Airtel - Positioning (And Repositioning)

REPOSITIONING AIRTEL Contd...

In early-2000s, Bharti unveiled a three-tier Airtel brand architecture that was aimed at defining every service with a special brand name and place them under a mother brand (Refer Table III). Commenting on the new brand architecture, Sachdev said, “All convergent technologies in the sphere of telephony will be a part of the new brand architecture.”

TABLE III
THE THREE-TIER BRAND ARCHITECTURE OF BHARTI

TABLE III	SECOND TIER	THIRD TIER
• Airtel (Mother Brand)	• Airtel Basic Telephone Services • Airtel National Long Distance Services • Airtel Broadband Services • Airtel Mobile Services	• Airtel Freenet • Airtel Long Distance • Airtel Tango (Internet Mobile)

Source: ICMR

Commenting on this initiative, Sandeep Goyal, President, Rediffusion DY&R (Brand Communications), said “An Equity Research undertaken by ORG-MARG and quarterly Brand Track studies by IMRB have given us insight into the needs of tomorrow's consumer. The new branding initiative takes into cognizance the findings that consumers consider Airtel as a brand of the successful people and a preferred address.”

As a part of the restructuring efforts, the basic telephone services of Bharti were brought under the Touchtel brand and the National Long Distance (NLD) telephony under the ‘IndiaOne'brand. Though the cost of creating new brands was high, the company was inclined to create independent brands for its various services. The Bharti brand and Magic (the prepaid cellular brand) were not included in the Airtel brand architecture, and they continued to operate as distinct brands. According to company sources, the new structure was aimed at positioning Airtel as the power brand with regional sub-brands reflecting customer needs in various parts of the country. Bharti felt that a single brand name for all cellular operations might not always work in the urban markets, which were heading towards saturation.

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