Orange makes me go a bit puce. (Again.)

I know I keep going on and on and on about Orange, but it is the brand that consistently upsets me the most.

The tone of voice is consistent, I'll give it that. But it's so consistently unctuous and supercilious and syrupy that I just want to gag.

Coming home from a meeting last week, I spotted the latest sticky-sweet globule to have dripped from Orange's honeyed spoon. It was this:



It turns out to be part of the new Orange campaign from Fallon, based around this line of 'I am who I am because of everyone.' There is, God help us, a TV version:




Christ. For my money, these ads prove that the easiest thing to do with this sort of quasi-lyrical, oh-so-meaningful copy is to get it horribly wrong.

Thankfully, I am not alone. Campaign swiftly named the commercial Turkey of the Week, and the opinions they recorded from punters in the street were generally of the 'boring', 'confusing' variety. One of these reviewers gets straight to the point, saying she thought it was going to be an ad for teaching, or 'something with a bit more meaning, rather than just a mobile phone company.'

And that's it, isn't it? Orange appears to have had enough of being 'just a mobile phone company'. (All right, a broadband company too, but that doesn't seem to be working out too well either).

You feel that somebody somewhere has said to them, 'You're not about boring old phones any more. You're a brand. An iconic brand. You're a totem, a cultural touchpoint, a glowing connection between all the peoples of the world. You're a fireplace for us to gather around as the night settles coldly all about. You help release the dreams in us all, as a fine summer rain unleashes the delicate majesty of the rainbow.' Or something.

It's all very well to recognise the 'softer' elements of a brand, of course. If you allow people to communicate, you become a facilitator for all sorts of things in life. Lovely. But what if that becomes all you talk about?

Well for one thing, you run the risk of going generic, which I think these ads do. They just become about connections between people, and that's something any telecomms company can talk about.

But all this earnest, onanistic froth also seems hopelessly out of joint with the bloke who convinced me to sign an 18-month contract in order to get a free, early upgrade to a phone that's never worked properly since. And crap coverage.

Perhaps if customers came away from real-life encounters with Orange glowing with the sheer delight of it all, the brand would have more chance of getting away with such fluffy, pure 'brand' advertising. (It's impossible not to think of the iPod ads, which provide no more information than do the Orange ads, but succeed by reflecting the - authentic - joyous simplicity of the product.)

Sadly, though, I think the rot goes even deeper. It's in the tone of voice itself. Like the lady said, all this earnest, high-falutin' stuff about 'who I am' suggests something with 'more meaning', 'rather than just a mobile phone company'. Basically, they've got a bit above themselves. (Or more crudely, up themselves.)

The thing is, there's nothing wrong with being 'just a mobile phone company'. Provide a great service, communicate it with sense and charm, and you're onto a winner. We all love our mobiles (as long as they work). We couldn't be without them. They let us do all sorts of things.

So why is Orange so determined to pretend it's something else? I still wonder if they've got all sorts of new service offerings up their sleeve, and want to create a more abstract umbrella brand that can encompass whatever those are. Maybe. But if so, it ain't working.

A refreshingly straightforward strapline

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