How it started

Telenet is a telco brand with solutions in both the connectivity and entertainment space. Generation Z is rapidly becoming a larger part of their customer base and thus Telenet raised the question how they can be more relevant and meaningful for this audience going forward, both from a branding & comms perspective and from an innovation and customer experience angle.

How we inspired change

Understanding next generations is a common brand challenge. If you want to understand this audience, you don’t only have to empathize with them (consumer research), but you also need to look at culture to understand where you fit in their cultural worlds (cultural insights and semiotics). Both phases contributed to a meaningful result for Telenet:

• Inside-out: Who is Gen Z into the future?
  We combined multiple research methods to truly understand what makes Gen Z tick and how they feel a connectivity brand could support them. We interviewed 8 Gen Z leading edge consumers (from our Illume Guides) to uncover new emerging needs and values, connected with 50 youngsters on our Telenet research community to sense check how it manifests locally and used secondary sources to find best-in-class examples today.
• Outside-in: Opportunity spaces for Telenet.
  The second phase was all about understanding how the category is communicating today, and what the relevant and ownable spaces are for Telenet to stretch towards Gen Z. Our team of cultural insight analysts and semioticians decoded how Telenet, and its competitors are showing up today in media and culture.

By analyzing those, we understood how Telenet as a brand is perceived by Gen Z today and where they should play in terms of brand, communication, innovation and experience to make them more relevant tomorrow for Gen Z.

How it lives on

This project truly initiated a renewed sense of urgency with Telenet to prioritize thinking on how to approach this generation. As a result, a new workstream was initiated to think further about concrete ideas and initiatives in all aspects of the business, targeted towards Generation Z. A second and even more direct result was the direct input of this project into communication concepts of Telenet’s creative agency, which will be further tested through Telenet’s ongoing research community.