New Boss, New Image – BT Prep Brand Refresh with New UK Logo UPDATE

Telecoms and broadband ISP giant BT Group are understood to be considering a change of logo today, which our sources suggest will be based upon the one they originally trademarked all the way back in 2016 (pictured), except the new version will be mainly white and may have a glow around it.

The trademark proposal for BT’s original redesign in 2016 can be seen here and a colourised version was also produced here, although the latter was later withdrawn. At the time we assumed that BT had chosen not to adopt the logo during 2016/17 because they had much bigger things to focus upon with Ofcom’s Strategic Review and the change to Openreach’s independence focused re-branding.

However this week our sources have indicated that BT’s new CEO, Philip Jansen, may be set to return to their plans for a brand refresh (possibly being decided as part of a meeting taking place today), albeit with some tweaks to the originally proposed logo (as described top). We also did another search of the trademarks database and found that BT had yesterday submitted a virtually identical one to their 2016 design (here).

Big companies have a tendency to go through periodic branding refreshes, which are frequently timed to reflect big changes in leadership and / or strategy. BT’s recent CEO change, as well as any related restructuring and their move to ramp-up the UK deployment of Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) ultrafast broadband technology (here), could well qualify.

By the sounds of it the new logo may also give a nod to BT’s first design from many years ago (designed to symbolise a telegraph pole), which also featured a single circle (see below – far left side). Not big news, just interesting. At the time of writing we don’t yet know when the final design will be unveiled to the public.

UPDATE 1:32pm

Also today BT’s new CEO has announced a commitment of £50m towards making BT Group colleagues shareholders in the company (here). The ‘yourshare’ scheme will amount to approximately £50m per year for colleagues around the world, equating to an initial award value of £500 per employee. The shares will need to be held for three years, a move designed to encourage long-term thinking and customer focus.

UPDATE 3:46pm

We’ve managed to sneak out one of the first uses of the new logo. Sorry it’s in a bit of a low resolution but this is a leak. You can just about make out the subtle colourised glow at the edges and this is the white on dark background version, as expected.

UPDATE 17th May 2019

Due to other distractions we missed BT’s official statement on this yesterday afternoon. A Spokesperson said: “We’ve shared our new logo with our colleagues today and will consult them on the detail as we gradually roll it out towards the end of the summer. Our CEO has been very clear that the new mark symbolises real change.” We expect to see the new logo doing the rounds from August 2019.