Micah Walker: ‘Wherever We Go’ Will Make Telstra “Warm and Personable”

Micah Walker and Blake Crosbie say Telstra’s newly-launched brand platform, ‘Wherever we go’, is a bid to make the heritage telco feel warm and distinctive.

“Love wasn’t the word people were using, even if they were customers,” Micah, the Bear Meets Eagle on Fire co-founder tells LBB. 

“We both [Brent Smart, Telstra CMO] agreed that if you want to change how people feel about a brand, you have to change how a brand feels.”

The idea of a more idealistic, optimistic, and imaginative Telstra drove the process. With plans to express the brand in different ways moving forward, as Brent told LBB earlier this week, Bear Meets Eagle On Fire and +61’s work on the Telstra brand, “was less about reflecting a Testra of the past.” 

+61 managing director Blake adds, “Everyone knows, or thinks they know, Telstra. It’s a brand with such a long history, it doesn’t struggle with awareness, the challenge is how people feel about them. There’s no reason a big corporation can’t feel warm and personable. And most importantly distinctive.” 

The platform follows the wonderfully-crafted stop motion animals which starred in ‘Better on a Better Network’,‘Wherever we go’ was briefed in as soon as +61 was appointed last year, and the  a charmingly animated TVC plus the courageous OOH roll out were worked on in tandem, according to Micah. 

“We always felt like they come from the same brand world. We could’ve put ‘Wherever we go,’ at the end of those [Better on a Better Network spots] and they would’ve worked just as well,” Micah says.

The audacity of taking over 3,000 OOH sites is not entirely new to the Bear Meets Eagle On Fire team, however making bespoke artwork for each placement was. Unbeknownst to the average passersby, the graphic for each billboard, bus shelter, and mural was comprised of individual pieces of paper, layer upon layer.

“Even down to the detail of ensuring the right paper grain and direction of the lighting was right for each piece. Kind of bonkers really, but we felt it made a difference to take that care rather than just hitting a resize button,” Micah explains. 

+61, as described by Blake, is “a unique first-of-its-kind set up”. Its aim is to produce the best work for the brand, Blake says. “The ability to bring work to life with this level of craft and scale shows how special the model is.”

With more in the pipeline, including an impending Christmas campaign, this tonal shift from corporate to whimsy is all about changing the public's perception of the brand.

Micah says the work will hopefully succeed in “making Tesltra a more magnetic brand.” 

“We’re just at the start of the journey though, so fun things to come.”