Here is what made the Tatas integrate all mobile services and products under one common brand — Tata Docomo.
Last month, Tata Teleservices announced a significant branding initiative: cutting across CDMA and GSM platforms, the company decided to integrate its wide range of mobile services and products under one common brand — the three year old Tata Docomo. This means brand Tata Docomo moved into the CDMA space, and all Tata Indicom customers were migrated to Tata Docomo.
The rationale for the move was simple: For one, the merger marks the company’s evolution from being just an access provider to a multi-platform telecom applications and solutions organisation, with one single brand. So customers will have a single-point brand interface.
Brand experts say the move makes ample sense as Tata Docomo is a more powerful, popular and well promoted brand than any of the company’s other brands. Consumers see Tata Docomo as “path breaking” which brought in revolutionary billing systems and pricing of ‘one-paisa-per-second’.
The GSM business of the company had seen explosive growth in terms of subscribers and this was not seen in the CDMA business. The subscriber base of the company, which was around 35 million prior to the launch of its GSM service, is currently at 88.5 million. This follows the trend across the country, as the number of GSM users far outweighs that of CDMA.
A bigger brand can also ring a louder bell with consumers. “People want to belong to bigger networks. Unified brand building is a huge advantage,” says Harish Bijoor, an independent marketing consultant.
Bijoor feels that there has been a great degree of diversity in marketing and branding of the various services offered by the company. For example, Tata Teleservices' popular broadband offering is under the brand Tata Photon, which was promoted with a dongle. That however uses the CDMA platform. Later, when the company acquired 3G licences in 10 circles, it started advertising the 3G powered Internet connections as Tata DoCoMo, emphasising on higher speeds.
Such confusion was also cleared with the merger of brands, as the broadband offerings will now be called Photon Max. The company will just have different plans and price points for different speeds, hence differentiating 2.5G, offered by CDMA and 3G via GSM technology.
“Consumers does not buy into the technology, but buys into the benefits,” said Gurinder Sandhu, head of marketing at Tata Teleservices.
BETTER SAVINGS
It is not just the bigger name which is the reason for this brand merger. There is an economic advantage as the company could save heavily on marketing and branding cost. “Earlier, the company was spending quite a bit on marketing its GSM service, and then CDMA and also 3G. Now, it can save quite a bit in advertising a single service name,” said a company official.
As per VLR (visitor location register) data given by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), on an average, only 50.4 per cent subscribers (both GSM and CDMA) are active on TTSL’s networks. “This is due to high churn in the industry. But the marketing spend per subscriber ratios too would improve, and there will be huge cost savings on ad spends,” says a sector analyst.
The subscribers of either of the technology will get some advantages. For example, preferential calling which was earlier only with each of the technologies, can now be across them. Also, recharge points of GSM will now be available to CDMA subscribers as well.
“The customers of CDMA can now access the rich value-added services developed for Tata DoCoMo,” says Sandhu. Some of these value-added services include endless music, social media voice products, songbooks, Videshi radio which were developed for the GSM platform, powered by the Japanese joint venture partner of its GSM business, DoCoMo.
The retail footprints of each of these brand will also merge. Tata Indicom, ie, the former CDMA brand which has around 3,000 retail stores across the country have already been re-branded as Tata DoCoMo, and service all the customers.
The company claims that consumer retention, average revenue per use (ARPU) will also go up. “We can attract consumers from CDMA and vice-versa and also do cross selling,” says Sandhu.
After the branding exercise, the company wants to get more aggressive in advertising. Billboards featuring its brand ambassador and movie actor Ranbir Kapoor, scream ‘Is network se bachke kahan jaaoge’ (You cannot escape from this network), which is the new tagline of the brand. The Tatas will hope there are few chances of subscribers escaping, now that all its telecom customers have been brought under one net.
