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| How do you turn megabits into megabucks? THE ERICSSON ENGINE CAMPAIGN The launch of a new concept for the broadband evolution of public telephone networks was one of Ericsson’s most successful marketing campaigns ever, revitalizing the company’s wireline business.
In the summer of 1999, Ericsson asked Fraser & Bilder for help with the launch of a new technology, which was at that time called “ATM convergence”, or “voice over ATM”. Talking to Ericsson’s product and marketing managers, it became clear that behind these unassuming phrases was something that was potentially very big business for Ericsson. Very big indeed.
In the 1980s and 90s, Ericsson had done very good business with many of the world’s telephone operating companies (telcos). Over this time, the telcos had been busy replacing all their old, electromechanical telephone exchanges with shiny new digital ones. Ericsson’s digital exchange, called AXE, was a market leader: by the end of 1999, 150 million lines had been installed worldwide. AXE had been a cash-cow for Ericsson for some years. But that wouldn’t last forever. Fortunately, during the 1990s Ericsson had excelled in the new, and fast-growing, field of mobile telephony. When the first, analogue networks were built, Ericsson gained 40 per cent of the world market. With the second-generation digital networks (GSM and the like), Ericsson’s domination was even greater. Just a mobile phone company? But this enormous success in mobile telephony was not without its downside. One problem was that it threatened to unbalance the business: huge growth in the mobile side was draining talented people away from other parts of Ericsson. In the media, Ericsson was increasingly described as “the mobile-phone company”: reinforcing the impression that Ericsson was losing interest in fixed telecom networks. Some telcos were starting to wonder whether Ericsson still had the resources or the commitment to support the future evolution of their wired networks. The telcos were well aware of the threat presented by the mobile networks. Users preferred the convenience of mobile phones over wired ones: mobile networks were threatening their core business. In order to survive, the telcos had to find new uses for their wired networks: some new ground on which (for a while at least) the mobile operators would be unable to mount a challenge. This new ground could be summed up in two words: broadband and Internet. The telcos would have to spend big money to upgrade their networks: maybe even more than they had spent in the previous two decades on digital exchanges. And having spent all those billions on digital exchanges, it would certainly be nice if the telcos didn’t have to throw them away and start again. Bell-heads v. Net-heads Although the telcos all knew that something had to be done, there was considerable debate as to how to do it.
One faction was the “Bell-heads” – so called because they wanted robust, ultra-reliable networks the way Ma Bell had always built them. They favoured ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) technology: it was robust, ultra-reliable, and (its critics would say) over-engineered and obsolete almost before its introduction. Ericsson, together with most of its traditional competitors (Alcatel, Lucent, Nortel and Siemens), was developing solutions using ATM. In the opposite corner were the “Net-heads” – who felt that the Internet’s modus operandi, IP (Internet Protocol), was the way to go. IP was a “best effort” technology: instead of being designed to work right, first time, every time, IP tolerated failure, and just kept trying until it found a way to work. (Remember how frustrating the Internet was in the early years?) Cisco Systems was the leader in this camp. The debate between the Bell-heads and the Net-heads generated a lot of passion. Most of the established telcos wanted ATM at the core of their networks. They didn’t mind IP, but thought it would be best if IP were carried on top of ATM for extra reliability. The equipment vendors were, in the main, unnerved by this debate. Most of them were heavily committed to one technology or the other: ATM or IP. But beyond trumpeting the specifications and performance of their respective products, they did little to sell a vision to the network operators, or align their messages with the operators’ concerns. This created a big opportunity for Ericsson. Rising above the techno-babble If Ericsson could successfully align its products and technologies with the network operators’ top-of-mind business concerns and desires, it would steal a march on its competitors. So that’s what we decided to do. The first thing we had to do was to create an identity – a name – for what Ericsson was proposing. A generic phrase like “ATM convergence” simply wouldn’t do. For one thing, anyone could say it, which made it impossible for Ericsson to “own” it. Moreover, a name like “ATM convergence” still left us stuck in the middle of the technological argument between the Bell-heads and the Net-heads, which we were trying to rise above. We wanted a simple, powerful, and meaningful name. A name that could tie together whole families of products and solutions: something, in principle, that could draw together all aspects of fixed-network evolution under one concept. The name we came up with was ENGINE. Why ENGINE?
What’s in a name? Well, for a start it was a real word, which would make it much easier to remember than a made-up name. It made positive associations in the reader’s mind: ENGINE implied technology and power, of course, but also energy, speed, productivity … all good things to associate with the brand. It also began with an “E”, like Ericsson itself. This alliteration would help with brand recognition and recall. But the real inspiration for the ENGINE name was a lucky accident. In one of the many briefing meetings on the project, we misheard what someone was saying. They were talking about next-generation networks – which they shortened to a three-letter acronym: NGN. (Just about everything in Ericsson is shortened to a three-letter acronym.) Say “NGN” fast enough, and sure enough, it turns into … ENGINE. Now we had a name. We followed this up with a slogan: The right engine can take you anywhere. We created some rules for how to use the name: always in capital letters, for instance, and which products and solutions would use the ENGINE brand, and which would not. And we also created a simple graphic identifier for the brand: not a logotype, since this would have competed with the Ericsson logotype which is a sacred part of the Ericsson brand, but a simple typographic block that contained the name ENGINE, and the phrase “next-generation network solutions”. This would be used on all print, web and other presentation material. The next step was to start telling people about it.
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DOWNLOADS Campaign case study (pdf, 1.7 MB) Press advertisements (pdf, 1.3 MB) |
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