Two of the largest telecom companies moved their creative agency.

Airtel moves from Rediffusion to JWT

Reliance moves to Grey

Is there a signal? Some observations:

Problem 1: Both brands have not had a great ‘last few campaigns’. Personally, I think it is because Airtel & Reliance have been trying to say too many things and somewhere down the line, barring the signature tune, there was nothing that connected the many communication pieces that was coming out of these behemoths.

Airtel had a campaign with SRK based on his life story and how he is connected with his friends. Loosely made TV based campaign, which was doing nothing to the brand. Their earlier messages were clear and crisp in terms of communicating the brand objectives / values to the consumer. The SRK commercial didn’t connect well.

Reliance on the other hand brought in Hrithik. I am still unable to make sense out of the TVCs made by Reliance using Hrithik. This proved to be a classic case of lazy communication by bringing in a celebrity. The opening up of the GSM platform for Reliance was a tremendous opportunity, which I think was not utilized properly by the brand team.

Problem 2:  The relationships have either gone sour between the agency and the marketers. With Airtel, the relationship is since inception of the brand. This kind of long relationship would obviously bring some moments where one takes another for granted. It could be from the client’s side or the agency’s side. Either ways, the relationship would obviously suffer. Having been the agency since the beginning is a tremendous advantage for Rediffusion, but alas, it is not meant to continue.

With Reliance the account was with Mudra for a long time (again since inception if I am right) although the brand seems to have flirted with Cartwheel for a short while. But it is better for them to settle down with an agency properly with a long term view else the sufferer will be the brand.

Familiarity breeds contempt seems to have happened in either cases.

Problem 3: I also believe that there has been a churn at the client’s end in both these cases. Chandru alias Chandrasekhar of Airtel quit the telco very recently. And there is very little clarity (at least in media) about the person who has taken over the mandate.

Reliance marketing team also seems to have gone through a churn. I know for a fact that they are in the process of getting their marketing head on board. Internally there has been a churn which seems to have ailed these brands.

Problem 4: Intense competition. Tata Docomo, Idea, Uninor, Videocon, Virgin and many more have started digging deep into their pockets to start communicating. New regulations including Number Portability is not helping the cause and is building immense pressure on all the brands to maintain market share.

Problem 5: Highly fragmented customers. Starting from a Rs.10/- recharge to a VAS customer with an average billing of about INR4000-5000 per month makes it difficult to maintain the consistency. Also, both these brands have tried to communicate more than one message at the same time. Typically the brand ambassadors or the messaging style / guideline for each message is very different thus creating dichotomy. On the other hand, though the brand communicates different kinds of services Vodafone has at least managed to create a property which could be milked for 3 years in a row. And all their messages followed the same route, thus bringing in some consistency with respect to the different kind of customers and the kind of messages sent across.

I sincerely hope that both these brands will correct themselves on these parameters and many more that I may have left out. It is important to get the act right here because continuous errors on this front will expedite the brand’s demise. I wouldn’t want to see either of these brands in the twilight zone. Probably the change of guard is just the first result of a wake-up call.

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BTW, sorry Airtel

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I am particularly impressed with Vodafone for their ability to adapt to the ‘eastern branding principles’ despite being a very ‘western brand’.

I can safely claim to belong to the Kapferer school of thought which hinges on the fact that every brand is available to be milked to the last drop of “blood”. As a pattern Kapferer observes that the brands (and brand managers) in the eastern (or the ‘occult’ world ) invest on a brand only to derive benefit out of it in every possible way. So you would tend to find line / brand extensions galore. While in the west, you typically tend to find more ‘one product brands’ than anywhere else.

Another typically eastern phenomenon is to have an umbrella brand and to have many ’sub-brands’. This doesn’t happen in the west much either. Consider these examples: HUL Vs NIIT.

Hindustan Unilever Limited (erstwhile HLL), is a stable that I have always admired. However, having ‘Hindustan’ as part of their name does not make it any Indian. They still have a lot of western principles of branding which govern them. Not that it is wrong, but that’s how they are! Suits them fine. They had more than 100 brands (correct me if I am wrong), which they wanted to prune down to ‘30 power brands’ a few years back. I was wondering if I am not going to get my ‘favorite’ brand of bathing soap up north because according to the HUL releases, there were 30 power brands across the country and then ‘regional brands’. Whoa! Here’s an organisation which still wants to put money into brands and relegate them to ‘regions’! So you will not be getting your Hamam if you live in Chandigarh and may not get Rin if living in Kolkata or something equivalent like that! I have reasons to believe that this failed! I now get my Hamam almost anywhere I go. Probably, they just don’t advertise Hamam up north, west or north-west. Period.

NIIT on the other hand is a desi brand. We believe in dropping a coin in the pot and taking out four! After all, we are the ‘occult’ kind. The mystic east! You would have NIIT, NIIT@school, NIIT K12 and almost NIIT@anywhere, making the brand owner the traditional milkman, who is out to get the best out of a 30 year old brand. Well, that I call is actual brand management. You have one name, with which you try to get the best benefits over a period of time. That my friends, is called business sense. Every brand goes through a life cycle and I think the ‘occult’ version helps get the best out of the brand because of its multitude uses. Another classic example in the FMCG space which does the same is ‘Dabur’. You will find the prefix ‘Dabur’ with almost all brand that they own. Very rarely do they not associate a brand with its mother! Familial ties do help.

Well, this is certainly not a concept that can be ‘commonized’ as such. But the root remains. The east depends on familial ties and you still tend to find ‘joint-families’ and ‘Hindu Unified Families’, while go-west the kid is kicked out (or kicks-out) of the home the moment they reach copulating age. More product brands as against a brand family.

Q.E.D.

See you soon!

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