Brand Management Individual Assignment

Name: Roll no.: Section:

Saurabh Seth 2012279 DE1

Vodafone Overview

Vodafone Essar is the Indian subsidiary of the Vodafone Group. Vodafone Essar, usually referred to simply as Vodafone, covers 23 telecom circles in India. It was formerly known as Hutchison Essar. It is based in Mumbai. 67% stake in the joint venture is held by Vodafone while the Essar group holds the remaining 33%. It is the second largest mobile phone operator in terms of revenue behind Bharti Airtel, and third largest in terms of customers. The Transition (Hutch Vodafone) :

Hutch enjoyed considerable brand equity. It was also a well-loved brand in terms of its unique imagery and award-winning communication. In making the transition to Vodafone, it was important to carry forward this equity and exceed expectations. Vodafone had to ensure that it was successful in carrying along 35 million customers, 400,000 trade partners and 10,000 employees through the transition and, even more importantly, to exceed expectations. Communication Campaigns:

Vodafone is innovative in its advertising, trying to come up with something new and refreshing, which will be liked and remembered by the consumer for a long time. Vodafone keeps coming out with new communication campaigns at regular time intervals. It ran the Pug campaign for some time initially. Then it launched the Zoozoo campaign and it also launched the Vodafone delights campaign. Another small campaign that had been running until recently was the Rs. 4 me sab kuch which had a speaking parrot trying to co nvince people that four rupees are of no value today but Vodafone offers a lot of things in just that amount. These changes in communication campaign strategies and focus on different things

every time shows that. They have never used media or sports celebrities for their communication, unlike competitors like Airtel, Idea and Reliance who use sports celebrities and bollywood stars like Abhishek Bachchan and Hrithik Roshan for their endorsements and advertising. Marketing Strategy

Vodafone India tries to reach maximum customers and uses integrated marketing strategy. The sales and distribution of Vodafone products is done through their dedicated outlets as well as other outlets, small shops and stores. Vodafone has also set up similar format Vodafone stores all over India to give their consumers an experience wherever they maybe. At the same time a number of mini stores ensure that the customers have more number of places to resolve their minor problems and enquiries. This also helps customers to settle their bill dues. Vodafone India also pushes its sim cards through general retailers and pays them a small margin on the sale of each sim card. Post paid consumers are given offers and upgrade schemes to ensure that the company maintains a relationship with them. Thus the sales and distribution aspects of Vodafone in India are taken care by Dedicated outlets, Mini outlets, Retail shops, Mobile shops. Vodafone also uses the events platform as a promotion tool. Events like IPL which are sure to grab eye balls are sponsored by Vodafone and large scale TV advertising is done to ensure that the customer may avail IPL related services on his handset. Vodafone had combined with the highest TRP grossing Big Boss and provided a chance to the customers to visit the Big Boss house. Advertising

Vodafone lays special emphasis on creative advertising. They came up with the highly successful zoo zoo campaign which became a hit with all the consumers. All their ads clearly portray the benefit for the user and are done in such a way such as to induce good brand recall. Events Vodafone ties up with a number of events which are designed to create daily or special brand related interactions. They generally combine with high popularity TV shows

and events which provides them good eye balls and ensures that a particular number of people always view what they have to offer. Vodafone emphasizes more on above the line activity. Their strong financial background ensures that they can pump in their money in such events and ensure a strong brand recall. Interactive Marketing

Vodafone is making extensive use of the online segment to involve more and more consumers with the brand. They have a presence on all the social networking sites and are providing special offers on those pages as well. A number of users can connect with the brand and talk , discuss about the various aspects of the brand online itself. They periodically keep revising the promotional offer advertisement that they put up on such pages. They are providing their entire range of products, service and promotion related information on these sites. Brand Logo

Vodafone calls it the Speechmark Logo. It is a quotation mark in a circle. The quotation marks before and end of a conversation is depicted in the logo and Red color has been its corporate color for long. Characters Characters in Vodafone represent a special type of brand symbol. Since Vodafone entered into the Indian market, there have been two primary characters associated with the brand. The first is the famous pug which was used in the earlier advertisements and portrayed the consistency of service in the tagline Wherever you go, our network follows. The second and extremely popular character which Vodafone created was the Zoozoo. Real people wore grey suits to portray comical characters in a major communication campaign aimed at increasing awareness about the value added services provided by Vodafone. The campaign includes every channel from television and print advertising to billboards and hoardings at the point of sale. Zoozoos as a character have been loved by one

and all and have helped tremendously in increasing the brand awareness among consumers. Slogans

Slogans can contribute to brand equity in multiple ways. They can play off the brand name to build brand awareness and image and can also contain product related information and other meanings. Vodafones slogans are Isnt it nice when someone makes you feel special and Power to you. Their previous slogans like Happy to Help, Power to you and Wherever you go our network follows have been equally successful in associating different meanings with the brand; meanings like consistency of service, the consumers power to choose what service to avail and what to pay for and the brand being ever present in case of any need for the consumer. Jingles Most consumers remember the You and I in this beautiful world jingle, which ran as background in the communication campaign consisting of the pug following the kid, helping him and doing chores for him. The current campaign has the jingle The little things you do, a sweet and melodious song which portrays the intended message quite well. Vodafones jingles strongest point is their likeability and consumers tend to remember them very conveniently.

Consumer perception

1. Aggressive in advertising. Comes up with new ads frequently. 2. Good value for services provided. 3. Have variety of offers in their recharge. Suits for variety of customers.

Failure at times 1. Vodafone was involved in 2G scam. As such no charges were found against Vodafone in later stages. 2. With its latest zoozoo campaigns they were able to create brand awareness but not much subscribers.

3. Proper customer retention strategy is not there. This can be included in failure because there are always few customers who are dissatisfied and switch over to other telecom network. 4. Vodafone India "My News" service is a big failure in terms of revenue generation. They didnt understand the fact that why would customers subscribe for this services when news is available for free Recommendations

1. Network is the main factor for customer dissatisfaction, majority of the respondents suggested to increase the number of towers ,widen the coverage to villages and network congestion. 2. Though Vodafones innovative and uniquely creative advertising campaigns have distinctively caught the eye of the consumer and have helped the brand recall increase manifolds, they have also caused another problem. The consumers tend to remember more about the zoozoos and the pug while the basic service attributes that can be attached to a telecom operator are not really crossing the mind of the consumer when talking about the brand. In short, Vodafones extremely popular mascots have dominated their basic offerings. This is one area where we would recommend them to create campaigns where the focus is more on the service attributes that they want to be known for rather than the mascots which are currently making them popular. 3. Vodafone should work on its call rates as it scores very low in comparison to its competitors on having good call rates

Testimonial: Vishal Moonka a 2nd year student of IMT Nagpur, Vodafone user for the past 2 years says that he is satisfied with Vodafone but is very annoyingly dissatisfied with its customer care services. He says, I called up the Vodafone customer service and choose English as the language of communication but some hindi speaking lady picked up who spoke to me very rudely. She didnt even direct me to the right person and didnt know what to do with my complaint.

APPENDIX

Perceptual map

PERCEPTUAL MAP
High on perception
Airtel Reliance
Vodafone BSNL MTNL Low on esteem Aircel LoopUnitech MTS Videocon Idea High on esteem Tata

for Vodafone:

Low on perception

The country was divided into 23 circles when the mobile phones were introduced in the country The circles were classified as Metros, A, B or C depending upon the revenue potential for the circle with Metros & A circles expected to have the highest potential.

Circles Metros A circles B circles C circles

Number 4 5 8 6

in millions 114 288 335.5 115

Vodafone enjoys the third spot in the number of subscribers.

Others, 3.90% Reliance, Bharti, 16.81% 19.70% Uninor, 3.67% Aircel, 6.84% Tata, 9.97% Vodafone, 16.56% Idea, 11.55%

BSNL, 10.91%

Based on a survey it was clear that,

What connects you with Vodafone the most

Happy to Help Express 7% yourself 2% Power to you 0% Pug/Dog 21% Red/White Colors 12%

Zoo Zoo 58%