Background

The following paper is a ‘coming of age’ story for Three: a perennial youthful challenger in the UK mobile market since launching in 2003. A brand that flouted established marketing conventions, historically taking bold risks to pursue growth with disruptive propositions and advertising. But after 18 years of growth, Three found itself stalling in an increasingly crowded, commoditised market. This called for a change of formula.

Three had been stuck in a modern marketing trend of pursuing younger demos and all things ‘youth’ at the expense of growing up to target broader and often richer audiences. Three was what we call a ‘Peter Pan' brand and it was time to finally grow up and realise the bigger market opportunity.

Faced with intense competition and evolving customer expectations, we helped Three embark on a strategic brand overhaul to transition from a youth-centric approach to a more mature, inclusive and consistently distinctive brand, aiming to reshape its public perception and expand its market share.

Section One: Time for Peter Pan to grow up.

The Three Key Challenges & Objectives

We pin-pointed the Three core challenges and objectives to overcome them.

No one can stay young forever. It was time for this Peter Pan brand to finally grow up its marketing approach to get the brand and business back into growth.

Section Two: Growing up without losing Three’s soul

 Strategies and Implementation

Part A) A grown-up creative strategy

Aiming for the heart of the market: After years of steering away from talking about the ‘network’, we leant into building that very generic association distinctively over time. We made it distinctive, by going against a category that looked like they’d never really used a phone before with a creative world built on the soul of the Three brand; showing how people really connect through their phones.

A grown-up platform that could do it all: Three introduced the “Life Needs a Big Network” platform to reflect its strong network that helps fuel the little moments of connection for its customers that make life rich.

Part B) A grown-up visual identity

Visual Identity Update: Three launched a new colour scheme, “Aurora Sunrise,” to establish brand standout and consistency across all touchpoints, making the brand more distinctive.

Part C) A grown-up media approach

Media Overhaul: Moving from youth-focused and ‘private’ digital channels to a mix of more ‘public’ TV, sponsorship and OOH, Three reached wider audiences and maintained presence on-air for 43 weeks annually, a significant increase from previous years.

Broad Appeal: Sponsorships like Gogglebox helped position Three as a family-friendly brand, increasing reach and resonating with diverse audiences.

Creating brand consistency: Since launching in 2021, every Three campaign has had a juxtaposition of the scale of its big network with the seemingly small but important ways people use it to connect every day. Alongside Three’s new distinctive brand world, we created a consistent visual and tonal language for the brand every time and every place it showed up.

Section Three: Reaching Adulthood

Results

So, how did we fair up to these goals over the past four years?

Conclusion

Nobody ever really wanted Peter Pan to grow old. It took huge amounts of bravery to get rid of an established formula of disruptive propositions and advertising that had helped this brand flourish for 18 years. These results and this paper show how important it is not to be afraid of drastically changing things when what one made you great is no longer working. Together we helped the Three brand grow up to grow the business, whilst maintaining the insightful magic that would continue to make them distinctively brilliant in their adulthood.

This transformation highlights three key insights:

1.Don’t shy away from the obvious: At the heart of this brand’s brave success over the last three years is the power of owning generic core associations in ‘Network’ and ‘Big’ distinctively, over time.

2.Step back and look at the bigger effectiveness picture: In the high-speed telecom sector, success requires looking beyond short-term metrics. Three’s transformation underscores the value of a steady, long-term strategy that prioritises sustained brand effectiveness over quarterly gains.

3. Stop fetishising youth: While future audiences’ matter, focusing solely on youth can be costly and limiting. By crafting messaging that is both relevant to younger consumers and relatable to older, higher-value customers, Three successfully broadened its appeal and maximised marketing efficiency.

IPA Effectiveness Awards Case Study 2024