Deutsche Telekom: The story of a colour – and how a colour made history
Magenta, the corporate colour, at the heart of the Deutsche Telekom brand // Success story began in the late 1980s // Contemporary witness Ewald Spiess hands over early advertising originals to the Telekom archive
Telekom is magenta – and magenta is Telekom, right? That wasn't always the case, because as late as the 1980s, telecommunications was yellow, had a post horn and was part of the German Federal Post Office, with the three units ‘Postal Services’, ‘Postal Bank’ and ‘Telecommunications’. So where did magenta come from?
The decision-makers at Deutsche Telekom made magenta a key feature of a groundbreaking communications strategy, developed together with the lead agency at the time, Spiess & Ermisch, headed by SpiessConsult managing director Ewald Spiess. He had been working for Deutsche Bundespost since 1984 and had accompanied the preparations for privatisation as a consultant. The Deutsche Bundespost had actually wanted to give the spun-off company the run-of-the-mill colour ‘signal red’ for identification. The problem was that signal red did not have any distinguishing independence. With this colour, Deutsche Telekom would not have been able to stand out in the market and in competition. Deutsche Telekom chose a different path and a different red – magenta.
After the postal reform, magenta was given the task of clearly distinguishing the appearance of ‘Deutsche Bundespost Telekom’ from the appearances of the other two subsidiaries – and also from national and international competitors that were becoming active with the liberalisation of the telecommunications market. In addition, the independent appearance was intended to pave the way for the later privatisation of the company (see the IPOs from 1996).
From the outset, Deutsche Telekom's corporate and overarching product colour magenta was much more than just a decorative element of corporate design. Thanks to its extensive use in print media, magenta was an unmistakable hallmark of Telekom from the very beginning. As early as 1992, the Bonn-based company's close-knit research into the effectiveness of advertising together with Spiess & Ermisch showed that ‘magenta = Telekom’. From the outset, consumers understood magenta as a brand and associated the colour with Deutsche Telekom – the beginning of an inseparable union and a brand that is now known worldwide.
In the early 1990s, print ads – along with TV and radio spots and outdoor advertising – played a major role in the company's corporate identity with magenta. And Ewald Spiess and his team had collected many of the print ads as evidence of the work of Spiess & Ermisch, Deutsche Telekom's long-standing lead agency.
A few months ago, during a move, hundreds of the original ads and other advertising material turned up, some of them 35 years old. They have now been handed over to the Deutsche Telekom Corporate Archive to supplement the holdings – and to complete the story of the colour magenta.
Deutsche Telekom is one of the world's leading integrated telecommunications companies, with around 252 million mobile customers, 25 million landline and 22 million broadband connections. It offers fixed-network and broadband, mobile communications, and Internet and TV products and services to consumers, and information and communication technology (ICT) solutions to business and corporate customers in more than 50 countries. In the 2023 financial year, we generated revenue of 112 billion euros with 199,652 employees worldwide (31 December 2023).*
SpiessConsult GmbH & Co. KG is a Düsseldorf-based consultancy firm specialising in corporate communications, employee communications and brand management. We also offer companies the full range of services provided by an advertising and PR agency. Our work focuses on strategic corporate communications for companies, institutions and organisations and on employee communications relating to change programmes and corporate change processes.
Contact: Robert Fuchs
Tel.: +49 211 550217-211
E-Mail: robert.fuchs@spiessconsult.de
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www.spiessconsult.de