One 2 One unveils £30m ad blitz

One 2 One is dropping its celebrity-based “I’d like to have a one-on-one with…” ads in favour of a campaign emphasising the breadth of the mobile phone operator’s services. It will plough £30m into a pre-Christmas ad campaign to reposition the brand under the slogan “Welcome to your world”. The push, by Bartle Bogle Hegarty, will redress the emphasis placed on talking to one person on a mobile phone with the new slogan and various services offered by the company. It launches this week with a 60-second TV ad starring footballer-turned-actor Vinnie Jones. The ad features friends, family and business contacts, who he talks to regularly. One 2 One labels them a “web of connections”. Colin Morley, general manager of brand development and communications at One 2 One, says: “Instead of a single connection like BT’s ET ad, we show a network of connections through voice and data services. The previous One 2 One ads didn’t sum up our service.” Morley says the strategy will appeal to the business market and prepare One 2 One for the third generation mobile phone services, which will connect mobile phones to Internet, video and broadcast services from 2001. Other celebrities will reveal their “web of connections” in the TV ads, while “real” people do the same in a radio campaign. Press and posters will push services. One 2 One, the smallest of the UK’s four mobile phone companies with 2.6 million customers, was acquired by Deutsche Telekom last month.