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Elisa, Finland's largest operator, had grown well beyond phone lines. Its announcement on 15 October 2014 noted strong expansion into new business areas, from the Saunalahti mobile brand to online services such as Elisa Viihde, Elisa Lompakko and Elisa Kirja, and a range of business productivity tools. The company described itself as serving 2.3 million consumers, businesses and public organisations, with revenue of 1.55 billion euros in 2013, and Mattila said it intended to remain the largest Finnish operator with the most extensive 4G LTE network. That day it published a new brand strategy and corporate look, visible at once on the website, in marketing and in many stores across Finland. Ilta-Sanomat reported that new logos were installed in Elisa shops that morning.

The architecture is the core change. Saunalahti, Videra and Appelsiini stopped operating as separate brands and became Elisa Saunalahti, Elisa Videra and Elisa Appelsiini, among eight sub brands. Communications director Katiye Vuorela described a diverse whole being unified, and the company said the new look should communicate its broad range of services more clearly. Chief executive Veli-Matti Mattila insisted Elisa was not just changing its logo: the company had long been much more than Finland's biggest operator. He said unifying the brands would bring efficiency to communication and marketing, enabling the cheapest subscription prices in the sector, and that Saunalahti's low prices would remain.

Visually, Ilta-Sanomat summed it up simply: the lettered Elisa logo was consigned to history and replaced by a handwritten script. The paper immediately questioned whether it was legible, asking readers what they thought the new logo actually said and placing old and new side by side. Estonian marketing outlet Best Marketing reported that the renewal, worth around two million euros, was carried out with agencies in Finland and Sweden.

Consolidation was overdue; Saunalahti in particular had become a confusing parallel brand for the same company. The script is the gamble. A handwritten mark makes an operator feel personal and warm, which suits a company selling entertainment and books alongside SIM cards. But a logo that a national newspaper treats as a reading test on launch day has a problem, and scripts degrade quickly at small sizes on phones. Elisa gained cohesion and personality, and paid for it in clarity.