Painting the town red: Hutch is now Vodafone

Change is good, that is the message the country’s third largest mobile service operator Vodafone-Essar is sending by spending up to Rs 200 crore. It has little choice starting this week, what we knew as Hutch has to be known as Vodafone. This is one of the biggest rebranding exercises ever anywhere in the world.

Almost overnight 370 Hutch shops in the country and four like dealerships will be saying goodbye Hutch and hello Vodafone. This is the last most visible sign of a pain taking process that has taken the better part of two months. In most of the countries where Vodafone has entered via acquisitions, the brand roll out has been a step-by-step one with Vodafone suffixing itself to the local existing brand before migrating it out completely. In an unusual mood, Vodafone the company that completed the acquisition of HDIL, the company that owned Hutch in May has just four months later rolled out its brand across India.

"Our view was why do tomorrow what you can do today because everyday it delayed cost you more money. You have more bill posts to change; you have more shop signs, shop fronts to change" says Asim Ghosh, MD, Vodafone Essar.

Q: You are investing in a brand that is not going to exist beyond a point?

Ghosh: That is exactly so, it is simply a question of ‘if you are going to make the transition, the sooner you do it and have certainty in your marketing roadmap the better it is because then you do not have this business of investing money and then ‘oh my god we are going to have write it off later, it is just most efficient way to do it.

Q: Arun Sarin in February when he spoke to CNBC, he said that, “Vodafone more and more over a period of time,” what happened to that because it clearly, immediately as soon as possible, Vodafone immediately is actually what is happening, is this highly unusual?

Ghosh: It is, the normal Vodafone practice is to go from brand X to Vodafone X and then move onto Vodafone. I think the difference is in this market from the others was they were not moving from a dog brand to a new super brand. The brand that they brought into already had a very substantial brand equity, it had a very high emotional connect with the customer; it was one of the most recognized brands in the country. So there was no need for transition in order to set up the business for the promise of the future. We were in a position really to be credible for the transition from day one.

Q: Make the most of now as Vodafone says, isn’t it?

Ghosh: That is exactly so.

Q: How involved has London been or Mr Sarin been in the brand transition?

Ghosh: There is obviously brand template and the work that we are doing is within the boundries of brand templates, so obviously there has been some, I would say fairly minimal oversize to ensure that we are staying within the bounds of that. But all the work has been locally developed and produced, as was the case with Hutch and as indeed the case was with Orange before that.

Harit Nagpal, Director-Marketing, Vodafone Essar: Vodafone came with the guidelines, Vodafone did come with templates but Vodafone did not come with any dogmark. Vodafone was very clear that this brand has to be created for India by India and as the creatives and as the touch points stuff unrolls, you will notice that every piece has been made in India.

Q: Carnival atmosphere here, it looks like a party, has it been a party overseeing this transaction from Hutch to Vodafone?

Nagpal: This is just the changeover from the first phase to the second phase. We have been at this planning phase for the last three months or two and a half months where every small bit of what is going to be executed in the market place with the changeover has been planned. In fact the first time we met and made out a list, it ran into about 770 rows on an excel sheet that require change. People have sat down with the help of the agencies, outsourcing partners etc, put together each and every one of those items.

Anchor: One of the biggest challenges was to announce this change to the world. Hoardings, newspapers and from 9 pm on September 20, 13 channels of the Start TV network were co-opted. All commercial breaks on Star over the next 24 hours played only Vodafone adds. That kind of positioning on television comes at a huge price, some says Star got a 300% premium, while other advertisers will be compensated over the next month, it would have been a bigger coup, if Start Cricket and ESPN that are showing the 20-20 World Cup were part of this unveiling.

Uday Shankar, COO, Star India: To tell you the truth, it was not something that we had been sitting and analyzing then it came. It was fairly intuitive because it came from that meeting with the client where the client kept insisting that they wanted something very different, very fresh, something which had never been done before. So we thought okay if that is the case then how about something like this. We were aware that their concerns or requirements over to cut the clutter, to make it very exclusive, to make sure that anybody who is watching television was getting the message and make sure that the message was registered in a non-hostile, non-annoying environment and we felt that this kind of solution was the perfect fit for all of that.

Q: You want to share with us the media budget for television where this is concerned because obviously this kind of solos position on television comes at a price?

Nagpal: We would be negotiated in that.

Anchor: The first Vodafone campaign simply wants to reassure people that while there is change, there has also been continuity; you could call it a curtain raiser. To do that O&M, the agency that works with the brand across all its avatars, has kept the Pug. The Pug that become the symbol of the service was the happy accident, it was brought in for an ad to show a stronger built up network in 2003, but people found it so endearing that it has made its presence felt in all commercials that followed, even Vodafone seems it clear that the dog had to stay.

Piyush Pandey, Vice Chairman, O&M-Asia Pacific: I do not know where the boy is now, pug we could find. If you look at it, boys have changed over a period of time but the Pug somehow has become very symbolic of Hutch and very endearing to India, very endearing to Vodafone too. That is why you will see it. What has always been the philosophy is to keep it so simple that everyone understands and keep it so different and charming that it looks premium because end of the day there is no difference in since its not that you get one service enormously cheaper than the other.

Ghosh: The dog remains the dog is almost- it’s other than being a mascot for us it’s an article, a faith for us. To me it is symbolic of the fact that we believe that you don’t have to follow the crowd. Why would I use as I said the moment to go another cricketer or any filmstar, not that I have anything against them. There were people and they were the people in their own right.

Q: And you used Rahul Dravid occasionally for its service?

Ghosh: But to sell cricket products. But why would I use them as a brand Ambassador when the dog actually is vastly cheaper and in fact we find from all the market research that we do, gives us much better emotional connect with our customers.

Q: Does Vodafone have anything like this anywhere worldwide?

Ghosh: Not that we are aware of.

Q: What is their reaction to the Pug?

Ghosh: We would have to ask them but I think they are quite sanguine about it.

Anchor: While nearly a 100 people worked on the transition at O&M, Vodafone Essar had 10-member core team that was in charge. From educating dealers and backend call center officers to three days of game and activities to get employees to buy into the change, it was about saying goodbye pink and hello red.

Communicating change both within and outside is critical but it is just the tip of the iceberg when you think of how large this re-branding exercise is.

Source: www.moneycontrol.com