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Optus's 2016 identity was preceded by a naming scare. In March that year AdNews and Mumbrella reported a Fairfax claim that the Singtel-owned telco had tested changing its name to Yes, its strapline for a decade, with focus groups, and had trademarked names such as Yes TV, Yes Crowd and WiFi Talk Yes. Optus told both outlets it had no plans to change its name. AdNews noted that the company was readying a big marketing push around its newly acquired English Premier League rights, with a settled creative and media agency roster pointing to major brand work.

The new identity kept the name and changed the relationship with the word instead. Truly Deeply noted that the long-running yes was decoupled from the logo, freeing it to work as a voice rather than a lockup, and described a flexible playground layer around the core identity, framing the whole as a way for Optus to differentiate itself through flexibility.

In November 2016, at the Mumbrella Entertainment Marketing Summit, the agency's head of strategy and Optus's associate director of brand strategy explained the ambition: turning Optus into an entertainment company that moves at the speed of culture, and creates it. They also made the more unusual claim that the inspiration for the brand came from the late David Bowie. The article drew sharply divided reader comments, some dismissing the look as bland and others defending the revived yes positioning.

The Bowie line reads like strategist flourish, but the principle behind a flexible system is sound. A telco that wants to sell football, entertainment and broadband talks about many things, and a rigid identity struggles to stretch across them.

The Sydney Morning Herald had reported months earlier that the company had gone further than a tagline. Focus groups and market analysis had tested whether Australia's second largest phone and internet provider could rename itself Yes, and it had been quietly trademarking Yes TV, Yes Crowd and the bare word itself. The obstacles were cost, running to tens of millions, the near impossibility of owning so common a word, and how many other companies already used it. Turning Yes into a standalone mark beside the Optus name was the compromise those three problems forced.

Separating yes from the logo was the smartest call, and a better answer than the rename the company denied. Locked in, yes was a tagline; freed, it becomes a way of speaking, while Optus keeps the name customers know. The risk with any playground system is that variety turns into noise, and Optus's discipline in applying it would decide whether the Bowie analogy held up.