Hutch makes way for Vodafone in India; runs roadblock on Star Network

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Following Vodafone's acquisition of Hutchison Essar in May this year, the renamed entity Vodafone Essar will finally be visible as the company will unveil its brand identity in India on 21 September.

With this, the bright pink Hutch logo, will be transitioned to Vodafone across the country. The brand change over the next few weeks will be unveiled nationally through a high profile campaign spanning all media including outdoor, print and an aggressive push on television.


Vodafone Essar managing director Asim Ghosh said, "We've had a great innings as Hutch in India and today marks a new beginning for us. Not as a departure from the fundamentals that created Hutch, but an acceleration into the future with Vodafone's global expertise."

The company has tied up with Star India to run a complete roadblock of its fresh campaign on the entire network by unveiling the 24-hour nationwide rebranding campaign.

Vodafone will use all of the commercial airtime across all 13 channels in five languages (Hindi, Tamil, Bengali, Marathi and English) from 9 pm on 20 September to 9 pm on September 21. This exercise will include TV commercials, transition bumpers and contest spots to promote the Vodafone Essar brand. Commercial spots have also been purchased on Sony.

Vodafone Essar marketing and new business director Harit Nagpal says the telecom player has inked deals with all television broadcasters for the launch campaign.

The Zee Network was also in talks with Vodafone but declined to accept the roadblock. Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd president and revenue head Joy Chakraborthy opines, "This strategy of a roadblock goes against our principles as it is not fair to our other clients. We don't like to be seen as opportunists."

Yet media specialists advocate the roadblock approach for Vodafone's launch campaign. Maxus MD Ajit Varghese says, "Conventionally awareness for a new brand takes some time to build. However, Vodafone wanted to achieve this task at the shortest possible time. Maxus and Star Network worked closely to address this challenge and came up with the idea wherein during the day of the launch a complete roadblock on the Star Network channels was conceptualized.

"Considering that the Star Network is the lead network in India, this was the most apt platform for Vodafone launch. This strategy helps not only in achieving build rapid brand awareness but also breaks the clutter during such an important launch in the most happening category - telecom. This is a first of its kind mega media initiative in India by any brand."


Nagpal added, "This transition is probably the largest brand change ever undertaken in this country and arguably as big as any in the world. It is even larger than our own previous brand transitions as it touches over 35 million customers, across 400,000 shops and thousands of our own and our business associates' employees."

While the campaign is heavy on television, it will also include all other media vehicles. The print campaign kicks off on 21 September, a day after the television splash.

Market reports have put the marketing spends for the monster campaign to be in the region of Rs 3 billion. Nagpal, however, dismisses these numbers as highly exaggerated."The marketing spends for our launch campaign is only a mere fraction of that number," he points out.

The Vodafone mission is to be the communications leader in an increasingly connected world - enriching customers' lives, helping individuals, businesses and communities be more connected by delivering their total communication needs.

Vodafone's logo is a representation of that belief - The start of a new conversation, a trigger, a catalyst, a mark of true pioneering.

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