Vodafone originally launched on July 17, 1985 as an operating brand of Racal Telecom in the UK. In 1991, Racal Telecom de-merged from Racal Electronics plc and then renamed to Vodafone Group plc.
In 1997, the infamous speech mark was unveiled. During this era, Vodafone's then-recent acquired subsidiaries in many countries, as well as its partner networks (which Vodafone had no investment there) would be marketed under the dual-brand scheme, where the Vodafone brand is added at the end of the local brand (e.g. D2-Vodafone in Germany, JPhone-Vodafone in Japan).
In the early 2000s, all international subsidiaries phased out their local identity in favor of solely Vodafone brand.
In 2006, Vodafone modified the 1997 logo slightly. The wordmark is now in a different font. During Summer 2013, the Vodafone wordmark was removed, as most people could recognize the speech mark logo as Vodafone. The rollout began in September.
On October 6, 2017, Vodafone unveils new positioning and brought the speech mark back to 2D along with its eponymous custom font made by Brand Union (now Superunion), which previously worked with them in 2006 and 2013, respectively.
It also introduced a new campaign and strapline 'The Future Is Exciting. Ready?' with stroke version of speech mark as an outline to its following marketings and advertisements.
“The new visual identity will place much greater emphasis on Vodafone’s iconic ‘speech mark’ in the biggest change to one of the most recognisable symbols of Vodafone since the ‘speech mark’ logo was created. The ‘speech mark’ will now appear as the central graphical focus overlaid on all marketing and marketing communications activity. The logo will also appear in a new 2D design in place of a skeuomorphic 3D approach.”
