Morty hibernating

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This article was published 12/03/2016 (3806 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

MTS has sent Morty, its animated spokes-bison, to the digital hibernation cave in the cloud.

While the company won’t admit it has killed Morty off, he’s not been seen for some time as the company launches a major re-branding exercise.

The Winnipeg-based telco has used the gentle, goofy buffalo and his Prairie wildlife pals as its public brand icon for many years.

The company is now using everyday customers in its print and digital advertising.

Heather Tulk, chief customer officer and one of a new coterie of senior executives to join the company since Jay Forbes took over as CEO at the beginning of last year, said Morty might come back out on the range at some point but only in a secondary role.

“He (Morty) is not the hero anymore,” Tulk said. “We are moving the customers to the forefront of our messaging.”

The premise of the new brand is to send a message to the public MTS is a customer-focused organization. The new tag line that is being featured in much of its public imagery is: “We’re with you.”

The result of extensive customer research and feedback, the new brand platform was launched internally last fall targeted to staff first. The new ads and public-image campaign started last month. Tulk said it’s all being driven by what the company has come to understand to be the needs of its customers.

Tulk said MTS’s brand characteristics that will be conveyed in the messaging is about a Manitoba company that is open, helpful, dedicated and accountable.

“On those four brand characteristics we have encapsulated a promise to be focused on our customers,” said Tulk. “Our photography and messaging is really all about using our customers as the hero… telling stories about our customers and the benefits our customers get from choosing MTS.”

Even without debating the relative merits — and relative success — of the new direction the company is taking, it is a very big deal.

Corporate branding is not an exact science, so there are always risks inherent in the process.

Kevin MacNeil, a senior executive at Winnipeg’s Metric Marking, said it’s good policy for companies to be always thinking about brands.

“The way we talk about brands is that it’s all about positioning to your different stakeholders,” he said.

But that positioning will change as the market changes as the industry changes and as their customers’ perception of the company changes.

“Your brand needs to be reactive to that,” he said.

But MacNeil also acknowledges it’s a significant undertaking for a company as large as MTS to attempt this kind of transformation.

“It’s easy for me to say companies have to look at their brand,” he said. “You have to give a large corporation like MTS credit. To actually make that kind of strategic change takes real guts.”

And he’s not just talking about culling cartoon characters.

There is a lot riding on the new messaging. MTS is a billion-dollar operation with consumer connections that are deep and broad. Competition is lurking and ready to pounce at the slightest indication of a misstep.

So these kinds of moves require care and attention to detail.

Tulk said MTS keeps tabs on what the competition is up to.

“But I have to say in this case, the vast majority of our thinking was really driven by what is important in our relationship with our customers and what our customers told us is important,” said Tulk.

Considering its customers are all in Manitoba (now that it’s sold its Toronto-based Allstream division) MTS maybe does have the chance to separate itself from the competition, who are all national in scope.

“It would be pretty easy for MTS to take a safe approach and be like everybody else,” said MacNeil in reference to the fact a lot of telco-company advertising has a similar feel to it.

He said MTS does have the chance to really differentiate itself in the Manitoba marketplace.

“If that’s what they are trying to bring forth… if the customer being a hero is more about Manitobans and how they relate to the brand, I would think that would be a terrific approach for them to take,” MacNeil said.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca