Yesterday we spoke with Gav Thompson, Head of Brand Strategy at O2 to delve deeper into his involvement with one of the UK’s ‘big four’ players in the telecoms market, his role within the company and how he feels about communicating with customers online.

After spending 13 years working for advertising agencies across London, New York and Sydney, on clients that included Volvo, Guiness, Playstation and Absolut, he was headhunted for the role back in summer of 2007. At the time, even though he was a partner in his own agency, but was coming to the realisation that the ‘glory days’ of advertising (a time when, as he says, ads became famous and people used to talk about them in the pub) were coming to an end. O2 provided a new challenge, and so Thompson made the move to help the subsidiary of Telefonica to plot the next phase of its brand journey.

Q. What are you responsible for within O2?

“I look after the brand strategy for O2. As O2 is such a brand-centric company this means that I get involved in virtually every area of our business, which makes for a very fun and varied existence. In very simple terms, my job is to plot the course of the brand in the future, ensure we are making the most of, and being true to, our brand in the present and constantly look for new areas that the brand can move into. I work very closely with my marketing colleagues who are responsible for how the brand appears and interacts with our customers.”

Q. How do you differentiate your brand from others in such a competitive market?

“There are three components to this. First, we need to make sure that our brand idea is truly motivating and relevant to our customers. Second, we need to do our best to interact with our customers and deliver products and services that are true to, and can live up to, what we are promising. And finally, and most visibly, we need to work really hard to ensure that whenever and wherever the brand appears, people notice it and care about what we are saying. If you can do all these three things well, and always ensure that you are delivering against your customers needs, then you will have a differentiated brand.”

Q. Do you work with specific creatives on your branding?

“We work with many fantastic agencies who help us in all aspects of our brand and marketing. Personally, I work closest with VCCP, our brand and adveritising agency who were joint architects of the original O2 brand and have been with us since day one. They are truly brilliant. As an ex-agency ad man myself, I appreciate how difficult their job is and how much work and effort they put in to make the brand as strong as it is today. Our relationship with them is one of true partnership, they call a spade a spade and aren’t afraid to tell me when I have got it wrong!”

Q. What about new channels like Twitter? How do you treat them?

“Twitter is fantastic for us, as it allows us to have a virtual real-time dialogue with our customers. We are one of the most followed UK brands on Twitter with over 11,000 people following us. I firmly believe that effective brand strategy is about listening to what your customers are saying to you and ensuring that your brand and your behaviour responds accordingly. We work really hard to listen to all the feedback on Twitter and provide an answer or explanation when we can. We can’t please everyone all of the time, but we do try to do the right thing by our customers and take it very seriously if we fail in that regard.”

Q. Other than Twitter, what are the main online channels you use to strengthen your brand?

“We are a major on-line advertiser, and our website is one of the most visited UK websites. All of our brand and marketing messages appear in on-line and off-line channels. The brand needs to look, feel and behave consistently wherever it appears – it is the same brand talking to the same person, whether it is 30ft high on a cinema screen or 3cm high on-line. I think, more and more, how we interact and treat our customers, and what services we provide for them, will become more powerful than traditional communications channels – I would far rather someone feels compelled to write something good about us or our people or our services on a blog or a forum or in a tweet that other people will read, than for people to just “consume” our advertising messages.”

Q. How do the PR, marketing and brand objectives fit together at O2?

“We have a very clearly defined brand promise, which everyone in O2 is aware of, and we all do our best to make sure that all of our product development, all of our services, all of our behaviours and all of our communications always work together to consistently build upon this.”

Q. O2 is diversifying hugely at the moment, how do you manage so many different segments of the brand?

“O2 has become the market leader and brand leader in mobile, so we are diversifying from a position of strength. We also have one of the most recognisable and clearly defined brand looks and tonality in any sector. Plus, we are fortunate enough to have over 20 million customers who know what O2 is about, and knows our strengths (and weaknesses). So, if we stay true to what has built the brand to where it is today, if we ensure that what we are doing is based on real customer insights, and that the new things we are doing build the overall brand promise, and that everything looks and feels like it comes from the O2 stable, then I think we can manage our successful evolution from mobile company to connectivity company.”

Q. What advice can you give to people to try and build their brand and integrate online and offline outreach?

“Listen to your customers, understand what they want from you, tell them the your story in the right way at the right time in the right place. Remember that your brand isn’t your ads or your marketing messages, it is how you behave at all times and interact with your own people and your customers, as well as the nature of all of your products and services. If all of this isn’t consistent and true to a simple, over-arching brand idea, then I guess you will just need to be extremely lucky.”

Tags: brand strategy, gav thompson, O2, profile