NZ Telcos In Fracas Over The Colour Orange… And There’s A Clear Winner

A telco has been forced to change the colour of its homepage after being threatened with legal action from a rival.

Online retail and telco Kogan has recently partnered with Vodafone in New Zealand to bring a discount offering under the Kogan name.

On creating the website for the new service, Kogan opted to go with an orange tone on the homepage, a decision rival telco Spark NZ has taken great issue with.

“It seems clear that the Kogan NZ Website reflects a deliberate design choice to adopt the brand attributes which consumers associate with Skinny [the name of Spark’s mobile plan provider] in New Zealand,” said Spark in a legal letter that was uploaded by Kogan titled ‘Spark aggressive letter to Kogan Mobile NZ’.

Spark claimed the similar colours could mislead a customer into thinking the two mobile services are the same or commercially associated and asked Kogan to “reconsider its approach”.

Kogan has since done its best to turn the legal threat into positive PR and troll its opposition.

As well as uploading Spark’s strongly-worded legal letter, Kogan also shared its (far more upbeat) response.

“Kia ora neighbour! Thank you very much for your letter. Given that we haven’t really wasted any money on expensive ads, we really appreciate that you noticed that we’ve moved in,” Kogan cheekily said in its letter.

“It’s amazing how quickly word of an awesome deal spreads, isn’t it?”

We had a chuckle when we received this legal letter from @SparkNZ. While we're focused on creating better deals, increasing mobile competition & lowering prices, our competitors are focused on colours. More NZ mobile competition couldn't have come sooner https://t.co/Z3P3L99Xze
— Ruslan Kogan (@ruslankogan) September 11, 2019

Despite pointing out it has used the colour orange here in Austalia – and that other telcos have too – Kogan has elected to change the colour of the website to a hot pink, but not without one last insult.

“We really appreciate you looking out for us and ensuring that no customers may confuse our incredible offers for something lacklustre,” Kogan said in its letter.

“We expect our prices and the deals we offer Kiwis to speak much louder than any colours we use, and we doubt anyone could have confused our offer with yours.

“This is especially the case given the abundant Kogan branding everywhere on the customer journey. But, in any case, with pleasure, we have replaced all orange on our site with hot pink. Check it out. What do you think?”

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