AIRTEL

Repositiong
 Introduction
• Airtel is an offspring of Bharti Airtel Limited, one
of Asia’s leading integrated telecom service
providers.

• Bharti Airtel since its start, has been at the

forefront of technology and has pioneered
several innovations in the telecom sector.

• Founder – Sri. Sunil Mittal

 History
• 1970 - Sunil Bharti Mittal laid the foundation of
Bharti group at New Delhi

• 1985 - Entered telecom business –Bharti

Telecom Ltd which entered into a technical
collaboration with Siemens AG Germany for
manufacturing electronic pushbutton telephones

• 1990 - Entered Telecommunication

• 1992 - Launch cellular service in Delhi

• 1995 - started offering post-paid service, Started Service centers.

• 1997 - Mobile switching center

• 2000 - Acquired Skycell (TN), JT Mobile (AP & Karnataka),

Spice Cell (WB), agreements with BPL to gain seamless access
in Mumbai, Maharashtra, Chennai, Delhi, Kerala, Tamil Nadu,
Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka
 Cellular Position
• When the brand was launched cellular
telephony wasn’t a mass market by any
means. For the average consumer, owning a
cellular phone was expensive as tariff rates
(at ` 8 to 16 per minute, as against ` 1.20 for
landline communication )

• At that time, Instrument prices were steep

high — sometimes as much as buying a
second-hand car.

• High Licence Fee for communication service

providers.
 Airtel’s Positioning
• At that time AirTel company redefined the way cellular
services were being marketed in the country, was made
possible due to its innovative marketing strategies, continuous
technological up gradations, new value added service
offerings and efficient customer service.

• AirTel decided to address that benefit of sensory of the

customer and make it as their Business strategy - main
selling approach.

• The idea was to make a badge value brand

• They targeted the elite, up market professionals and

entrepreneurs as customers – Premium Sector
 Leadership Campaign
•  AirTel “Leadership series” campaign was launched
showing successful men with their laptops and in their
deluxe cars using the mobile phone.

• Airtel was positioned as aspiration brand that was meant

for leaders, for customers who stood out in a crowd.

• Brand — leadership, dynamism and performance

• Tag lines like “Airtel - Power to Keep in Touch” and

"Airtel celebrates the spirit of leadership" and "The first
choice of the corporate leaders" .
 Competitors
• Domestic players like Tata cellular and
Reliance Infocomm.

• International Players – Orange, Essar

• If Airtel wanted to increase its market share, it

had to face those increased competition.

• At that time Airtel - with a subscriber base of

over 0.38 million, the growth was still much
below the company's expectations.
 Brand Analysis
• In early 2000, Airtel conducted brand tracking
studies to understood customer’s psyche.

• The brand had become something like

Lufthansa – cold and efficient, what they need
was to become Singapore Airlines, efficient but
also humane.
- Preet Bedi, Director of Lowe India

• 50% of new subscribers are brought by

promotion of the existing User.
 Singapore Airlines - Winning
• The early 1990s recession was a decline in
economic activity.
• Lufthansa make post de-regulation – focusing
on pricing i.e.) yielding management
• Singapore Airlines focus on needs of
passengers rather than Flighting, they did
subjective vision – humane software. Thus they
differentiated themselves by making specific
touch point with passengers.
• Lufthansa - commoditization of Customer
• Singapore Airlines – Humane of customer
 Analysis Report
• Airtel team realized that in a business customer
relationship was the core which was lacked by
AIRTEL – a major weakness

• The leadership series was okay when you were

wooing the crèmede la crème of society. Once
you reached them you had to expand the market
so there was need to address to new customers.
- Senior executive of Essar 

• A change in track was important because this

was a time when the cellular market was
changing.
 Cont.,
• Surveys showed that the concept of leadership in the
customer’s minds was also changing.

• Leadership did not mean directing subordinates to

execute orders but to work along with a team to achieve
common objectives — it was, again, a relationship game
that needed to be reflected in the AirTel brand.

• We are adopting a new brand

platform – Touch Tomorrow –
not only to reflect our corporate
ethos but also business strategy.
- Hemant Sachdev
 Leadership To touch Tomorrow

Govt. reduced the tariffs A brand was created that

not only had qualities like Replacement of
and taxes which led to
Leadership, Performance, licence fees
the emergence of huge
Dynamism but also with with revenue
customer base
supportive values like sharing scheme
courtesy, politeness and
efficiency

Other players also During late 1990s many

started imitating national and international Cellular
strategies followed by players started entering Operators could
Airtel, by offering into the Indian telecom drop their price
same type of market
schemes and
facilities
Ex. ESSAR
 Humanized AirTel
• Now, ‘humanize’ brand ‘Airtel’ started to gain competitive
advantage.

• In August 2000, Bharti launched its new ‘Touch

Tomorrow’ campaign which aimed at strengthening its
relationship with its customers and highlights the
relationship angle and make the brand ‘softer’ to cater a
wide variety of people across the society.

• Airtel brand will have the logo in red, black and white
colors, and a lower-case typography to convey warmth.

• This has tossed a challenge: how to bond with

consumers
• In the new thrust, Airtel has also moved down the socio-
economic classification (SEC) from SEC-A to SEC-B.

• Mobile telephony is taken for granted - in one research,

consumers have described mobile telephony as `dil ka
rishta hai‘ (as it is kept close to the heart)

• Airtel has also undertaken an updating of the entire Airtel

franchised network and company-owned customer
centers. At Airtel Connects, it is creating a softer
ambience with e-kiosks, new signage's, facades,
merchandising material and collaterals; and a color co-
ordination of red, black and white
 Change In Architecture
• The Company adopted a three-tier brand architecture to
expanded its ‘Touch Point’ network.
• All convergent technologies in the sphere of telephony
will be a part of the new brand architecture

Tier I ----------- Airtel

Tier II ----------- Basic Telephony, Basic Telephony,

Broadband Service, Mobile Service

Tier III ----------- Freenet, Long Distance, Tango-

Internet mobile
 Changing colors
§ Ad spend more - doubled to Rs 45 crore

§ A new ambience, reinforcing red and black color-co-

ordination, for Airtel shops

§ The network of Airtel connects and touch points, were doubled

§ A push of products, especially Net-centric ones, was launched

§ Network capacity utilization (currently operating at 75 %) was

improved by 20 %

§ Number of cellular lines increased from 2,00,000 to 5,60,000

§ First quarter growth of 25 per cent over the corresponding

period in 1999-00.

§ Airtel Leadership Programmed in alliance with 50 marketers

 P’s of Service Marketing
Normal 4 P’s Extended 8 P’s
• Product • People
• Price • Purpose
• Promotion • Positioning
• Place • Partners
• Personality
• Process
• Physical Evidence
• Punch
 Changes concerning 12 P’s
• Product - Electronics Items, Air Traffic Services
Systems, Airborne Systems, Signal Towers

• Price - Initially high price, then according to

government regulation – Low price

• Promotion – Promoting the differentiated Airtel

• Place – Airtel covered most important big cities

and areas where SEC – B people are there.
Creating Touch points
 Cont.,
• People - Recruiting the right staff and training
them appropriately – Change them according to
new theme – clothes, attitude

• Purpose – Emerging Competition and

Government regulation, Capturing more
customers

• Positioning – positioning in humane way rather

than to commoditization way

• Partners – Indirect partners – cellular producers

–Nokia, Motorola…
 Cont.,
• Personality – Showing Airtel in different way -
beyond the current Brand Personality Scale

• Process – Design and approach – 3 tier

• Physical Evidence – people started to feel the

touch of Airtel, they made good judgement about
Airtel

• Punch – The tagline “ Touch Tomorrow”

 Teams View
• Brand restructuring helped the company to broaden its
customer base by reaching more people and offering
new services

• Airtel was the first cellular service provider to start

customer centers (Airtel connects), thus setting a trend
of effective and responsive CRM system & it should be
maintained.

• More focusing on emotional angle to differentiate the

brand, helps to add more SEC- B customers.
 Success
• Merits • Demerits
• Targeting different and • Risk of being alienated
new customer of market from loyal customers
effectively. • Huge promotional costs
• “TOUCH TOMORROW” • If a new positioning fails
gave an insight into the or not executed properly
needs of tomorrow's brand may suffer a crisis
consumer. of identity and dilution of
• Customer started to feel brand image
the theme - Humane
 Success
• Loyal Customers will realize that this change is
inevitable, to grow the company and they will feel the
futuristic aim from the tag line – Touch Tomorrow

• Huge Advertise cost will become meagre when

comparing to increasing customers

• This campaign make all to think as a team

• Humane Approach make customers to forget the other

competing service providers.
 Conclusion
• AirTel Overcomes all its demerits and positioned the
AirTel as humane service providers as they Targeted.

• More customers started to subscribe AirTel.

• In telecom industry people live a brand 24X7 ,so AIRTEL

restructures the Theme, Logo, Architecture to broaden
its customer base by reaching more people and offering
good services.

• AirTel broadens its base and this campaign creates a

confidant among the subscribers that AIRTEL can do
every thing Better.
 Cont.,
• 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.“

• Though the cost of creating new brands was

high, the company was inclined to create
independent brands for its various services.