BUSINESS COMMUNICATIONASSIGNMENT

“MARKETING CAMPAIGNS OF VODAFONE”

Submitted by:

Aneesh Ninan – 20/103

Saurabh Mathur – 20/130

Vipin Kumar – 20/141

Sajili Prashar – 20/79

CONTENTS

1. ABSTRACT

2. INTRODUCTION

3. MARKETING CAMPAIGNS OF VODAFONE

4. POSITIONING OF VODAFONE

5. MARKETING CAMPAIGNS OF COMPETITORS

6. BIBLIOGRAPHY

 

ABSTRACT

In the following report, marketing campaigns of Vodafone India are presented to analyse their marketing strategies and target customers. It was observed that with innovative and customer centric campaigns either on Television or otherwise, Vodafone tried to cover every segment of Indian society. Campaigns gained popularity and helped the company to gain market share. Then positioning of Vodafone vis-a-vis its competitors is presented with the help of a perceptual map. A brief about the recent marketing campaigns of Vodafone’s nearest competitors i.e. Airtel and Idea is also presented. Then a comparative analysis is done, which is depicted in tabular format.

INTRODUCTION

Vodafone Group plc is a British multinational mobile network operator headquartered in Newbury, England. It is world's largest mobile telecommunication network company, based on revenue. It currently has operations in over 35 countries. In 2007, it acquired Hutchison Essar to become Vodafone Essar in India. Presently it is the second largest mobile phone operator in terms of revenue and customer base after Bharti Airtel.

Vodafone gained popularity in Indian market soon after it acquired Hutch in 2007. They launched several marketing campaigns targeting different customers. Some of them are mentioned below in a timeline format.

MARKETING CAMPAIGNS OF VODAFONE

May 25 2009 - ZooZoo spots were created by O&M to communicate Vodafone’s value added services, which were titled “Most Valuable Puppets” at that time. Everywhere; wherever we used to go, people came up with their own ZooZoo story. This is an example of their success.

June 26 2009 - All the 27 Vodafone ZooZoo commercials were aired back to back in a single commercial break across 15 channels including, Colors, MAX, WB, MTV, VH1, B4U etc. This move tried to push the boundaries and created benchmarks of disruptive communication. Vodafone ZooZoo was a fantastic campaign and gave an exciting opportunity to push the envelope further and create a new standard of media impact.

July 14 2009 - The brand came up with a new 'Happy to Help' campaign. Created by O&M, the new campaign featured Vodafone's trademark character - the young girl and the pug.

This time, Vodafone started off wanting to refresh Vodafone's customer service promise. The task for this campaign was to breathe new life into the promise. It was backed up with tangible service substantiators - like the over 4000 Vodafone Stores and mini stores which brought the service around the corner, the self service kiosks which made it easy for a customer to help themselves anytime, anywhere; the 24-hour service and Vodafone mobile

vans which actually made the service accessible at your doorstep. The pug and Zoozoos existed to make the brand promise come alive.

August 12 2009 - Vodafone rolled out a new campaign for its latest value added service - 'Record a Busy Message'. The campaign was created by O&M. Vodafone was targeting customers who wanted to use this service instead of receiving a call immediately.

August 14 2009 - Vodafone's ZooZoos made a comeback for the first time after the IPL, this time to promote the telecom service provider's “Independence Day” special caller tunes. However, they were not seen on television, but on the Internet in the form of a viral.Vodafone believed that, this was a completely one-off viral for Vodafone's new VAS. They decided to go with the ZooZoos this time, since they were in great demand.

*** On September 1 2009, it was declared that, Vodafone would retain Maxus as its Media Agency in India.

October 2009 - Vodafone's ZooZoos were made available as merchandise, as Vodafone partnered with Shoppers Stop to retail the same. Vodafone hoped that Shoppers Stop and Vodafone’s esteemed customers will enjoy the opportunity to own authentic Zoozoo merchandise. This arrangement between the two majors of their respective fields marked a strategic alliance aimed at utilizing the Zoozoo frenzy.

*** In April 2010, Vodafone emerged as the most awarded brand at Goafest 2010.

July 27, 2010 - Vodafone announced the launch of its latest generation eco-friendly solar charging handset in India. This new hand set used a solar powered solution to benefit users in areas with adequate sunlight.

September 20, 2010 - Ogilvy & Mather conceptualised a new TVC for the launch of BlackBerry services for prepaid users on Vodafone. Prior to this, only postpaid customers for Vodafone could access the BlackBerry services. The TVC was in the form of a song called “The BlackBerry Boys” which started off with five top level management men shown singing the BlackBerry song.

March 4, 2011 - The new TVC by Ogilvy & Mather for Vodafone’s 3G services featured a superhero Zoozoo, or Super Zoozoo. Vodafone’s strategy was to depict that - "Faster. Smarter. Better. Vodafone 3G is here."

The challenge in front of them was that their competitors – Airtel, Reliance and Tata – had announced their 3G services at various points of time in the last 3-4 months. They tried to target every segment of customers who want to use internet on the go with faster speed.

September 27, 2011 - As the title sponsor and total communications partner for Vodafone McLaren Mercedes team, Vodafone announced something for small and medium enterprises. Vodafone gave one SME a chance to put its logo on the Vodafone Mclaren Mercedes race cars, during the motor racing event which was held in Delhi October’11.

Ogilvy, Vodafone's creative partner, created three TVCs for this campaign to invite entries for Vodafone ‘Drive into the Big League‘, a reality contest show which aired on ET NOW, to decide the winning SME.

November 3, 2011 - Vodafone India launched a new campaign to indulge their consumers in a volley of voice based services. The campaign created by Ogilvy worked on the thought that phone is not just meant for talking.

With this campaign Irfan Khan made a comeback in his bona fide avatar. For the Southern market, the campaign featured actor Prakash Raj.

January 2, 2012 - Two brands Indigo Airlines and Vodafone launched their adverts in a Broadway musical format. Indigo Airlines produced a Broadway musical-inspired ad to communicate the launch of its international services, while Vodafone created one to launch its new Facebook phone Vodafone Blue.

January 30, 2012 - Vodafone India launched “The Adventures of Super Zoozoo” – an online comic series which featured Super Zoozoo, which was made available exclusively on Vodafone Zoozoo’s Facebook page (facebook.com/Zoozoo). The comics were conceptualized and created by Vodafone India’s digital agency – Ogilvy One Worldwide.

February 21, 2012 - Vodafone released a new campaign that propagated the superior quality of the telecom service provider's network. The campaign was created for print, TV and outdoor marketing by Ogilvy & Mather.

A TVC was created to communicate the quality of the network. Before this Vodafone was focussing on strengths of the network. While this time, the brand went an extra mile to improve sound clarity, ensure no call dropping, and enable instant connection, to be precise. The pug was a symbol of everything that is good about Vodafone. The pug lented its charm to the messaging.

March 2, 2012 - Vodafone and Seagram's Imperial Blue signed up as official sponsors for the

ongoing Bridgestone World Series Hockey tournament. WSH had tremendous long term

potential and tried to create interesting and engaging outreach programs for their subscribers around this property.

April 9, 2012 - Vodafone launched a fresh campaign for IPL5 which took cue from the concept of “telematch” (popular in the 70s) to communicate how mobile internet navigation is a fun experience on Vodafone. Ogilvy & Mather, Mumbai, was the creative hand behind the campaign.

It was believed that the concept of telematch belonged to a simple era of the 70s and yet it incorporated interesting activities which synced well with their communication strategy. 

March 14, 2012 - After a year and a half, Ogilvy & Mather Mumbai brought back the 'BlackBerry Boys' to promote Vodafone's latest tariff plans for prepaid BlackBerry users.

Vodafone India was constantly on the lookout to provide innovative experiences to their valued customers. The objective of the campaign was to increase the appeal of BlackBerry services on Vodafone to a larger audience with special emphasis on the younger generation.

July 3, 2012 - Vodafone brought back its 'Delights' campaign launched in October 2011. The second phase of 'Vodafone Delights' created by Ogilvy & Mather featured three commercials. For six weeks, the campaign engaged through radio, print, outdoor, on-ground and digital media. The second leg of ‘Delights’ also dwelled on the friendship theme, much like its predecessor.

The lead offerings chosen for this round of the Vodafone Delights program are little ways of thanking the customers for being with Vodafone.

October 30, 2012 - Vodafone created a new campaign to lure the SEC B and C segment of customers towards an IVR (Interactive Voice Response) service called 121. The service allowed customers to avail the offers for products like STD, SMS, VAS and data. In the TVC, a voice-over says that Vodafone provides 'Made for You' offers to its customers that could be availed for, by dialling 121. 

Vodafone gave an offer best suited for every customer’s needs, since they understand that each person’s needs differ from one another.

 

POSITIONING OF VODAFONE

Mission Statement of Vodafone – “We will be the communications leader in an increasingly connected world”

Vodafone wants to help people enjoy richer, anywhere, anytime, always reliable, always easy, always great value mobile services.

Before Vodafone took over Hutch, the positioning strategy followed by Hutch was already a success in Indian Telecom Market. Differentiating its services from the competitors and presenting it in a form of an advertisement helped Hutch in positioning its brand in a world class manner.

Showing its class in the telecom industry was important and that reflected when the company signed the two class acts in their fields, Rahul Dravid and Irfan Khan as its brand ambassadors.

A position for the company was establishing as a company focusing on providing good services to the subscribers by giving them network anywhere.

Post hutch Positioning

In 2007, when Vodafone took over Hutch, the transition time for the company was less. Decisions regarding relaunching of brand, positioning, channelizing, etc were taken and implemented in four months.

Vodafone maintained the things as it is, before making any big change in the services, and to ensure that the company went for the similar ad campaigns with a pug in it trying to show that the pug has got a new home.

The name Vodafone was not new to many Indians as the name frequently appeared in the news. With its strong presence in the global market, the arrival of Vodafone in India was perceived as positive sign for Indian telecom industry as it was expected from the company to raise the standards of the services and bring more competition in the market.

If compared with others in price and quality aspects, Bharti Airtel, the country's largest operator by sales and customers, commanded 32.5% of the sector's revenues in the first quarter of 2010-11 financial year before sliding to 30.1% for the year-ended March 2011 and declining further to 29.1% in the subsequent year.

Coming to Vodafone it’s the second largest network provider with a share of 25.4% of the sectors revenues again with the next best quality provider after Airtel and well as with pricing.Followed by Reliance and Idea Cellular are on the race with maximum efforts to stay on the share.

Amongst all other networks Vodafone holds a good stand with its very much satisfactory services and quality which keeps the consumer attached to it and more strategies are yet to be implemented to serve the customers even better.

A Perceptual map for Vodafone and its nearest competitors of the basis of quality and price can be drawn as shown below.

*Based on the data from Annual report of Vodafone, 2011MARKETING CAMPAIGNS OF COMPETITORS

AIRTEL

Har Ek Friend Zaroori Hota Hai' TVC – With this campaign Airtel tried to target young customers.

Nearly 200 million Indians are between 15-25 years of age, and it is this segment of the population indeed, that is leading today’s India and will pave way for its future. 

Bharti Airtel took forward its eminently popular ‘Har friend zaroori hai, yaar’ campaign on to the digital space, with Youtube. Created by Taproot, the twenty videos on the Airtel channel were inspired by interesting ‘friend types’ or tags created by the online audience on Facebook during an outreach program initiated by Airtel earlier.

Post the launch of its new thought 'Har Friend Zaroori Hai, Yaar' through a long-format TVC in August 2011, Airtel released two new shorter-version commercials highlighting certain offers, with the now-familiar jingle firmly in place.

Airtel to “Touch Tomorrow” with a new brand vision

The Bharti Mobile promoted Air-Tel cellular service for repositioning of its brand image. The new brand ethos portrayed in two distinct fashions - the tag line "Touch Tomorrow", which underscored the leading theme for the new brand vision, followed by "The Good Life", which underscored a more caring, more customer centric organization. Aimed at re-engineering its image as just simply a cellular service provider to an all out information

communications services provider, Touch Tomorrow was meant to embrace the new generation of mobile communication  services  and  the  changing  scope of customer needs and aspirations that come along with it. The new communication is about a new dimension in the cellular category that goes beyond the Internet, SMS, roaming, IVRS, etc. but which engulfs wireless digital broadband services that will constitute tomorrows cellular services.

*** Airtel’s marketing campaigns were also varied and very innovative in their own ways. They tried to target every segment of customers in the country with various campaigns.

IDEA

In October 2012, Idea launched an advertising campaign for the festive season that looks to promote secularism. The film created by Lowe Lintas and Partners depicted a Muslim man standing outside a shop and looking at the price of a certain watch. He reads the price and is disappointed. Seeing this, the shop keeper shows him a card about the special festive offer for Diwali. Pleasantly surprised, the man rushes in, purchases the watch and sends a picture of it to his loved one with a 'Happy Diwali' message. The film ends with a voice over which says, "Dharam jo bhi ho, har tyauhar manaana acha idea hai." 

In December 2011, a TVC created by Lowe Lintas showed a highly influential goon attack a common man. All the witnesses to the incident do not have the guts to speak against the goon, other than one man who records the incident and shows it to Abhishek Bachchan. Bachchan then uses his Idea 3G smartphone to upload it on YouTube. Lakhs of people start viewing the video and sharing it among friends, which in turn starts protests against the goon which finally leads to justice for the victim.

*** Idea is gaining popularity among the minds of customers in India. Recent campaigns focused on social issues like secularism, happiness and equality.

Competitive Analysis

Airtel launched its services before Vodafone and Idea and skimmed the market picking up the bulk of the high usage premium clients.

Telecom is a very competitive industry with the companies differentiating either on value-added services or price. Airtel is perceived as the high quality provider and has a premium image. Vodafone, on the other hand, is perceived as the lower end brother of Airtel. Idea is still trying to catch up with these two.  Airtel positions itself as the market leader on the basis of the number of subscribers. Vodafone is trying to counter this by emphasizing on the reach of its network and the quality of its service. However, Vodafone is somewhat not been very successful largely due to the inconsistency in advertising. To promote themselves, these players have been dependent on tactical advertising. However, they have restrained from using comparative advertising. Hoardings have been a very popular medium for carrying the advertisements.

Market Segmentation

Segmentation is beneficial because of better predictability of the target consumer group, minimization  of risk exposure, better ability to fine tune  a  product /  service  to  the  requirement  of target  buyer  and  the resultant ease in designing a proper designing marketing mix strategy In this case segmentation is on the basis of income. In evaluating different market segments the company looks at two factors: the overall attractiveness of the segments and the company's objectives & resource.

Target Market Segment

Airtel has targeted the premium and upper middle class. The rationale behind it is that only those segments should be targeted who value time and have the paying capacity. It is also planning to target the business tourists during their stay in the capital. About 60% of the clients are top executives of corporate houses. About 15% are foreign organizations and the rest are professionals and small businessmen. During the introduction stage there was intense pressure to get consumers across to hook up with their brand, because getting them to switch brand loyalty later would be hard. So far Airtel marketers have been concentrating totally on the business executive class but now that the basic viable volumes has built up and prices have declined to a certain extent they are planning to venture further ahead.

On the other hand, Vodafone targeted middle class people with a need for new and innovative services, but as it built up its image, the quality has improves, the company is trying to move to premium segment with a base of already held customers.

Idea is still catching up with these two, by building a base of customers by targeting lower end customers, who want to use cheap and fairly good services.

Company Marketing Strategies

Target Customers

Rating in terms of Quality

Rating in terms of

price

Rating in terms of growth

Airtel Varied and Innovative

Premium Class

1 1 3

Vodafone Varied and Innovative

Premium and Middle class

2 2 1

Idea Innovative and Socially

Sensitive

Middle and Lower Class

3 3 2

*Source: TRAI (Based on the data collected up to 3rd Quarter of 2012)

BIBLIOGRAPHY1. www.campaignindia.in2. Annual Report, 2011 (Vodafone)3. News and Updates, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI)4. Several articles in “Economic Times’5. www.ogilvy.com (Ogilvy & Mather)6. www.wikipedia.org