Broadband News

Be has rebranded its identity today in a bid to, it describes, get closer to its users by appearing less ‘corporate’.

The O2-owned company is centring its new identity around the theme of ‘Create The New’ through which it is promises its main priority will be to put its member community at the heart of its operations moving forward.

The ISP is even going as far as to suggest that it will give members “more control of policy and creative content” adopted by the company.

Hence,the new-look home page (www.bethere.co.uk) has one of those Marmite appearances which users will either love or hate. Clearly it is designed to look a lot more rough and ready than its previous more corporate incarnation which Be felt did not connect well with the gamer generation which form its core audience.

Building community

There are calls to ‘build it’, ‘tweak it’, ‘blog it’ and ‘share it’ on the new home page as well as prominent links to forums and chat rooms. These underline the community-building ethos behind the rebrand which was led by CEO, Felix Geyr. He reveals the brand needed to communicate better with its users as well as allow those users to communicate more easily with one another better.

 “The brand idea is a call to arms, aimed to drive our members to be bold, provocative and inspiring, mirroring the co-creation, user-generated content and social networking aspects of the evolution of internet use,” he enthuses.

“In a world of corporate control, we are trying to understand how a peer-to-peer relationship between members and the business can work. The end result has come from a process of speaking to our members.

“Our new identity’s artwork is stripped back and raw, providing the platform for members to express themselves, something we know they already do across the web.”

What about the gaming channel?

However, SamKnows enquiries have shown that plans to build gaming and, even, gambling services hosted on Be’s site for its members have been put “on hold” and could possibly now not happen.

The ISP could not confirm whether plans to have its own gaming channel have been ditched but there is certainly no clear date or idea of when the plans outlined to SamKnows earlier this year by Felix Geyr will now happen.

The idea was that rather than provide a fast connection for gamers to enjoy content elsewhere, the ISP would get involved in marketing and selling games to its members directly and providing a gaming area for them to hang out in.