Name Matters

It's always been a Herculean task for companies to communicate with the
fragmented Indian consumer market.  Branding
has played an important role in enabling the companies reach out to the masses.
In telecom, since service offerings are almost similar, each service provider is
trying to look different from the other, and is investing hugely in marketing
and branding. In an industry where customer churn is at its peak and quality of
service is a major area of concern, does image building matters more than
customer building?

Though  service providers have
done enough to take the image of the companies to new heights, they have failed
to take branding beyond advertising. They stillÂ
think of branding as advertising, when the latter is just one element of
the former. Branding  is considered as an importantÂ
element of any company's overall strategy but hasn't touched every
part of business. It has been restricted to letterheads, logos and display on
huge hoardings. Instead, branding effort should also be reflected in how
employees answer the phone and how supply chain runs. Branding is the
integration of everything about the company to create consistency for customers,
vendors, employees, suppliers and the operator itself. And since operators
failed to integrate all these components together, they are struggling with
right branding as well as customer acquistion strategy. It is estimated that all
operators combined, spend around Rs 2,000 crore every year on brandingÂ
alone.

	"We believe in local branding. That's the reason Idea is more visible in hoardings and other stuff" -Vikram Mehmi CEO, Idea

Laid Back Incumbents

Branding is used by the services industry to establish a relationship with
consumers by differentiating itself from competitors while building loyalty and
comfort with the company's services or products. It has traditionally been the
strength  of the telecom sector,
particularly  for the incumbent
players-BSNL and MTNL-which have been a very inspiring brand name material,
but never spent heavily on brand slogans. It's now with competition all
around, the incumbents have  loosened
their purse-strings.

The brand war in the telecom domain actually started with the advent of
private players in 1996. The incumbent's monopoly environment of course, had
much to do with this. It is no coincidence that Bharti, which reinvented itself
as Bharti Airtel was the first  major Indian service provider to have startedÂ
looking seriously at branding issues.Â
The incumbents soon found a number of drawbacks in their product
strategies when dealing with cherry-picking, fleet-footed new entrants. But
branding is one area where they had immense advantage due to the sheer scale and
presence-particularly in their home market it gave them a head start when they
launched their mobile services in the late 90's. But still, the state-owned
players are way behind the private operators who are more focused on image
building than customer building. BSNL and MTNL didn't spend much and relied
more on their aggressive tariff plans and geographical reach, the issues that
private operators are still grappling with.

Battle of Brands

Among the private operators, Bharti started its operations with strength
that new arrivals hoped to emulate in the short-term. And it managedÂ
to project these facets of its brand in international markets, which
resulted in getting huge FDI.  It
has also been rated as one of the most respected brands by foreign media. The
cautious investment initially in branding paid-off well as it realized that huge
investment in branding could be a kiss of death for a growing companyÂ
such as Bharti, which hardly had any capital at that time.Â
In its ten years of operations, Bharti has reinvented itself by
constantly working on its brand. Bharti has a wide variety of servicesÂ
that it  offers through  different subsidiaries and under different brand names. The
company has now realized that a single brand will haveÂ
more appeal and would reduce confusion in the minds of customers.Â
The company is now working on a single brand 'Bharti Airtel' across
all its telecom services. It's working on a 'Matchbox' strategy, which
will take Bharti brand to the outlets where matchboxes are sold.

Hutch too has reworked on its identity. The brand slogan 'The future is
bright, the future is Orange', that gave Hutch a new identity in Mumbai
circle, has been replaced by Hutch's slogan 'Wherever you go, our network
follows'  with pink color in the
backdrop. The consolidation of the company's operations across the country
resulted in Hutch coming out with its new identity, as it changed its logo.Â
The company stood out in the  advertising
world with its 'boy and dog' campaign. While everyone used film stars as
brand ambassadors, Hutch made pug its icon.

Idea has taken a completely different approachÂ
on its branding activities. The company doesn't believe in roping in
brand ambassadors for its campaigns.  It
has instead spent  heavily in
sponsoring events  such as the iifa
Awards and film festivals. The company had also bid for the sponsorship of the
Indian cricket team and was the second highest bidder after Sahara.Â
Idea had  also organized
singer Sonu Nigam's shows in 22 cities across the country.  As the company does notÂ
have  an all- India presence,
it restricted itself to regional level branding. “In India, only two things
sell-bollywood and cricket. We have sponsored film shows and had bid for
sponsorship of the cricket team. We believe in local branding. That's the
reason Idea is more visible in hoardings and other stuff,” saysÂ
Vikram Mehmi, CEO, Idea cellular.

The real battle in the branding space  took
place soon after Reliance joined the bandwagon with itsÂ
'Monsoon Hungama' scheme. Its appeal turned around the fortunes of
the company, which was struggling to survive amid stiff competition.
Reliance's foray into the mobile world  started
a brand war among the CDMA players. The GSM playersÂ
also became aggressive.

Reliance has now taken a different approach and is focusing more on the
regional level. It is targeting the youth and has recently signed cricketer MS
Dhoni as brand ambassador.  Superstar
Amitabh Bachchan would endorse all products of Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG).
In all, the strategy is to target different market segments with localized brand
campaigns. The company has roped in  south
Indian  and Punjabi film stars  for
brand campaigns in their respective territories. 

In a fundamental shift towards branding, Reliance is integrating its brand
marketing with businesses tuned to customer segments. “The complexities and
challenges are huge as we have to make Reliance, the most admired brand in the
world,” says  Sanjay Behl, head,
Branding, Reliance Communications. The company is in the process of
simplifying its brand architecture and will keep Reliance as an iconic brand for
all its services and products. “We will have multitude of services and
products. Doing sub branding is a dangerous exercise for future technology
platforms,” adds Behl. Reliance has recently rebranded R-world as 'Reliance
Mobile world', R-Connect as 'Reliance Net-Connect' and Web World as
'Reliance world'. The enterprise offerings have been named
'Reliance business solutions', and the famous Reliance India Mobile  has been renamed as 'Reliance Mobile'.   

Despite all this, Reliance's approach to branding and marketing has not
been as innovative as some of its competitors, notably Hutch and Bharti. Though
most of its subscribers happen to be low-end, which is very fragmented, the
company started its campaigns on a national level. Also people's perception of
Reliance had not moved on.

The company is now moving on to GSM services as well. It remains to be seen
how successful Reliance would be in taking its message to the broader market and
delivering on the data promise.

Reliance's direct competitor Tata Teleservices was sticking to the trusted
name of Tata. Tatas had a wider portfolio of telecom services under different
brand names, which eventually re-branded under one name-Tata Indicom. “There
are certain key values attached with our brand guidelines. We offer what you see
in our campaigns. There is no hidden meaning in our messages,” said Abdul
Khan, VP, Marketing, TTSL.

Brand-aid

Undoubtedly companies have spent large sums of money in branding and have
reaped benefits of it by acquiring customers at a rapid pace. Customer churn and
quality of service were some of the factors that operators had taken for
granted. Analysts believe that if service providers cut their branding budget by
1% and invest in increasing network capabilities, customer retention and
customer acquisition issues could be addressed to a large extent.

Branding should be the well-planned coordination of every single touch point
with the customer to create consistency in service. Branding shouldn't be
about getting prospects to choose somebody over someone else. It's about
getting customers to see brand as the only solution to their problem amid
today's tariff wars and other hiccups. The way to get new business today is to
turn new customers into evangelists. If they don't get something to
evangelize-such as brand message-they'll have no way to communicate it to
the next guy. Brand strategy should be incorporated in business plan.

"The complexities and challenges are huge, as we have to make Reliance the most admired brand in the world" -Sanjay Behl, head, BrandingReliance Communications

Branding could become a boon for service providers if they address customer
pains through their branding activities. Making promise to customers through
brand campaigns and delivering it on time will defintely help in image building.
Simply changing the name or the logo doesn't really help. A brand is not only
a name; it is actually the whole product that surrounds it. It comprises of the
quality of the service and the interaction that the customer gets. All of this
contributes towards building a brand. So for telecom service providers, simply
changing the appearance will do no miracle. 

Rahul Gupta

rahulg@cybermedia.co.in