Advertising: One2One loses its way at T-junction

Do you like having One2Ones? Well, too bad; you can't any more.

They've been abolished. Euro-purged and merged.

One2One was a sublimely Nineties kind of advertiser. Right sector, right attitude, right style. Right budget too. When One2One was building a customer base a few years ago, it had a campaign that was so typical of the decade in its mixture of celebrity worship, production values and PC pieties, you just knew it was a collector's piece even then. Celebrities talked about dead people of distinction they'd have liked to have had One2One conversations with. Deep, very private conversations – just star to star, you understand. They'd relate to each other. I can't remember all the names but there was some really A-level stuff going on. Did Kate Moss want a quiet word with Simone de Beauvoir? (Actually, I think it was Elvis, and I think she said they'd got a lot in common.) Then there was Ian Wright and Martin Luther King, with Ian sitting on that fateful Alabama bus. Those were heady days.

Behind all that, of course, the mobile network market isn't remotely touchy-feely. It's all about taking massive risks on the technology investment and building the subscriber base. It's all about deals and debt mountains, consolidation and world dominance. And One2One has just got itself consolidated out of existence, so all that warm, New Age branding, all that personality, has gone like mist. What's actually happened is that One2One, originally owned by Cable & Wireless, now belongs to Deutsche Telekom, which has just consolidated it into its interesting-sounding T-Mobile global network.

Renaming and rebranding has become a national joke because of the fantastic pretensions of the rebranders and their clients. The Post Office has already been shamed out of its funny Consignia clothes almost before it's had a chance to wear them. It's difficult to introduce a new brand, a formerly known as, with any grace. People think only two thoughts: what's remotely interesting about that to me? and then, a moment later, what are they trying to hide?

The T-Mobile commercial doesn't answer either question; it just suggests that One2One people must have been rather sad and lonely, by opening on a young rock guitarist, alone in a huge, empty, municipal, multi-storey car park. "From now on," says the lady voice-over, "One2One is becoming part of something bigger." An Eighties rolling cube shot (how they loved using that new software then) makes him part of a band with a big audience. Lots of hair and sweat. "So now you can enjoy all the advantages of a new global mobile network – One2One becomes T-Mobile," she says, enunciating the new name very carefully, and again, "T-Mobile ... Get more!" More cube action follows. It rolls round over a Samuel Palmer landscape, showing the One2One logo facet turning round to the T-Mobile one (it's seriously boring) and then to the "Get more" exhortation.

It's the opposite of the old One2One campaign. Utterly corporate, utterly formulaic, utterly up itself. And more than a teensy bit German too. So there's been a bit of Corporate Activity; keep that for the FT. Back in suscriber-land, what's in it for us?