Allstream launches brand refresh and core values

On Oct. 23, employees across the U.S. and Canada celebrated Allstream’s brand refresh and commitment to its core values.

“We didn’t change the brand identity—in a lot of cases, the essence of the brand is very much aligned with both of the predecessor companies, so it’s not a big pivot,” says Mike Strople, president and managing director of Allstream Business Inc.

“But we’re reaffirming our values: we’re customer-centric, we’re responsive, we act with integrity, we focus on business communications. Now we can put a little more weight behind it.”

Allstream has gone through several changes over the course of its history. This refresh was an opportunity to unite every Allstream employee and customer through its brand values.

By reaffirming these brand values across the board, it means all 700 employees at Allstream will “live the brand,” says Strople, and can speak to customers and partners with a single, cohesive voice.

“We want to make it clear for our clients what they can expect when they deal with a partner like Allstream—the culture and the values of Integra and Electric Lightwave are very much in alignment with what Allstream has always been,” says Stefan Pittinger, senior vice-president of sales and marketing with Allstream.

“We’ve always provided services on both sides of the border and this will allow us to prepare for future growth, to get ahead of the demand so we can scale,” he says. “We see a lot of customers looking for options that can provide them with a seamless solution in both Canada and the United States.”

For Vanessa Hyjek, senior vice-president of customer care with Allstream, this brand refresh represents the unification of its American and Canadian offices. “It brings us to that next step of being a North American company,” she says.

“We’ve just launched our unified services across North America and now we have a platform to share those. We also have a number of projects underway that will unify our systems, tools and processes to support our customers, so we can provide that unified experience across the border.”

During the mini-celebrations, expertIP asked Allstream employees about the brand refresh and what it means to them. Here’s what they had to say:

“We’ve had all these companies come together and this is that clean start, which to me is the most significant part of all this. We can now say we’re Allstream, we’re not Electric Lightwave and not Integra and not all these other things. That part is very, very welcome. I’ve been through all these changes, so to me that’s the biggest gain out of this rebranding. I love the fact we’re working in our values and they’re prominent.”
-Dario Gasparotto, director of sales operations, Allstream

“The brand refresh is about who we are as a company and it allows us to show the culture of how we work and how we treat our customers and our partners. The brand says, ‘this is who we really are and what we’re trying to achieve.’ It’s not just a logo, but it’s not something tangible—it’s the intangible items that we want to achieve as a whole. It allows us to wow our customers initially and continue wowing them.”
-Raquel Rigua-Gomez, solutions analyst, Allstream

“I think it’s absolutely necessary. I love the relaunch, I love the core values, I love the green pastures ahead.”
-Mike Hiatt, sales manager (Minneapolis), Allstream

“In my view, we’re finally seeing the end result of merging and creating something unique in North America, a truly cross-border voice solution, being able to offer customers a unified solution where we can provide voice services in both Canada or the U.S., whether it’s a hosted environment or on-prem equipment. It’s something we’ve been trying to achieve for quite some time and I think this rebrand and unifying the product suite is really going to push us forward in that.”
-Dave Plewes, product manager for SIP services, Allstream

“There’s been many different mergers so with this refresh everybody will be communicating the same way with one unified view across the board.”
-Dale Waines, delivery manager for Cisco HCS and managed services, Allstream

For more information on Allstream’s unified product suite, please visit: Voice and Collaboration, Connectivity and Managed IT.