Fresh energy for a major telecoms player

Airtel are the leading communications company in India with 200+ million mobile and home customers. Owned by Bharti, there was often confusion in the marketplace between the Airtel and Bharti brands. A proliferation of sub-brands added to the confusion and was limiting their opportunity to maximise profits.

Airtel is a highly ambitious company – but their ambition was getting the better of them. They were finding it difficult to focus on a small number of projects that would bring them the greatest success. They were also simply not getting some of the basics right – like clear tariffs, billing procedures and service levels at their various stores. This was all further undermined by the lack of a strong brand personality.

Airtel asked Philip and his team, first, to gain insights into all the issues that were holding Airtel back. The team conducted a detailed research programme into how they operated currently and how they compared with the competition, to help them understand where they needed to go. From this the team developed a new Brand Essence, based around thinking in fresh ways about how the business should operate and how they could deliver more for customers. They also developed four supporting desired brand attributes – expressions of how Airtel want to be seen by customers and other key stakeholders in the future.

These include a desire to be seen, very much, as up-to-date, ‘on the side’ of customers and having a can-do attitude to how they service them. On the basis of these, Philip worked with his design team to devise an extremely vibrant visual identity system with a ‘Bollywood’ feel! They applied this to a wide range of applications including literature, online presence and retail environments. The team also developed new approaches to customer service through a Leadership and Ambassador Programme. This gives Airtel employees and their agents essential guidance on how they can deliver a fresh energy to fulfilling customer needs.

The repositioning programme for the Airtel brand was truly comprehensive. It covered all key touchpoints across the organisation. The new identity system gave a new life and energy to all literature, advertising, customer communications, the website, retail environments, signage and uniforms. The Leadership and Ambassador programme involved important cascade systems to all staff – frontline and back office – ensuring the service component of the brand was right up to scratch.

This comprehensive programme gave Airtel a far more solid base on which to build the highly successful business that exists today.

Keeping right up-to-date, Airtel and taxi-hailing app Uber announced a first-of-its-kind strategic partnership in 2015 – enabling Uber passengers across India to pay for their trips using Airtel’s mobile wallet service – Airtel Money.

It was recognised as the ‘Firm of the Year – Telecom’ at the 2016 ICICI Lombard & CNBC-TV18 India Risk Management Awards. And it secured second position in Interbrand’s ‘Best Indian Brands Report 2016’.