With focus on on-ground innovations and retail promotions, Rajiv Bawa, Executive Vice-President, Corporate Affairs, Uninor is driving the brand steadily to see through a rough phase
Q] Uninor has been cited in all the controversy around the 2G spectrum allocation scam. As a brand, how are you addressing this particular situation?
This is a rather unfortunate situation that the industry is going through. This is an industry-wide issue and it is not that any particular operator is being singled out. Depending on the issue and the situation around six to eight operators are being looked at.
As a brand, we are actually doing what we have been doing since the last eight to nine months, which is to be on the ground and focus on activities that matter most to customers, retailers and trade. So yes, there might be corporate-wide brand challenges, given the situation that the whole industry is going through. But our focus has not gone off at all. In fact now we are reassuring our channel partners that at least, we as an operator are here to stay.
Q] Given the situation, what challenges are you facing from the corporate branding point of view? How are you handling it?
We were never that predominant in terms of national and corporate branding right from the beginning. So yes, there are challenges but we’ve never been that aggressive, that we have to re-think our strategy. We’ve just maintained status quo. All of our advertising and marketing has been more close to where the consumers are and that is continuing as is.
Q] When you launched, you were probably the 12th player to enter the already crowded telecom market. What was your launch strategy?
When we were about to launch we were going to be the 12th, in some cases even the 14th brand in the telecom market. So clearly it was a very crowded space and we knew that. What we did do, is that we wanted to establish ourselves over time as a brand that really stands out, not just in terms of corporate brand but when people come and buy a new connection, they actually start to hopefully connect with the brand. Which was the thinking that we had. We decided at that time and even now to at least start by being a non-celebrity brand. So we’ve created our whole phenomena around being built around people, in many cases young people, who are eager to succeed in what they are doing. When we launched our tagline was ‘ab mera number hai’.
Q] What kind of initial hurdles did you face when you started off?
When we started, we felt that our product offerings were simple and easy to comprehend. Now in hindsight, I think they were not. And so while our launch focus was with the notion of connecting to the consumers, I think it ended up taking more on the emotional connect than on the functional aspect. And that is why our products, while they were less in number, were not as simple as we had originally planned them to be. So that was the initial error and learning that we got. But then when we added more circles and because of being closer to the consumer we realised the need to go more on the functional side.
Q] What were the key points that you kept in mind while executing your marketing plan?
Again given the fact that we were 12th or 14th operator, we had to really look at execution a lot more differently. We had the advantage of looking at the history and what other players had done, but we also had the disadvantage of coming in late. So we had to blend the two. So firstly we looked at our operations being as cost effective as possible, whether it was creating our backend system or whether it was looking at innovative ways of marketing, everything had to be cost effective because that would be one of the ways we could differentiate ourselves.
The second part was the retail front. We were seeing that tariffs were already very low and in order to be competitive we had to ensure that our cost levels were as low as possible. We had to be very conscious of our spending because that was the only way we could be a long term player in the market. In terms of media and marketing we constantly challenged ourselves for both ATL and BTL to ensure that everything we do really is really tied back to keeping our ears to the ground and doing stuff where it matters which is at the point of sale.
So that is why even during the MNP (Mobile Number Portability) launch we stayed away from major national television. We did not do much on the ICC World Cup or IPL either.
Q] Many telecom players use the platform of World Cup and IPL to increase their brand recall. Would that not have helped your brand?
In an ideal situation, it would have been great but going back to where I started, we wanted to do things differently. Just because others were doing it, we did not want to. And in any major event you see, there is brand clutter, and in this case there has been clutter not just from telecom brands but in so many other categories. We just did not feel the necessity to be there. But what we are doing now is more on-ground activities using the World Cup. For example when India won the World Cup we put out lot of hoardings in Mumbai congratulating the team because we are blue and so is the cricket team. Another example is in terms of festivals. We usually try to be present at major festivals of the region and do a lot of stuff that resonates with the consumer.
Q] Going back to your functional connect and your dynamic pricing, how did you try and simplify the communication for this scheme, because at the outset it was a very complicated scheme?
It was a very complicated scheme; in fact the more you get into what it is and how it works, the complexity increases. The product has now been in the market since June and month over month it is getting better.
When we started, we were focusing more on how it works and what it does but then we shifted towards the simplified benefit that the consumer is getting out of it. And whatever the product and the fanciness of technology innovation we find, it was really about giving more talk time to the consumers. We did a little bit of communication for that through some ad campaigns but a lot more on the retailer side.
Q] How has it worked for you so far? How much is your subscriber base and your market share right now?
Our last reported subscriber base was 21.5 million. We launched in December 2009 when we had eight circles, and in June 2010 we added five more commercially launched circles. So in our 13 circles, where we are actually going hard with sales and distribution, we’ve reached 21.5 million which means around 2 million subscribers per month on an average – which is good. So we are extremely happy with the way the uptake has been and it gives us a little bit of comfort that people are at least trying us, and then we all know that this market in general is a high-churn market and that churn continues for all operators.
