Lyca Mobile

How do you reposition a brand for a new digital future and change its perception in the market?

Brand Evolution | Brand Positioning | Brand Guidelines | Visual Identity | Stakeholder Interviews | Quantitative Survey | Product Proposition | Purpose-led Customer Experience | Digital CX MVP | Brand Activation | Agile Methodology

Connection through purpose-led CX

Challenge

Lyca Mobile was ready for an upgrade. It announced plans to invest £250 million over the next three years as the mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) eyed up ambitious growth. The UK-based MVNO (part of the multinational Lyca Group) was at a critical juncture of change with new state-of-the-art technology platforms, content partnerships, and international expansion. Lyca Mobile had traditionally been a low-cost international calling network but wanted to grow its target market through a new set of differentiated products, content, and services communicating with a wider audience.

Lyca Mobile came to us to evolve their brand and develop a renewed purpose-led customer experience. They wanted the trust and empathy that Lyca Mobile uses to fulfil its brand mission – connecting people with their loved ones – to be brought to life through a refined positioning, modern brand identity, and warm tone of voice.

Clarity

The brand’s mission informed all our thinking around the identity development and CX strategy.

We knew that to stay competitive, the brand needed to convey that Lyca Mobile had evolved into a larger ecosystem providing exceptional digital experiences through the entry point of mobile. Another key challenge was creating relevancy between loyal customers and the new audience Lyca Mobile hoped to attract.

We identified three core parts needed to create and communicate Lyca Mobile’s new CX-centric offer: brand & messaging, product & experience, and infrastructure & ecosystem. Successful interactions between these elements would lead to meaningful brand experiences aligned with brand promises, a seamless and innovative product portfolio, and the use of digital to accelerate brand growth.

Building from Lyca Mobile’s heart

Solution

Lyca Mobile’s current and target consumers had a clear shared need: to connect with their loved ones. This was the crucial connective tissue between Lyca Mobile’s original mission and future plans. We wanted to lean into this universally relatable part of its personality and really make it shine as a brand for human connections. To do this, we had to build from the heart – literally and figuratively speaking.

We redesigned Lyca’s two heart graphics – a symbol of meaningful connections – into a bolder, more confident articulation of the brand. This core was supported with a visual language of playful heart graphics and selfie-style photography to celebrate the diversity of people and their environments. The color system was expanded for a bright digital future, combining bright greens and blues with a warmer secondary palette and a redesigned, ultra-accessible typeface. The revitalized visual identity was designed to convey joy, simplicity, and energy driven by love.

When it came to tone of voice, we crafted the future Lyca Mobile narrative celebrating its focus on keeping things simple, enabling consumers to worry less about their mobile plans and experience real, meaningful, and consistent human connection.

With Lyca Mobile being part of a larger family – the Lyca Group, made up of 16+ companies globally – it was imperative that the rebrand worked within the broader brand architecture. Our team also worked with the Lyca Group to create a more unified brand aesthetic and identity system, which Lyca Mobile was a key part of.

Impact

The new brand was rolled out across 40 countries over 12 months. This started with the launch of the rebrand and digital CX MVP, with supporting guidelines, templates, and best-in-class activation examples (including social and banner communications, printed materials, and signage). The majority of core retail touchpoints had changed within six months, and our brand guidelines were deployed across the business for internal and external communications.

Following the rebrand, Lyca Mobile was recognized with What Mobile Awards’ customer-voted “Best MVNO 2022” award, and was also shortlisted for “Best MVNO” at the Mobile Industry Awards 2022.

“Working with Clear was an absolute pleasure. They really got under the skin of our brand, modernising it for a digital-first era, without ever losing the essence of its origins or its ‘soul’.”

– Cara Whitehouse, Global Head of Brand & Comms at Lyca Mobile