Through fraenk, Make Studio shows discount brands can lead on design

fraenk is Deutsche Telekom’s app-only mobile tariff: one flat plan, run through an app, launched in 2020 as a discounted experiment. Five years on, it had quietly become a fixture – genuinely loved by the people who used it, yet still unknown to just about everyone else. Barely 2 in 10 people had heard of it. Looking to close that gap, fraenk turned to Hamburg-based Make Studio, with a brief to evolve the brand rather than reinvent it – refining what already worked to give the product the visibility and character it lacked. Discount mobile brands tend to compete on price alone, and their marketing usually shows it, with all the cheapest-gigabyte claims and loud, look-at-me graphics. fraenk had long been the exception thanks to a founding principle called ‘radically unspectacular.’ But that principle had reached its limit. Strip a brand back far enough and the plainness that once looked considered starts to feel cold. Make Studio reframed it as ‘spectacularly simple,’ and, working from fraenk’s existing story, distilled a set of guiding brand principles, memorable enough to repeat but firm enough to steer design, tone and behaviour. “When everyone in the discount segment sounds the same, the brand with character wins,” notes Creative Director Hannes Drensler. “Being radically simple and app-first has always been fraenk’s strength. But it wasn’t enough on its own and no longer future proof as competitors began to catch up,” explains Art Director Paul Eslage. “In the meantime, a different quality had started to define fraenk: their strong sense of community.” The ‘fraenk for friends’ offer had helped that community grow, and the relaunch set out to build on it. “Our main goal was to encourage word-of-mouth recommendations based on people’s connection to the brand, not on price,” Drensler continues. “We want people to love fraenk.”