When the Pug leads

The transition of Hutch into Vodafone was smooth and straightforward.

For four years, the Pug, a small-bodied dog with a wrinkly face, followed a little boy in cellular service provider, Hutch's commercials. The message: wherever you go, our network follows.

In 2007, when global telecom giant Vodafone acquired a controlling stake in the Indian operations of Hutchison Telecom, the Pug turned leader and ushered the Vodafone brand into India. The advertising message: a simple, most obvious, "Hutch is now Vodafone".

But the seemingly easy communication was difficult to execute. "A large transformation of this scale had not been witnessed before this anywhere in the world," says Harit Nagpal, marketing and new business director, Vodafone Essar.

Adding to the challenge was the fact that Hutch was growing extremely fast. The company currently has over 35 million subscribers, but it's adding approximately 1.7 million subscribers every month to its network.

Even coverage is expanding with the addition of 1,800-1,900 cellular sites in unrepresented areas, to its existing 35,000-odd cell sites across the country.

More delays would mean additional costs in rebranding. That was one reason why Vodafone avoided the phased-transition strategy that it had undertaken in other markets.

For instance, in Egypt, Turkey and the Czech Republic, Vodafone undertook a phased transition when it took over brands like Click GSM, Telsim and Oskar respectively in those markets.In these markets,Vodafone first adopted co-branding, like, say, Oskar-Vodafone, before becoming a standalone brand.

"In many countries we had a phased transition. But in India this would not only result in a delay, but also in spending double the amount," says Nagpal.

Nearly 60 per cent of the changeover cost was spent in changing signages, claims Nagpal. "The question was do you want to do it twice?"

True, Hutch, now Vodafone, has undergone a name change before "" at least on three occasions in the Mumbai market (Max Touch, Orange and then Hutch).

But the new challenge was a rapidly expanding base. When the company had changed from Orange to Hutch brand in Mumbai, a couple of years ago, the company had just one-third of the customer base and under half the number of shops in the island city.

However, Hutch had to make sure that customers were not uncomfortable with the change process. "Change causes discomfort," says Nagpal and adds, "we wanted to ensure that life does not change so much and had to retain symbolic gestures that customers liked."

Customer feedback indicated that most customers liked the Pug. "The rebranding had to be about continuity and not about departure from the past," says Nagpal.

The brief to ad agency, Ogilvy & Mather (O&M) was to introduce a new brand, while carrying forward the equity of the old. "While the Pug was used in the context of our network story, it was also the face of the brand.

So we used the Pug to communicate that our strong fundamentals will continue and get even better," says Hephzibah Pathak, executive brand director, account management, O&M. When the launch happened in September, it "was an agglomeration of excruciating back-end work for months," says Pratap Bose, CEO, O&M, India.

In a subscription-led business like cellular phone services, customers interact frequently with the service provider for monthly billings, change in billing plans, subscribing or deactivating value-added services and so on. The brand transition had to cover each of those aspects.

Take the interactive voice recording (IVR) system as an instance. The company had to re-record 700-800 lines of conversation with consumers across several languages. That itself was a four week task.

"The transition gave us an opportunity to change for the better. We could use customer feedback to change or tweak areas like the IVR system for the better," says Nagpal.

The rebranding also had to ensure "quick saliency building," and the question was on what medium could be used for that. "We had to get uncluttered visibility in the first week," says Nagpal.

While the company could increase the presence in the outdoor medium "" it has actually hired anywhere between two to four times the number of outdoor spots than it normally would "" and hired front page solus (FPS) advertisements in newspapers. But the challenge was to find a FPS equivalent in the television medium.

So Hutch hired the entire range of 13 channels from the STAR India bouquet where each channel would air only "Hutch is now Vodafone" ads for the entire 24 hour time frame from the night of September 20 till prime time on September 21. "Star had a wide bouquet covering multiple segments. So it made sense to do something like that," says Nagpal.

"The launch made Vodafone an aspirational brand that's also inclusive, which is not an easy act," says a Derby respondent.

For all its efforts, the future of the Pug is uncertain. "Whether it will stay on for perpetuity is a call that will be taken soon," says an O&M executive. For now, the Pug certainly helped Vodafone paint India red.