Category: Point of View

I’ve been going to the Mobile World Congress for many a year. My first appearance was pre-Cannes, on the Athens stage. Over the years I’ve given presentations, chaired panels, judged the awards and partied the nights away! My main interest is in Security, having been in it from the start, but I also like to check out the main theme for the year which in the past have been GPRS, 3G, Apps, LTE and M2M.

I have to come early, as there are lots of meetings before the main event begins, so will be arriving on the Thursday before. Because I booked just after the last one, I have IBIS rooms at 50 euros a night. You should think about planning for next year now!

I usually work out a few things beforehand, as otherwise you waste a lot of time: Key note speeches to attend, talks to go to (in my case the security ones), and talks to give (this year just the UK Cybersecurity one), people I must see (arrange appointments), exhibits I must see (security related and gadgets!). I go through the plan of the exhibits and make a list, and the important evening events to attend. The evening events are most important, as these are where you meet other useful people to catch up with them. I usually have a few invites, and there are some I have to attend where I am a minor functionary (such as ETSI). Others, like the whisky tasting at the Scottish Stand are where everyone meets!

I carry as little as possible, but take an umbrella and water bottle. I also bring my small teddy bear along, and try and blag a pass for him, a sort of security test! Comfortable shoes are a must, as well as stacks of business cards. I also have a Spanish SIM with prepaid data which I recharge every year – the WiFi is not always the fastest. Most of the faces are the same, but everyone moves around companies so you have to keep up with them! I always take time to look through the daily newspaper every day to catch up with the announcements, press releases and themes. Afterwards I type up a small report, and try and follow up the key contacts and ToDo list.

My security tasks for this year? Thinking about Embedded SIMs and Machine to Machine; are people building in security to devices yet? How useful is the latest blast of publicity we get on malware and viruses? I am hoping none of it is too exaggerated! And of course I will be spreading the message about the importance of security in products and services as it has a direct influence on your profit……. too often I see the technology used wrongly, with unrealistic expectations, leading to insecure networks, products and services. Mind you, it keeps me in a job!

So get ready for long treks, long nights and tired feet and heed my top tip – you will get the most out of it if you plan.

I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of five pounds. And as long as the Governor of the Bank of England has signed it, it is deemed legal tender. On this basis when I hand you a five pound note you accept at face value that I have handed over money and not just crumpled piece of paper. In the US, they say This note is legal tender for all debts public and private.

Interestingly, the Euro note makes no such assurance or promise and perhaps with what’s going on in the Eurozone, that’s no bad thing! Well, our promise to pay the bearer is about to be condemned to history. The mobile revolution is coming and pretty soon we’ll just wave our mobile phone in the air and its job done. At least that’s the message coming out of the Mobile Money Summit in Milan this month.

If anyone was in any doubt about this they could pick up a free mobile phone at the summit (on loan of course) and use it to buy their tickets on the tram, get around town, and even buy goods in the shops – and hey, it all worked. Pretty impressive. A quick spin round the summit convinced me that the technology works just fine so why is Mobile Money taking so long to come to reality? Perhaps I should clarify that and say why is it taking so long in the developed markets for mobile money to become a reality, as emerging and developing markets are streets ahead.

From MPESA onwards mobile operators have been the pioneers of bringing money services to the un-banked. In fact I am pretty proud of the way the mobile operators have gone where the banks have feared to tread and provided life changing services to whole communities. Make no mistake, mobile money has changed the lives and prospects of millions of people around the world. Where banks and other financial institutions saw credit risks and bad debt, mobile operators have seen customers in need of help and have delivered beyond expectations.

More evidence of emerging markets leading the way came from mBank, a joint venture which launched nationally in the Philippines three weeks ago, between Smart and PlaNet, and claims to be the first microfinance bank to be fully based on mobile technology.

In the developed world where the vast majority have the ‘privilege’ of being banked, we are perhaps more interested in Near Field Communication (NFC) which made up the other half of this summit. Thanks to a good demo from Telecom Italia, I could use my mobile phone to open my Alfa Romeo (well, not mine but I can dream) start the engine and drive away. I like this – you know the damage that car keys can do to your pockets. I can even give permission for my son or daughter to drive the car but that’s a feature too far for me!

This was a theme expanded by the CEO of mobile money technology provider, Oberthur Technologies, Xavier Drilhon. During a good presentation he said mobile money is not the ‘killer app’ but it is probably the first app. It’s the driver and first step many of us will take before embracing the full range of future NFC services such as transport, event ticketing, and access control and loyalty schemes. I think he’s right. But why isn’t it happening all around us today? Of course it takes the building of complete eco systems across multiple industries to join up all the necessary dots and summits like this help push us a little nearer to making this happen.

Another barrier is perceived to be the security and integrity of mobile money services. This seems a bit strange to me given the inherent underlying security measures being used in mobile networks and mobile money services and when I think of the (relatively) pathetic measures involved in PC on-line banking I can’t help but to raise a smile. A very good gathering of regulators were in attendance here to find out a lot more about mobile money services and not just the security aspects. The GSMA’s Mobile Money for the Unbanked program was active behind the scenes mobilising all the movers and shakers to promote new services.

The focus of the Summit was very much around mobile services – Google and their wallet along with Apple and their Passport were not in attendance – but who cares? Their own view of a mobile money is much more self-serving and working with partners is hardly their modus operandi. So safe to say they weren’t missed in the slightest.

Is there still a lot to be done? Yes, for sure. We won’t be using our mobile phone for everything and anything just yet but it is coming together – slowly. Recognised at this Summit was the need for a greater emphasis on NFC open specifications and the need to convince merchants of the benefits to them. The GSMA is certainly doing its bit to facilitate progress but fragmentation remains the big danger.

Let’s finish on a positive note though, because this was an upbeat summit. Philippe Vallée, from Gemalto, told us that the mobile NFC market is gaining traction in several countries around the world. Vallée said there is now a growing list of countries adopting NFC technology in a big way, with Singapore, the US, Canada, UK and Italy following in the footsteps of France, Japan and South Korea. “This is moving very fast,” he said.

Good, we are all waiting!

I only bought an exhibition pass so I didn’t attend any of the keynotes. But to be truthful I didn’t have much time to sit through them and one hardly ever learns anything new or interesting from them so I saved myself the extra bucks on registration fees by sticking to Show Floor category. I have to say the keynote speakers were hardly big hitters anyway. Pretty tame stuff really but they did finish off with William J Clinton who did draw a crowd. Someone said to me in the Starbucks queue ‘howdy, you look like the man himself’. He was referring to the other Bill (I think) but I pointed out that ‘I doubted he would be 15 deep in the coffee queue somehow.’ ‘He’s a man of the people’ my new friend said. Perhaps I thought ‘but I’m sure somebody would be getting his skinny latte for him.  Separated at Birth?

Anyway, I missed ‘cousin’ Bill’s keynote speech which is a stain on my copybook. Other than how to run an intern programme I’m not sure what I would have learned from Bill anyway. He spoke about the need for a light hand – in regulation I think!

So on day one I am up at 4:00am. Usual jet lag stuff. So I do a bit of work and then take shower, have an early breakfast and get myself over to the convention centre by 7.30am when the doors open and registration begins. Knowing what the queues are like at MWC on day one, I didn’t want to be at the back of the mad crush. By 7.31 I’m registered.

The first keynote, which I’m not attending, is at 9:00am and my plan is to walk the exhibition floors until 11 o’clock when I have my first meeting of the day scheduled. So with time to kill I head off to the Starbucks for breakfast number two – but I am on extra skinny lattes, so it doesn’t count. Anyway, the free WiFi is at Starbucks so it’s a good place to kill time. I discover later that the exhibition floor also shuts at 5:00pm. 11 till 5! What sort of opening hours are they? Definitely one up to MWC here.

There is a huge retail section in the conference (unlike MWC) and I discover that there are thousands and thousands of different mobile cases one can buy. Leading edge stuff this.

The rest of the floor is the usual exhibition mixture of old and new. I’m always intrigued by who is not exhibiting. I think this always tells one a lot about the show. So no Alcatel Lucent and no Nokia Siemens Networks. Now NSN I can sort of understand but ALU? In the USA? Blimey we’re even in French New Orleans so you’d have thought even the Alcatel branch would be OK to come here. So Ericsson, Huawei and ZTE dominated the infrastructure space. Apple of course are not here but as at MWC they still managed to cast a long shadow over the event.

No naughty CBOSS here but no shortage of short skirts and white teeth. I got though a lot of business cards but never did win the promised iPad. Sure has increased my spam count though.

It struck me walking around the hall that for the vast majority of exhibitors, I wouldn’t have a clue what they did from just looking at their stand and reading all their banners. We do work in a strange industry.

The main themes of the show were much as one would expect in the main. LTE, data off-load, small cells, IP traffic management, LTE WiFi combo plays, lots of devices – but nothing new, mobile money was big as was NFC and they go together now. Can we have some more spectrum please was another common rallying call. Oh, and M2M is the next big thing – so it’s official – as an industry, we’ve run out of ideas.

Congratulations to LG and the marvellous flash dance by all the staff on the stand.

What else (apart from short skits sells?). Well, HTC were blowing bubbles (doesn’t that song contain the line “and like my dreams they fade and die”).

So my final thoughts on CTIA 2012. A well organised and presented show. For the astute visitor there is more to be leant on the exhibition floor than in the keynotes. The wireless industry, from a carrier’s perspective, is undergoing fundamental change. The role of the carrier, the importance of the network and customer ownership changes are big issues the mobile operators need to grapple with but somehow not addressed at this show. This may well be because the answers are never going to come from a trade show. That doesn’t detract from the value of a trade show such as this which is more geared towards the technologies that serve our industry rather than strategies.

CTIA WIRELESS 2012 has returned to New Orleans after a 7 year absence. It has also time shifted itself into May for the first time. This is seen as CTIA trying to create a bigger gap between the two shows preceding it in the calendar, CES in January and MWC in February. I’m sure CTIA hoped this increased gap might have resulted in more manufacturers making major product announcements and launching new devices at the show. Sadly that hasn’t happened and Samsung even scheduled its own Galaxy III event in London the week before the start of CTIA.

Still, the return to New Orleans was well received and without fail everyone I spoke to about it at the event approved of the decision. New Orleans certainly has earned a break or two and I have to say the city did a great job in hosting the event and all the visitors. There was no hiking of hotel room rates and restaurant menus as happened in Cannes and sadly is now becoming a feature of Barcelona when MWC hits town. The good thing about New Orleans is that it can take 40,000 visitors in its stride as tourism is its largest industry.

Robert Mesirow, CTIA vice president and show director, said that after the last show held there in 2005 that the event had out-grown New Orleans, which seemed a bit hard to reconcile, but said CTIA came back this year because New Orleans has since ‘grown.’ I discovered the population of New Orleans is 30% down on pre-Katrina levels although there has been significant new investment in the city post Katrina and New Orleans boasts an increase of 300 restaurants, $400 million of improvements to local hotels, $250 million of improvements to the Louisiana Superdome and $92.7 million of improvements to the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, making it now one of the largest meeting venues in the U.S. and I guess that’s why we are here.

The city is still showing some of the scars of Katrina and the floods that followed and it’s fascinating and rather humbling to see the water line wherever you go in the city still clearly visible on walls and on the sides of buildings. Even where things have been cleaned up and are fully back to normal, the water marks can still be seen and sometimes they have been left on show as a ‘badge of honour’. Given 80% of New Orleans was under water the damage must have been immense. Locals told me it took 6 weeks to pump all the water out once the levee breaches had been filled. Looking at the city today it’s made an astonishing recovery.

I haven’t seen any numbers published for attendees but 40,000 were expected. It seemed less walking the floor. The CTIA claim to represent the world’s wireless industry with a focus on the US and on this point they over achieve. Being a regular attendee at MWC over many years I am tempted to make comparisons with MWC but is it fair to do so? As both camps claim to run the major show I guess this invites comparison. Maybe healthy competition between the two is good for the industry.

Perhaps this year’s CTIA show did give us a taste of things to come with the whole show contained under one gigantic roof. MWC 2013 will try the same trick, moving from the older, slightly decrepit but nonetheless charming Fira de Barcelona, to the ultra-modern Fira de Barcelona Gran Via Fira. Having attended both CTIA and MWC this year I feel I appreciated the opportunity to step outside the hall, take in the sun, and have an el fresco coffee and even an outdoor meeting or two. Escaping from the hustle and bustle of the halls does have its advantages but perhaps this is now to be lost forever.

CTIA lay on seven different shuttle bus routes which supply a hotel to convention centre transfer which works well and was well used. That’s something that maybe the GSMA should think about for 2013 especially as the new venue is off the beaten track, not on the metro and no longer in the heart of Barcelona.

There is another disadvantage of being inside all day long. Being all self-contained under one enormous roof, fully air-conditioned leaves one splendidly isolated from the outside world. So much so that I missed the tornado that passed by to the South on day two. Actually a double tornado! One of the main reasons for coming here was to see a tornado and I didn’t even know about it until I switched the TV on back in my hotel.

So here it is. A double twister (which is very rare I’m told). It ripped off roofs, knocked out electricity supplies and threw debris into streets. No injuries were reported; authorities said (accept my big toe when I kicked the door in frustration after seeing I’d missed it).

Security, even the definitions and applications are vague: It can range from good business practice; strong technical standards, staff and contractor vetting, to: working with Law enforcement; inadequate scrutiny and testing of new products and services; customer and employee fraud and theft, and many many more.

Many of these areas are related; for instance, in the development of a product design or service, internal responsibility for its development should effectively reduce the opportunity of fraud and theft. It is also true that, in many cases, the right mindset to acquire good security is often lacking. For example, who considers when designing something, that there is any way of making revenue from exploiting the security features of that design? Many mobile operators are not even aware of what they should be looking for. A good example of this is the original GSM authentication algorithm, which makes it easy to clone a customer SIM card. It was broken over 15 years ago, is easy to swap out, but is still, nevertheless, widely deployed by mobile operators around the world. In some cases these losses can be very real and considerable, with a stolen or cloned SIM used to rack up calls to premium rate phone lines or text services.

I would recommend the following simple strategy to start addressing the issue:

• Have the appropriate people and policies in place to ensure security is addressed. There are also International Standards for security, such as the ISO27000 process, which are helpful here.
• Ensure that responsibility for security is clearly devolved throughout the organisation and contractors with training and responsibilities are clearly defined. Security should be part of everyone’s responsibility.
• Ensure that each new product, process or service is checked for security weaknesses so that there are no severe risks of loss to revenue or reputation.
• Technical aspects of a network are also capable of being attacked. There is a lot of guidance available from Industry Bodies on ways to mitigate technical weaknesses, such as interception of information, changing network parameters of billing systems and manipulating calls and signalling. Hackers at conferences such as Black Hat and the Chaos Compute Club are putting mobile networks under increasing scrutiny.
• Finally, it is important to communicate to customers, in simple language, about the threats and risks, so that they can protect themselves against malware, unwanted nuisance calls and the risk of loss to their privacy and personal information.

Everyone has security challenges – the mistake many make is not to go through these checks. Making yourself safe and compliant will save you money.

There was – of course – a lot of stuff about LTE at MWC this year, and a lot of stuff about WiFi off-load. I haven’t yet figured out how those two co-exist… Build a very expensive LTE network but then off-load all the traffic? It’ll come to me I’m sure.

What I did find fascinating was looking at small cell technology. The Small Cell Forum’s – ex Femtocell forum – stand was very popular and also very informative. Gold star to them. They reported on an Informa forecast that there are now more 3G micro nodeBs than macro and by 2016, 90% of all base stations deployed will be micro/pico or femto, and this is by no means just for indoor coverage/capacity. Have all mobile operators got a strategy for small cells? I can see it being a big part of what they do in the next decade if they start planning now.

Telefónica, Alcatel-Lucent and Samsung announced their collective LTE-readiness and a live demonstration network. In the 2.6GHz band it provided download speeds of 100 Mbit/s and upload between 40 and 60Mbit/s.  It’s using Alcatel-Lucent’s self-organising LightRadio technology which mixes conventional macro network base stations with an underlay of small cells for indoor coverage. The Alcatel-Lucent’s LightRadio solution won the Best Infrastructure Technology Award in the Global Mobile Awards. This is a clear indication that LTE has arrived and emerged into commercial readiness far faster than 3G did. It’s probably too soon for many Operators but this particular genie isn’t going back into any bottle.

Nokia launched the 808 PureView – a mobile phone that comes complete with a 41 megapixel camera! Imagine the file size!! Don’t worry; Nokia have come up with a magic compression trick as well. The 808 won best device launched at MWC and runs on, wait for it……Symbiam. Is their clock running backwards?

MS have put Skype and Skype video on Windows Phone OS – no surprise there but it also means Voice OTT is just round the corner. For operators still reeling from the impact of OTT messenger clients this isn’t the news they wanted to hear.

Rich Communication Suit e 5.0 is now called Joyn. Lapel badges available. We saw a commercial launch in Spain during congress but it seems not all Operators joined in due to – whisper it softly – interoperability issues. Interoperability issues? On RCSe, the interoperable platform? Oh dear!!

The Cloud is omnipresent – even under the clear blue skies of this year’s MWC. Some predict the Cloud will be raining on MNOs’ parade but some MNOs themselves hailed it as their saviour. Seems that OTT was the elephant in the congress hall.

The EU Commissioner for the Digital Agenda, Neely Kroes, is still playing the same old broken record, claiming that reducing roaming charges and termination rates are still the big issue for the industry. Vittorio Colao, made a call for the EU to: “Get on board and help create jobs by supporting mobile in Europe”. Kroes then issued a statement. Specifically called a “message to Vittorio and Vodafone”, she said that she is: “Calling Vodafone’s bluff”, “Takes the side of the Vodafone customer” and “Doesn’t respond well to threats.”

Meanwhile, thousands of jobs were lost in the Mobile Industry in Europe last year. I can remember a time when the EU was at the forefront of creating a mobile industry in Europe and with it investment, jobs and wealth. They seem like bygone days now.

I said to someone at the GSMA that it’s a pity that there isn’t a start-up and small vendor package for congress. He said, “There is – an exhibition pass and the coffee bars!” OK I take the point but has congress become too focussed on the number of CEOs attending and lost a bit of the buzz on the floor that used to make it so exciting? AIthough, I did come across one enterprising outfit that used the forecourt area to create a street art exhibition tool. Very clever, very funny, zero cost, very original.

It has been my honour to act as chair of the judges for the Global Mobile Awards (shameless plug). This year I got to present the technology awards and got to meet the host, comedian Tim Minchin, who was brilliant.

This was the last year at the Fira de Barcelona and although it’s a bit decrepit, I will miss it. It had a certain charm and the location was excellent.  Starting in 2013, the Mobile World Congress will be held at the Fira de Barcelona Gran Via, a move which will provide approximately 50 per cent more space and will accommodate continued strong growth and demand for the event. The 2013 Mobile World Congress will be held 25-28 February, 2013. I think that the location might turn out to be a bit of an issue. A bit off the beaten track and certainly way off the Metro lines, the new centre looks bland and boring but is, perhaps, a fitting venue for MNOs in this decade!

This year’s MWC also saw the passing of power within the GSMA from Rob Conway to Anne Bouverot, and what should read into the job title change from CEO to Director General? Rob spent 12 years at the GSMA and was instrumental in modernising the association which represents all the world’s mobile operators using the GSM family of technologies. Rob was brought in when the Chair of the GSMA rested with the new world and had a mandate to move the GSMA on from a quasi-standards body to an effective trade association able to represent the industry at senior levels and to lobby regulators, ministers and governments around the world on things like spectrum and taxation. Rob also gave the GSMA an effective commercial arm – responsible today for MWC amongst other things – and launched the Development fund, Connected living programme and Mobile NFC initiative. But in these changing times and with the Chair of the association reverting back to Europe it seems the emphasis now seems to be to get the GSMA back to its roots, with a focus on member services and dealing with the issues of interworking and interoperability of new services between operators. So is it a case of out with the new and in with the old?

See you there in 2013.

Bill Best

Having been put back by two weeks from its usual place in the calendar MWC enjoyed the breaking Iberian spring; and the difference this makes to the event is astonishing – as all those poor wet-through souls who attended last year will testify.

Enough about the weather, the GSMA said that more than 67,000 visitors from 205 countries attended the 2012 Mobile World Congress, a new record and 11% up on last year. This was a surprise to many people I spoke to who were talking about downturns, credit crunches and declining revenues. But this view fails to recognise a theme of recent MWC gatherings: With the mobile world changing so fast, many of the exhibitors and attendees are a new breed of mobile species, and one operator’s declining ARPU is another App developer’s opportunity.

I always begin a definition of MWC by looking at who’s there – and who isn’t. So, many of the usual suspects were present: Alcatel-Lucent, ARM, AT&T, Bharti Airtel, China Mobile, Cisco Systems, Citigroup, Ericsson, Facebook, Foursquare, Google, HTC, Huawei, Interpublic Group, ISIS, Juniper Networks, Nokia (back this year after a 2 year boycott – hmm that did them a lot of good didn’t it!), NTT DOCOMO, Sprint Nextel, Qualcomm, Telefónica, Telenor Group, VimpelCom, Vodafone and ZTE. But – and here’s where we detect the changing nature of our industry – some of the not so usual suspects were also in attendance: Best Buy, Citigroup, Booze & Co., eBay, Ford Motor Company, Visa. As for who wasn’t there: Apple (too arrogant?), Amazon (can’t find Barcelona on a map?) T-Mobile (too cost conscious these days), and Openwave (a surprise no-show).

Again with thanks to the GSMA I can report that more than 50% of this year’s Mobile World Congress attendees hold C-level positions, including more than 3,500 CEOs. The trending here is clear – more and more, MWC is a major networking event than an exhibition of mobile technology. That said, MWC 2012 saw 1,500 exhibiting companies in all – clearly a figure not to be sneezed at.

The theme for congress this year was Redefining Mobile. It was left for us to decide exactly what Mobile was being redefined to or as. Some cynics – and there were many – were heard whispering: “redefining mobile – as a utility!” A bit harsh I feel. Perhaps MNOs are set for more industry norms when it comes to EBITDA margins and the heady days of 40% margins are gone forever, but most of them remain strong businesses generating lots of cash, if not lots of new ideas. Hmm, maybe that is a utility!

Up the hill looking down at the rest of congress, both geographically as well as metaphorically, is App Planet. Over 50,000 people visited the hall. It was the most fascinating place and a lot of fun too.  One can see where a lot of future revenue will be generated but how the MNOs get into the value chain is less certain. (Unless they buy up some of these companies).

Google have their view too of course, looking at the mobile world as one large cookie jar. Eric Schmidt was confident that “there will be an Android in every pocket”. (No, that’s not an Android in my pocket Eric, I’m just glad to see you).

And on that note, I’ll finish up now, but you can continue reading about my MWC experience and highlights in part 2…

Why Azenby? It’s a question we’ve been asked a lot recently.  Hopefully we’ve answered this question in this post, but if not, then just drop us an email – we’ll be happy to tell you more.

1. Clients come first

Of all the names in all of the world, we chose ‘Azenby’ after doing what any card-carrying user-centric company would do, and carried out some user research. The ‘users’, in this case, were senior decision makers of choice companies we‘d love to work with across different areas within the mobile ecosystem.  “Speak freely… no hard feelings,” I said. Our interviewees didn’t hold back, offering up honest, sometimes brutal feedback which was exactly what we wanted.

The research started with 7 statements of what we thought we could offer – our value proposition. The questions for respondents were
a) Does this remind you of anyone else?
b) Who have you worked with in this space – what did you like and not like about the experiences?
c) Why might you engage outside consultants?
d) How do you make your supplier selection?
e) Rate each of the 7 statements – how important are they as our value proposition

For obvious reasons, I cannot publish the insights, but I can say that as usual, each conversation took a really interesting turn. We found out some common issues with consultants, our perceived key strengths, potential risks and market opportunities.

I presented the insights back to the group with a revised value proposition. It was really important that we all felt we could sign up to the proposition. We were very clear about what we did and did not want to do. In addition, we worked through our tone of voice – how did we want to be perceived and how did that map to what our respondents had told us.

The User Insights gained from this initial research were key to helping us start the process of building our brand; and now help inform and drive every decision we make around branding, strategy and communications.

2. Finding the Name

I then brought in Katrina Damianou to help establish our brand tone and visual identity. We were looking for a name that was clean, elegant, short and memorable. We also favoured names as near to “A” as possible. Based on one of the key insights from the interviews, we began by working on “Explorer” analogies – playing with words such as “light”, “pilot”, “path”, “torch”, “polar” “route” and guide”, however, these analogies are widely used; and also felt very “done”. We hit a dead end. Katrina suggested a brand brainstorm. Known as “Forced Relationship” this is a fun exercise that forces you to think of your organisation’s brand in terms of another product or service.

Asked, “If your company were a brand of coffee, which would it be?” We were inspired by Monmouth Coffee – something of a favourite with coffee lovers “in the know”; purveyor of speciality coffee, one of the first London coffee shops and with clear, elegant, simple branding. Their name is derived from the street in Covent Garden on which their first shop opened. We loved the street name concept and started searching out possibilities for our own company. Very quickly, Azenby cropped up. It instinctively felt right.

As well as starting with an “A”, the name is an excellent fit with our original Explorer analogies:
• “AZ” = A-to-Z = map /directions = we can help you navigate the mobile landscape.
• The As and Bs = the alternatives = The As and Bs (and A to Z) of mobile = what we know and what we can offer.
We also really like that:
• “ZEN” – implies “relaxation” – serious but relaxed = That’s our style.
• “BY” (pronounced “be”) = to be present & current = Yes. Always.
• Azenby Street also happens to be in Peckham, where Founder and CEO Bill Best grew up. Which is quite a nice little tie-in we thought.

3. Design remix: Creating the logo

We appointed graphic artist, Stuart Crawford, at Inkbot Design to design our visual identity. Armed with a fully-comp creative brief and mood board, Stuart got back to us with a bunch of creative concepts within a week. Here’s the first logo we picked out:

We loved the “beacon” above the “y” (we named it the “beacon” as in: the light on top of the lighthouse a torch that guides the way). We were also into the edgy-looking “z”.  We also liked elements from this concept:

The split “A” in this logo reminded us of an arrowhead, symbolising the “direction” we offer clients. And we really liked how the same arrowhead, inverted, could be used to construct the letter “Y”. We were also excited by the observation that Stuart had used the very same arrow to form the shape of the beacon insignia from the first logo concept. Brilliant, we thought; let’s combine the two logos and see what comes out. Et voila! The eventual Azenby logo was a veritable mash-up of two original designs and we love it!

4. Colour

“If Azenby were a type of food, what food would it be?” “Sushi”, we replied. Why? Because sushi is understated, minimal and intricately constructed from the finest, freshest ingredients. Sushi thus became our inspiration for the Azenby colour palette. Introducing: our main colour, Tuna Sashimi Red; and our accent colours, Rice Grey, Wasabi, Seaweed, Prawn, and Salmon.

5. Developing the Website

With the help of Todd Halfpenny at Gingerbread Design, we took all the visual elements Stuart had created and the user insights and got to work on our website. Katrina produced the copy, establishing a tone of voice to support our visual identity. As the entire look and feel of the site is, of course, based on our user insights, we’re delighted that, so far, the feedback we have had has picked up on some of the key points we aimed to get across:
“When I look at your Home Page I want to read more”
“You look very different from other consultants – they look like they use the same template and mostly say the same things”
“It’s clear from the content that there is a lot of experience here”
“It is clean and simple…”
“Very open and transparent approach”

And that is the story of how we got to Azenby’s name, branding and proposition. Not that our work here is done. We want to ensure that the Azenby brand remains fresh and relevant. With this in mind, we’re continually listening and taking feedback on board…