Groups dial up 3G Mobile look for Irish customers

Irish phone retailer 3G Mobile launches revamped branding and refreshed retail concept next month, designed by Dublin-based consultancy Image Now and London group Chance & Fat respectively.

3G Mobile, which took over the old Eircom stores in May, is seeking to broaden the remit of a traditional phone retailer. As well as phones, the new stores will offer Sky Digital subscriptions, video games and ‘Internet zones’.

The Chance & Fat-designed retail concept will be trialled at the company’s two flagship stores in Dublin before a roll-out across the retailer’s 17-store estate.

3G Mobile marketing communications manager Karen Treacy says Chance & Fat was briefed to target a ‘younger, funkier gaming set without losing our older, settled Eircom customers’. Chance & Fat partner Tim Butt says the group did not perceive the age range of customers as a problem.

Butt claims the greater challenge was to get people to sign up for additional services. All of the group’s concepts feature live phones, allowing customers to ‘picture text message from one side of the store to the other, and play games over wireless Internet’.

Chance & Fat will also introduce some ‘theatre and scene-setting’.

Image Now managing director Darrell Kavanagh says the group chose an ‘olivey lime green’ for the identity both because it ‘reflects the stores link to Ireland’ and ‘is modern and retail friendly’. The group tried to keep the logo ‘simple and sharp-edged’, he adds.

Chance & Fat won the work in June, following a four-way, unpaid pitch. Image Now was appointed in July.