080808 Bell is using the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics as a launching pad for the campaign

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TORONTO - It took BCE Inc. four marketing agencies and two years of planning to come up with a new logo that may be the simplest among major North American businesses.

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Canwest News Service/Bell Canada

The idea is to promote simplicity: Bell ExpressVu is now Bell TV and Sympatico is now Bell Internet. Bell is currently fending off attacks for its heavy-handed management of Internet traffic, so how effective this campaign will be in changing perceptions is a mystery.

Gone are beavers Frank and Gordon. In their place is the single word "Bell," clad in a plain blue font and a new slogan company executives hope to underscore the changing dynamic within Canada's soon-to-be-privatized largest telecommunication company: "Today is a new day."

Wade Oosterman, Bell's chief brand officer and president of Bell Mobility, felt the move to a simpler brand strategy was necessary to pursue after relying on its folksy beavers for far too long.

"(Bell) is an incredible organization with an asset richness that is beyond belief," Oosterman said in an interview. "But I think we've constructed a very powerful language with which to work and is uniquely tailored to the demographic segments that we might want to pursue in any one initiative."

The campaign marks the symbolic shift of Bell following the appointment of George Cope as the company's new chief executive officer and the announcement of 2,500 employee layoffs as the finalization of its private-equity takeover looms.

Rick Seifeddine, Bell's brand senior vice-president, says the new visual representation of the brand was an attempt to "really clean things up."

Bell is using the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics as a launching pad for the campaign and will be releasing advertising on a variety of multimedia platforms across Canada.

Oosterman declined to comment on how much the advertising campaign will cost, but experts estimate it will be in the tens of millions of dollars.

The campaign was developed by four advertising companies that partnered together to develop the entire campaign, a large collaboration for the marketing world. Zulu Alpha Kilo, Leo Burnett, Ig2 and Bell's old marketing partner, Cossette Communication Group, teamed up to design the new logo and marketing look for the telecom company.

The company has also taken the opportunity to re-brand two of its major product lines with the new campaign - its broadband Internet Sympatico brand becomes Bell Internet and its digital TV ExpressVu brand is now named Bell TV.

Marketing experts have already given the new campaign mixed reviews.

"The question is whether this campaign is playing to the strengths of their brand," said Brandspark International president Robert Levy, a Toronto-based brand strategy and market research firm.

"It will certainly get people talking and it's a very dramatic change from the folksy beavers."

Bell has decided to heavily promote the new Samsung Instinct touch screen phone through its wireless division and targets the wildly popular iPhone device, available on with Rogers Communications Inc., a move that may backfire, Levy said.

"It's a challenge in terms of launching a new campaign when you don't have the leading horse," he said.

Another question is whether Bell's new brand can live past its initial ad campaign launch, said Peter Scott, a branding expert with Toronto-based q30 design inc.

"To some degree, it reflects back to the 1975 brand that was designed by Jean Morin in Quebec with a very simple logo, but unfortunately, it's not a particularly well rendered version of that," Scott said.