

The sum of all these parts is a comprehensible, commercial visual identity with a clear focus on what matters the most: the content itself.

The design and visual identity has helped Telenor Yng reach a brand awareness of a stunning 90% at the end of December 2017 (50 percentage points above target). The knowledge of benefits has been measured at 31%. More importantly, the preference for the Telenor mother brand among digital natives increased by 46%, increasing 22% compared with the same time last year. In short, the perception of the Telenor brand has been significantly enhanced within the 18–28-year-old target group. Ultimately this has resulted in Telenor reaching their ambitious business goals*.

In short, Telenor Yng has become an immediate success and has provided Telenor with an increasingly strong relationship with digital natives.