FAQs
It’s for all of us. BT Group is our parent company brand – no matter which part of the business we work in, we’re all a part of it. As BT Group we’re one team, with one share price and one shared purpose, to Connect for Good.
When referring to the whole company, remember to use ‘BT Group’ and not ‘BT’ anymore.
Each of the customer-facing brands within the group still have their own audience, positioning, look and personality. BT, EE, Plusnet and Openreach play a vital role both for their customers and our internal colleagues who work on them.
BT Group doesn’t overshadow or compete with any of our customer-facing brands, instead it can act as a platform for them to sit and shine.
You will start to see more and more of the BT Group identity over time. Unlike our other brands, BT Group serves a very functional purpose, so we’re not doing a rapid rebrand and we also want to keep costs down. Anything that needs to use BT Group should be updated when assets and materials are due to be updated as part of their natural lifecycle.
You’ll see it in a number of different places where it makes sense not to duplicate our efforts or where we need to signpost that something is for, or on behalf of, the whole group. For example:
• Laptop backgrounds
• In our buildings
• Comms from Philip or any other comms for the whole group
• Shared systems and activity across the group like My HR and the Your Say survey
BT Group mostly talks to the following audiences. It doesn’t offer any propositions and awareness among the general public will remain low. But it serves a really important purpose for:
Colleagues including potential candidates
We’ll use BT Group when we speak to everyone internally – think Philip’s comms and campaigns on subjects like wellbeing which are relevant for everyone. If it’s a message, tool or system for everyone then it will use BT Group.
We also use BT Group when we’re talking to internal audiences which belong to more than one of our brands. For example, communications within our Corporate, Digital and Networks units.
For everyone working on one of our customer brands, you’ll still see plenty of that brand. We want customers to be at the heart of everything we do, so where we have communications, campaigns or tools within an area of the business that works on a single brand, we’ll use that brand.
Business partners, including suppliers
It’s helpful for partners and suppliers to know how we work operationally, with a portfolio of brands, so we can both work together better. It’s also simpler for our partners to have one overarching relationship with us, rather than individual relationships with each brand.
Innovation partners, including R&D
Working with academics and within our industry to collaborate for research and development (R&D) purposes, comes way before we have a product to take to market. So working from a Group level means we can avoid distractions from our marketing strategy and which brand we’ll use to sell a product.
Investors and analysts
This group are interested in our strategy, objectives and how we deliver our commitments. Their interest is with our triple bottom line, and precisely which brands deliver what is in the detail rather than the headline.
Policymakers and regulators
Our position to share knowledge and influence the industry in the future comes from our Group perspective, where we can talk about multiple different markets and services irrespective of brand.
If you’re not sure which brand to use, please talk to the brand team.
The BT Group brand may be used externally when talking to one of the audiences mentioned above. For example:
• At an event with industry experts
• When Philip presents financial results to the City
• At graduate recruitment fairs as a platform to showcase the brilliant customer-facing brands you could work on here
We won’t use it to talk to any customers of our other brands.