Airtel - Positioning (And Repositioning)

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Themes : Positioning
Period : 1990-2003
Organization : Bharti Cellular Limited
Pub Date : 2003
Countries : India
Industry : Cellular

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Case Code : MKTG037
Case Length : 12 Pages
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Repositioning Airtel Contd...

The new commercials developed for this campaign reflected humane, aspirational, family-centric and softer brand values while promising easy reach. Bharti also created a new logo for the Airtel brand, which had red, black and white colors with 'Airtel' enwrapped in an eclipse. The tagline 'Touch Tomorrow' was placed below in a lower case typography to convey a warm and informal style (Refer Figure I). The campaign was first rolled out in the states of Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Chennai. As a part of this campaign, Airtel also shifted its focus from SEC, audiences to SEC B audiences.

The company also increased its Touch Point network (Airtel's shop-in-shop points at various departmental stores and lifestyle establishments). In line with its repositioning efforts, Bharti also revamped the entire Airtel network including Airtel Connect centers. As a part of this, Bharti focused on giving a contemporary look to Airtel Connect centers with e-kiosks, facades, collaterals, signages and merchandising material.

It also changed the color scheme of these outlets by adopting a coordination of red, black and white to give the outlets a soothing, soft but classy look. The dress code at these outlets was also changed. Men wore black trousers and a white shirt bearing the Airtel logo with and a red tie.

While women sported red tops and black trousers with ivory, schiffon scarves. While the Touch Tomorrow campaign was still running, Bharti announced a major brand restructuring exercise at the corporate level. This was done in order to facilitate its entry into new areas of the telecom sector and establish itself as a global telecom brand.

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." 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. Moreover, as a more towards product segmentation, the Internet-Interface services (WAP⁵) offered to cellular users were brought under the brand name 'Tango' in 2001.

Commenting on the launch of Tango, a senior Bharti official said, "The idea was to bring Internet and mobile in perfect harmony." However, Tango was not as successful as Bharti had expected it to be. The company sources mainly attributed this to the limited utility and inefficiency of WAP services. Soon the company discontinued the advertisements for Tango. However, the brand was retained for the company's permanent Internet connectivity (GRPS⁶) services (on its cellular phones).

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5] Short for the Wireless Application Protocol, WAP is a secure specification that allows users to access information instantly via handheld wireless devices such as mobile phones, pagers, two-way radios, smartphones and communicators.
6] Short for General Packet Radio Service, a standard for wireless communications which runs at speeds up to 115 kilobits per second, compared with the more commonly used GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) systems' 9.6 kilobits.