The evolution of design at BT

Eleven lessons: managing design in eleven global brands

David Mercer, Head of Design at BT, is responsible for the whole of BT’s brand identity and he reports to the company’s director of marketing and brand. The rapid pace of change within the sector, says Mercer, is creating ‘a more dynamic role for design’ as the company must adapt and extend its brand to encompass new service offerings and its new position in the economy

BT Broadband in actionMercer and his team are responsible for the design and creation of the brand, and for the delivery of specific products, such as the company’s new generations of broadband access hardware. But design touches a very wide range of other aspects of the company’s diverse businesses.

The majority of design work is carried out by an extensive roster of external design suppliers: Mercer estimates that 99 per cent of design is carried out by external agencies.

Capability building

Mercer’s team runs an extensive programme to help other members of the BT organisation (100,000 employees worldwide) understand the brand, and design’s role in the brand. ‘We want everyone to be brand advocates and to apply our brand correctly,’ he says. Brand workshops and conferences contribute to this process.

Anyone coming to BT for the first time and who may be involved in the purchase or application of design takes part in a half day brand workshop. In addition there is an online resource, the BT Brand Site. This includes guidelines on applying BT’s brand values and visual identity, as well as offering a section on policy and process, which includes guides to briefing marketing, communications and creative agencies.

BT brings all its external design agencies together on a quarterly basis to brief them on developments in brand strategy and identity requirements, as well as brand support ‘on demand’ for project or team needs.

BT makes sure its brand values are applied to all product design, such as this Fusion mobile phoneRegular brand briefing meetings also allow the different agencies to get to know one another, which is essential, says Mercer, as agencies are strongly encouraged to collaborate and work together to deliver consistent product across a range of activities. Annual audits of agency expenditure and reviews of performance are used to evaluate the performance of agencies on the roster and to make changes where necessary.

In more depth
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Market

Today BT is one of the world’s major providers of communications solutions. The company operates in the UK, Europe, the Americas and the Asia Pacific region. It has more than 20million customers (both business and residential) and in its traditional business area operates more than 30million telephone and data lines.

BT has four principal lines of business: 

  • BT Retail is the UK’s largest communications service provider, offering voice data and communications products directly to customers.
  • BT Wholesale sells network services to other communications providers. It has more than 500 communications industry customers.
  • Openreach operates BT’s physical assets – the local phone lines and network infrastructure that deliver both BT and other services to end customers
  • BT Global Services provides networked data and voice communication services to large organisations world-wide.

There are also two recently created areas of operation

  • BT Design, responsible for designing the technology and processes that provide solutions for customers over the global ‘21CN’ advanced communications network platform
  • BT Operate, responsible for deploying and running these new services