Despite being a late entrant in the Indian mobile network space, Tata Docomo has managed to come head-to-head with the big guns. Gurinder Singh Sandhu, Head Marketing – Tata Teleservices Limited, opens up about how the brand has managed to stay steady in the cluttered telecom space, thanks to relevant messaging and their simple plans
Q] Being a late entrant to the very competitive Indian cellular space, what were the challenges in establishing the brand?
Being the ninth operator in a cluttered market where everybody was making the same promise, it was critical for Tata Docomo to establish a clear and differentiated proposition. Extensive intelligence into the industry and research in the category unveiled the white space we were looking for — transparency, simplicity and relevant ‘lifecentric’ innovation. With this insight and our need to connect with the youth, we came up with one central thought: ‘Why do the done… do the new.’ Tata Docomo is a brand that inspires people to challenge conventional wisdom, question paradigms by doing the same in the telecom category.
We learnt that Indian consumers are price-conscious and also appreciate and adopt innovations that can make a difference to their lives. A great brand needs to focus on making that difference. We started off with offering a pay-per second plan, which essentially upheld the brand promise of ‘pay for what you use’ — the first was simply tariff, the second a much more important service innovation!
Q] What was the consumer insight that inspired your latest ‘Open Up’ campaign?
People tend to hold back or hesitate in saying what they really feel and this burden of unshared emotions can lead to regrets that last a lifetime. Building on this core human insight, the campaign instigates the viewer to open up, express their true selves and speak up rather than stay silent. It also highlights the brand’s commitment to enable and celebrate conversations with uncomplicated and value-for-money products that will enable people to speak up more often with simple, affordable tariffs such as 20p/min.
Q] How are you extending this campaign to other media touch points?
While Television is being used to bring alive the messaging ‘Open Up’, other media which operate closer to the purchase cycle of consumers are being used to present different product options under that messaging. Several innovations on Radio, Television and OOH have been carried out, and some more are being planned to continue inspiring people to express themselves. For the presentation of various products to potential customers, we are relying mainly on OOH. It is a critical medium not just because products and tariffs tend to be different in different markets but also because it intercepts people with attractive tariff/plan communication on their journey to the stores, where they recharge.
Q] The tariff structure of most telephony companies is confusing and complicated. How do you address this in your communication and also at your stores?
From offering intuitive, simple-to-understand plans like pay-per-second, Daily plans and Always Plus portfolio, to providing a simplified access to a host of telecom products — we have consistently removed several complications in the telecom users’ life. The effort at all our retail points is to create a unique 360-degree mobility experience for consumers. Each store has been designed to be an autonomous exploration zone to showcase Tata Docomo’s technically superior products and services in GSM, CDMA, 3G and Photon.
Q] What are the fundamental principles of your marketing strategy?
Tata Docomo offers products that are simple and easy to understand especially in the current environment where almost every operator is increasing tariffs. In our analysis of this competitive landscape in terms of the advertising narrative, product agenda and service promises, we observed the following:
1. An overwhelming focus on driving connections rather than conversations
2. Pressure testing the network’s strength rather than the romancing the magic of conversations
3. Pretensions for life relevance for really insignificant services
4. Self-consciously wearing the skin of youth while silently inflating their bills through the upward creep of tariffs
No brand wanted to be known as a conversation enabler. With this perspective, we interrogated the landscape of conversations — why people talk, why people listen, what are the pay-offs and to whom. And this is how we arrived at the insight that often, what is left unsaid is often more significant than what was said in any conversation.
The ‘open up and express’ territory is competitively fresh. No other telecom brand has ever owned this and it can support pretty much any telecom product since fundamentally, we are exhorting the speaker, the one who pays for the call to speak more often and for longer. It can even support conversations on broadcast platforms like social media, since we own the conversation purely from the sender’s perspective.
Q] What do you think the brand has done right in the digital space to garner a huge fan base? What is your future course of action?
Tata Docomo realised very early on that Digital is the medium of the future. We recognized the fact that as India’s becoming younger, the traditional media of engagement will take a backseat. Our strategy is based on five core objectives: building engagement, establishing one-on- one conversations, advocacy through positive word-of-mouth, constant accessibility to consumers and giving a credible platform to connect with the brand. Our efforts today have made us one of the most recalled brands on social media and within the telecom industry it boasts of being one of the largest online businesses.
Q] What’s your current and targeted market share? How big is your subscriber base?
Tata Docomo today stands at No. 4 in the telecom landscape, in terms of revenue market share. Our GSM business has outperformed the industry every year for the past three years. We have over 63 million active subscribers who are on our network. With the brand being a clear No. 2 among the youth and with a base of subscribers with a 50% skew to this segment, the demographics favour the future potential of the brand.
Q] Which service gets you most of your revenues? Looking ahead, do you see any changes?
It’s still Voice, however being a youth brand, we derive a significantly higher-than industry-average contribution to revenues from data and data services. With new devices, powered by better, faster software and an ever increasing portfolio of apps to augment the user experience, the need for mobile data is only going to increase, and hence we see no reason why data will come close to the voice revenue stream.
Q] Which markets have been contributing greatly to the growth of the brand? Looking ahead, which areas do see as potential growth drivers?
We believe that as the penetration of smartphones in smaller towns rises, there will be a stronger demand for data services from these pockets. Meanwhile, in the urban areas, mobile phones are already graduating from being a business tool to a lifestyle accessory. Therefore, in urban areas we see a lot of demand for value added services like M-Education, M-Banking, etc.
Q] How challenging is the Indian market right now for the brand?
In the Indian telecom landscape today, there are some challenges over which one has little or no control, like the debate on spectrum usage and prices regulatory/policy uncertainty. Also, it is no secret that the Indian youth drive the telecom market. But how do you create a product for them, in a country where languages change every 30 km, as do tastes and requirements? That’s one big challenge we have to counter today. There can be no homogeneity in your products — you need to constantly evolve and change.
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