Pradeep Srivastava, Chief Marketing Officer, Idea Cellular is gung-ho. And why not? After all, 2007 came as a watershed year for the telecom brand, with a near tripling in its subscriber base, taking the count up to 20 million subscribers
The year 2007 has been particularly eventful for Idea Cellular. Comment?
Yes! Ever since the group came solely under
Aditya Birla, we have been amongst the fastest growing telecom companies in India. Then came the historic Idea Cellular IPO, followed by our fast network expansion across the country. These were the key building blocks on which the Idea brand grew over the past year. At the beginning of March 2007, we had 7 million subscribers and till the end of November, our subscriber base has zoomed to 20 million. Our growth has been far better than our competitors in the Idea footprint circles.
What would you attribute this growth to?
The reasons for growth are far beyond conventional advertising – it can be attributed to significant roll-outs in new towns – wider audience; affordable tariff and most importantly, innovation in the category. We have managed to do successful segmentation in the category via our various campaigns, including My Gang campaign and Women card.
Your ad (Abhishek Bachchan as sarpanch) has scored big time.
Idea Cellular is all about celebrating ideas and this was our big idea of a society with no differences. The plan is not to sit tight with the present idea of caste, but to extend it to even religion and gender in times to come. This is just the first campaign and the rural setting has been used to target the rural audience. We are following it up with a host of below-the-line activities to connect with the consumer at the ground level across villages. What was the thought behind the communication?
The intent was to establish an emotional connect with a much larger audience, across age, class and gender. Plus, telecom as a sector has become highly commoditised in India, where most players have chosen to harp on their better network. The reality is that everyone mostly has the same network – so that’s a relatively comparable product attribute. Ditto for tariff or other value-added services. This ad was basically devised to break the clutter in telecom advertising. What’s 2008 looking like?
We are going through an exciting phase. Today, every competition we have is worthy. The next year will present us with greater opportunity in terms of more market segmentation and expansion in semi-urban and rural areas.
For Complete IIPM Article, Click on IIPM Article
Source : IIPM Editorial, 2008
The year 2007 has been particularly eventful for Idea Cellular. Comment?
Yes! Ever since the group came solely under
Aditya Birla, we have been amongst the fastest growing telecom companies in India. Then came the historic Idea Cellular IPO, followed by our fast network expansion across the country. These were the key building blocks on which the Idea brand grew over the past year. At the beginning of March 2007, we had 7 million subscribers and till the end of November, our subscriber base has zoomed to 20 million. Our growth has been far better than our competitors in the Idea footprint circles.What would you attribute this growth to?
The reasons for growth are far beyond conventional advertising – it can be attributed to significant roll-outs in new towns – wider audience; affordable tariff and most importantly, innovation in the category. We have managed to do successful segmentation in the category via our various campaigns, including My Gang campaign and Women card.
Your ad (Abhishek Bachchan as sarpanch) has scored big time.
Idea Cellular is all about celebrating ideas and this was our big idea of a society with no differences. The plan is not to sit tight with the present idea of caste, but to extend it to even religion and gender in times to come. This is just the first campaign and the rural setting has been used to target the rural audience. We are following it up with a host of below-the-line activities to connect with the consumer at the ground level across villages. What was the thought behind the communication?
The intent was to establish an emotional connect with a much larger audience, across age, class and gender. Plus, telecom as a sector has become highly commoditised in India, where most players have chosen to harp on their better network. The reality is that everyone mostly has the same network – so that’s a relatively comparable product attribute. Ditto for tariff or other value-added services. This ad was basically devised to break the clutter in telecom advertising. What’s 2008 looking like?
We are going through an exciting phase. Today, every competition we have is worthy. The next year will present us with greater opportunity in terms of more market segmentation and expansion in semi-urban and rural areas.
For Complete IIPM Article, Click on IIPM Article
Source : IIPM Editorial, 2008
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist)
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