Mobilink is a mighty giant of the Pakistani telecom industry, the largest in the country. Part of Orascom Telecom, an Egypt-based multinational telecom provider, which is in turn part of VimpleCom, a Russian telecom conglomerate. Together they make the world’s sixth largest mobile communications network.

So you see Mobilink wanted to do something totally cool for their 19th birthday. An emancipation sort of thing. A cool new identity. One that gets rid of all that heritage, roots, equity and shit. So Mobilink does away with Jazz, Jazba, Indigo, the signature purple, ‘Reshaping Lives’; dumps all of that all in favor of a fresh new tomato peel.

Now, Mobilink will have you believe that this is in fact a new philosophy and millions of hearts beat to the curves of this one swooshy symbol that represents the rishtas and relationships that define us and add value to life. But you must stay strong and you must know that this is bullshit and it is in fact just a fresh tomato peel. Not that there’s anything wrong with a tomato peel, by the way.

Let’s look at the new identity in stages and under proper headings, shall we?

mobilink new brand identity corporate id

Symbol

Generic & Done to Death

The symbol is generic and is nothing like we haven’t seen a thousand times already. Like one of our Facebook fans commented, it also shares a lot with the Airtel identity over in India. The colors, symbol and even the typography is remarkably similar. In fact, it has a lot in common with the generic idea for a logo for a communication company every Tom, Dick and Harry has. A globe? YES! Some Swooshes with that? Hell yes! Some gradients and faux-3D effects? Oh yes, gimme MOAR!
Just do a Google image search for globe logo, and you’ll see many icons not dissimilar to Tomato Peel.
mobilink new logo rebrand

Why Red?

Mobilink heavily invested in establishing its color identity with the signature purple, and was definitely successful at it. Why they chose to let all that investment and equity flow down the flush and opt for overused-as-hell red with Tomato Peel baffles us. Hey, it could well have been eggplant peel! Should have definitely kept the purple.

Typography

The typography is dominated by a free font called Signika. While it’s not bad to look at, it’s perhaps not the most apt choice for Mobilink. It is a little too techy and perhaps a little too trendy for such a broad-appeal, mass market brand like Mobilink. It might start to look dated in a year or so and that, mind you, is a terrible thing for a rebranding exercise. Brands and their identities should be timeless. Trendy is cheap when it comes to branding.

Visual Devices

Again, done to death and clichéd. These swooshes are about as clichéd as you can get. To add insult to injury, the banners are not even competently Photoshopped.

wolff olins mobilink

Tagline & Copy

The tagline and copy writing, with a recurring ‘Har This, Har That’ theme is too trendy and painfully wannabe. You know, the thing is, Mobilink should be going for understated class, but here they are trying to look and sound like every other youth brand out there.

Why No Urdu?

One of Pakistan’s largest brand and not a single alphabet of our national language to be seen on their website?

What’s your take, boyses and girlses?

Update: Credits

Many of you must have wondered ‘So who designed the new logo for Mobilink?’ The answer to that is this:

The rebranding exercise was led by the London-based, world’s leading, brand consulting firm Wolff Olins. Here’s their official post on this project. The Karachi-based D’Hamidi Partnership also had a role to play, mostly in the advertising aspect of it, in the lead of Wolff Olins.

by Najwat Rehman