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It's always been a Herculean task for companies to communicate with the fragmented Indian consumer market.  Branding has played an important role in enabling the companies reach out to the masses. In telecom, since service offerings are almost similar, each service provider is trying to look different from the other, and is investing hugely in marketing and branding. In an industry where customer churn is at its peak and quality of service is a major area of concern, does image building matters more than customer building?

Though  service providers have done enough to take the image of the companies to new heights, they have failed to take branding beyond advertising. They still  think of branding as advertising, when the latter is just one element of the former. Branding  is considered as an important  element of any company's overall strategy but hasn't touched every part of business. It has been restricted to letterheads, logos and display on huge hoardings. Instead, branding effort should also be reflected in how employees answer the phone and how supply chain runs. Branding is the integration of everything about the company to create consistency for customers, vendors, employees, suppliers and the operator itself. And since operators failed to integrate all these components together, they are struggling with right branding as well as customer acquistion strategy. It is estimated that all operators combined, spend around Rs 2,000 crore every year on branding  alone.

	"We believe in local branding. That's the reason Idea is more visible in hoardings and other stuff" -Vikram Mehmi CEO, Idea

Laid Back Incumbents
Branding is used by the services industry to establish a relationship with consumers by differentiating itself from competitors while building loyalty and comfort with the company's services or products. It has traditionally been the strength  of the telecom sector, particularly  for the incumbent players-BSNL and MTNL-which have been a very inspiring brand name material, but never spent heavily on brand slogans. It's now with competition all around, the incumbents have  loosened their purse-strings.

The brand war in the telecom domain actually started with the advent of private players in 1996. The incumbent's monopoly environment of course, had much to do with this. It is no coincidence that Bharti, which reinvented itself as Bharti Airtel was the first  major Indian service provider to have started  looking seriously at branding issues.  The incumbents soon found a number of drawbacks in their product strategies when dealing with cherry-picking, fleet-footed new entrants. But branding is one area where they had immense advantage due to the sheer scale and presence-particularly in their home market it gave them a head start when they launched their mobile services in the late 90's. But still, the state-owned players are way behind the private operators who are more focused on image building than customer building. BSNL and MTNL didn't spend much and relied more on their aggressive tariff plans and geographical reach, the issues that private operators are still grappling with.

Battle of Brands
Among the private operators, Bharti started its operations with strength that new arrivals hoped to emulate in the short-term. And it managed  to project these facets of its brand in international markets, which resulted in getting huge FDI.  It has also been rated as one of the most respected brands by foreign media. The cautious investment initially in branding paid-off well as it realized that huge investment in branding could be a kiss of death for a growing company  such as Bharti, which hardly had any capital at that time.  In its ten years of operations, Bharti has reinvented itself by constantly working on its brand. Bharti has a wide variety of services  that it  offers through  different subsidiaries and under different brand names. The company has now realized that a single brand will have  more appeal and would reduce confusion in the minds of customers.  The company is now working on a single brand 'Bharti Airtel' across all its telecom services. It's working on a 'Matchbox' strategy, which will take Bharti brand to the outlets where matchboxes are sold.

Hutch too has reworked on its identity. The brand slogan 'The future is bright, the future is Orange', that gave Hutch a new identity in Mumbai circle, has been replaced by Hutch's slogan 'Wherever you go, our network follows'  with pink color in the backdrop. The consolidation of the company's operations across the country resulted in Hutch coming out with its new identity, as it changed its logo.  The company stood out in the  advertising world with its 'boy and dog' campaign. While everyone used film stars as brand ambassadors, Hutch made pug its icon.

Idea has taken a completely different approach  on its branding activities. The company doesn't believe in roping in brand ambassadors for its campaigns.  It has instead spent  heavily in sponsoring events  such as the iifa Awards and film festivals. The company had also bid for the sponsorship of the Indian cricket team and was the second highest bidder after Sahara.  Idea had  also organized singer Sonu Nigam's shows in 22 cities across the country.  As the company does not  have  an all- India presence, it restricted itself to regional level branding. “In India, only two things sell-bollywood and cricket. We have sponsored film shows and had bid for sponsorship of the cricket team. We believe in local branding. That's the reason Idea is more visible in hoardings and other stuff,” says  Vikram Mehmi, CEO, Idea cellular.

The real battle in the branding space  took place soon after Reliance joined the bandwagon with its  'Monsoon Hungama' scheme. Its appeal turned around the fortunes of the company, which was struggling to survive amid stiff competition. Reliance's foray into the mobile world  started a brand war among the CDMA players. The GSM players  also became aggressive.

Reliance has now taken a different approach and is focusing more on the regional level. It is targeting the youth and has recently signed cricketer MS Dhoni as brand ambassador.  Superstar Amitabh Bachchan would endorse all products of Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG). In all, the strategy is to target different market segments with localized brand campaigns. The company has roped in  south Indian  and Punjabi film stars  for brand campaigns in their respective territories.