Storm the Norm

by Anisha Motwani

  As Vinay Razdan, the company’s chief human resource officer, says:

  There are varied leadership styles in our army of leaders. Some swear by strategy, some by their people, some by customer centricity and others by execution—but all of them are clear that they have growth at the centre of their agenda. These high growth gladiators have led the company with élan and vigour, despite a challenging economic environment.

  The network Idea

  For a telecom company, network is the equivalent of the factory in the manufacturing industry. Almost 95 per cent of the capital expenditure goes in developing the network. From 550 sites in 2006, Idea has grown to a staggering 133,000+ 2G and 3G sites today, the fastest-growing telecom infrastructure in the industry.

  Idea became a pan-India network in 2G services only as late as in 2010, against national players who had registered their pan-India presence by 2002–4. Idea is the only telecom brand to build, operate and maintain its own network—a testimony to its comfort with technology. In an environment where leading brands outsourced technical services, Idea built its telecom infrastructure in-house and still maintained the lowest churn rate in terms of employee turnover owing to constant training and retraining programmes for its people.

  A measure of Idea’s equal attention to both customer service and network quality can be gauged from the fact that all the system upgrades at Idea are done only between 12.30 and 3.30 a.m. so as not to inconvenience customers. It is truly proud of its executional details as that has been the key to its success.

  To quote Anil Tandon, Idea Cellular’s chief technology officer, ‘Telecom is an unforgiving sector. The room for error is small.’

  The distribution Idea

  Once a ‘minutes factory’ is set up at a location, where minutes are destroyed the moment they are manufactured if not consumed immediately, a sales force has to follow it to convert the minutes into consumer traffic. Idea recognized how crucial it was to get its sales model right and got cracking immediately. While leading the charge into rural India, it created probably India’s first deep rural direct distribution model.

  Till 2008–9, even the largest of fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies in India serviced rural retailers and ‘rural-stockists’ through a larger distributor based out of the nearby big town. This was supplemented in some cases with ‘van activities’ or participation through stalls and kiosks in weekly or monthly melas and haats. Idea rejected all these models as secondary and made ‘direct rural distribution’ its primary model. It appointed distributors directly in small towns and villages as close together as 10–15 km and as far as 100–120 km away from the larger towns in a district. These distributors had direct access to Idea just like their urban counterparts and got their stock replenished by Idea as and when they needed without having to wait for a monthly or weekly trip by the ‘superstockist’ from town. This model not only established distributors who took brand Idea and its flagship ₹10 paper voucher deep into surrounding villages but also built a corpus of loyal and rooted business partners who values Idea for reaching out directly to them.

  The company followed up this by recruiting its last mile field sales force, which managed these rural distributors from the local area, under its pioneer ‘son of the soil’ scheme. Idea’s territory sales executives came from within 20 km of its base location under this scheme so that local youth did not have to travel far from their homes to find gainful employment. This also supplied Idea with stable and dedicated employees who could work and stay near their homes while spreading business deep into the hinterland.

  Idea’s distributors in 2014 numbered over 30,000 across the length and breadth of the country, serving over 1.4 million outlets, reaching to within a stone’s throw of its remotest customers. This distribution network is till date one of the widest across any brand in any sector.

  The service Idea

  When Idea embarked on a new journey in 2007, it had two crucial gaps to fill—world-class IT systems and customer-centric service. As the two were inter-linked, both had to happen or improve. Hence, the company had to transform and build scale capable of handling transactions manifold its volumes in 2007. Thus came into being ‘One Idea. One service’. Idea was the first company in the world to launch the largest-ever integrated prepaid customer relationship management (CRM) and IT platform in 2007–8, providing unified information and ability to manage customer relationships. An Idea customer could therefore call any of its 15,000 strong contact centre team spread across India or walk into 6,000+ Idea service centres to learn, complain or upgrade their services.

  At Idea call centres, customers have a choice of being responded to in seventeen different languages. To do this, it recruits people from towns and villages where people speak the same dialect, not just a major language. Idea has 25,000 people involved in 1.6 million interactions every single day, with a massive success rate.

  In the last seven years, Idea has grown from 350 (own plus franchisee) outlets to a phenomenal 6,000 service centres across 4,400 towns. The larger Idea’s network grows, the more intimate is its relationship with its customers, as the company has adopted the neighbourhood kirana store model—get as close to the customer as possible. For instance, as people in villages are apprehensive of taking support from ‘telephonic’ call centres, the company has stationed fully trained Idea representatives at the local service centres to assist and support customer needs in voice and emerging data business. These customer care officers, therefore, develop a close, personal understanding of the problems involved at the micro level.

  This model is also being used in rolling out the latest mobile Internet services. With the complexity of different devices and multiplicity of operating systems and Apps, Idea is educating customers at contact centres handling over 5 million calls per day. All this has enabled Idea to steadily improve customer satisfaction, placing it at No. 1 position for the last five quarters in a customer satisfaction survey conducted by IMRB. Idea continues to innovate its services, like the recent launch of its super-specialist segmented Service Plus programme for premium customers that ensures one-touch access to services depending on the loyalty segment category of the customer.

  Navanit Narayan, chief delivery officer of the company, believes, ‘Set scary unrealistic goals to get employees to innovate and come up with breakthrough ideas. Mismatch between aspiration and resources is a necessary condition for any breakthrough thinking—and the key to a contrarian approach.’

  Story-telling, by speaking a different language

  The story of Idea is incomplete without its game-changing advertising. To reflect Idea’s inspiring brand attributes, it was essential for the brand to develop communication that projected this larger-than-life yet down-to-earth persona of the brand, flagging social and cultural issues that had to be resolved, rather than communicating mundane, feature-led, tactical benefits.

  Idea’s communication was never inward looking. It was not about the products that needed to be sold. It was about how the use of Idea mobile services could impact the customer’s life positively. Therefore, the brand followed them to address the issues close to their lives.

  Idea believed that conventional branding is characterized by dog-eat-dog fights to outdo competitors on a conventional set of benefits—either rational or emotional, both of which are traps. Both the functional and emotional approaches imply that branding is about embedding associations between brand and valued benefits in consumers’ minds. And as a property of mind, the brand and valued benefits are both assumed to be durable and context-less, often resulting in degrees of comparison between brands. In a parity world where there is hardly any difference between one brand and the other, they fall short of creating deeper meanings with people.

  Idea wanted the brand to be based not just on a big idea, but on a big ideal. Vital as ideas are, Idea wanted to be built on the underpinning of an ideal that gives guidance to all aspects of the brand. It wanted the brand to project a certain point of view,
its deeply held conviction on how the world, or some particular part of it, should be. In short, its point of view is the brand’s declaration of what it believes in and why it behaves as it does.

  ‘An idea can change your life’ isn’t just an idea but Idea’s ideal (point of view) of creating telephony solutions to life issues.

  Brand Idea’s point of view was expressed as ‘An Idea can change your life’, while the brand promise was ‘a simple telephony idea can solve a big problem’. Idea combined the above thoughts with its belief that a brand needed to have a cultural context, and developed a refreshing brand communication that teemed with innovative cultural expressions.

  Idea wanted to be society’s ultimate problem solver. Not with a missionary zeal but in an entertaining way. Each time the team asked ‘what is the real big problem our brand can solve’ and then found an innovative telephony idea to solve it.

  As Sunita Bangard, president, marketing, puts it,

  Our belief is that brands are a product of society, culture and politics. Therefore we adopted a cultural brand strategy to deliver a unique and innovative cultural expression that permeates society and provide people the building blocks with which to construct meaningful stories of their lives. We looked at Idea as a prime commercial vehicle for marketing cultural expressions, riding on opportunities for innovations created by cultural/historical changes in society.

  Tackling social issues with an Idea

  Through the years, the brand captured the culturally relevant issues of the country—caste wars, education, democracy, health, environment, language barriers and population control—in various memorable stories and demonstrated how a simple telephony idea can positively impact/change the lives of people in any of these contexts. This approach, in the course of five plus years since it started, has given Idea cultural authority and not just brand authority.

  In fact, the expression ‘What an Idea Sirji’ has now become part of popular culture, used liberally by the man on the street whenever someone has to be applauded for their out-of-the-box suggestions.

  The first story was a television commercial (TVC) on caste wars, with the conflict resolution coming in the form of Idea phone numbers that would henceforth be the new identity of the masses. This was followed in quick succession by TVCs on democracy, where people are consulted by political leaders on important issues through the mobile phone; health, where people are urged to walk while they talk into their mobiles to aid health and fitness; education, where children in remote schools with a shortage of teachers are taught through mobile phones; environment, where a paperless society that uses mobile phones is promoted to counter the felling of trees; population, where engaging 3G content keeps young couples from indulging in procreation as recreation; language, where young Indians overcome language barriers with the help of mobile phones; relationships, where a couple save their marriage as a mobile phone helps them appreciate each other’s issues; and the latest series on the Internet, which tells people to ‘Ullu mat bano’ by staying more informed with the help of mobile Internet. In each one of these stories, Idea was seen as the ultimate problem solver, not with a missionary zeal but in an entertaining way.

  Idea also tackled the issue of a wider network reach in every corner of the country through the wildly popular ‘Honey Bunny’ executions that not only made the ring tone a favourite with millions but also conclusively established that Idea is now a major national player with a footprint to match its largest competitors.

  Most of these ideas have later come to the fore in real life, emphasizing Idea’s marketing practice of foresight over insight in everything it does.

  Mobile Internet access, the new game

  In business, as in sport, leadership, these is no permanent victory. Voice mobility has reached 886 million Indians. But the next big idea is the mobile data game. In 2013, 210 million Indians had access to the Internet, while 188 million accessed the Internet on their mobile phones, and more than 600 million are waiting to be connected in the next four–five years. This is equally true of both Bharat and India. Clearly, Internet on mobile plays a central role in the transition to a digital lifestyle. And Idea is keen on transitioning to a balanced voice and data player in the near future.

  Communicating better with a distinctive voice

  The cultural coding of Idea’s communication doesn’t just connect with a wide cross-section of audiences for its relevance and creativity but has also given the brand a distinctly unique image and voice amongst the competition.

  In today’s context, even a high-technology product doesn’t create the difference. The difference lies in the story, because the story is what drives the bond between the brand and the consumer. If anything, Idea’s journey over the last decade has proved convincingly that a storied brand doesn’t just connect better, and in a more relevant manner, with its varied audiences because of its engaging stories, but also has the ammunition to pull off a brilliant marketing success story.

  It’s no mean feat to stand at US$409 billion in just twelve years of existence and rival some of the big brands in history that have taken a good seventy-five years or more to reach that mark. While that is just the numerical data, all tracks of human data show that brand Idea to consumers is less like a service and more like a beloved friend and this affection is rooted in emotion, identity and personal philosophy.

  Says Himanshu Kapania, ‘During our seven-year journey, we have imbibed a number of powerful attributes. We have learned to think big, act fast but with honesty, integrity and transparency. We have imbibed a culture of meritocracy, nurtured an army of leaders and scaled up operations with legendary discipline.’

  Our Idea of the future

  Lastly, creativity in business is this amazing intersection between a company’s imagination and the reality in which they exist. The problem is, many companies don’t have great imagination, but their view of reality tells them that it’s impossible to do what they imagine. For Idea, it’s that consistent combination of creativity with effectiveness that continuously endows resources to create new and more wealth.

  The fact that technology has been changing all of our lives at a breathtaking pace makes this a great time to be creative. Fortunately, the speed of change hasn’t tempered humanity’s fascination with an impulse towards creativity—it has actually fuelled it. So it’s critical to have a spirit to solve as well as a spirit to create.

  Idea’s learnings in this epochal journey are immense. If one had to capture some, they would be:

  Customer centricity: Base brand strategy with the customer at its heart.

  Clarity of purpose: Define purpose, have conviction in it, and follow it consistently.

  Innovation: It is not necessarily a product or a service, it can be a promise, process or proposition.

  Differentiation: Create and convey a distinct proposition in both purpose and communication.

  Relevance: Follow the consumer and continue to be relevant.

  Ahead of the curve: Keep a finger on the pulse of the market and change before you are forced to.

  Hopefully, this story of Idea opens a door. Maybe it has planted a seed that will enable your company/brand to start telling its own story. Opportunities abound and the door lies wide open.

  Himanshu Kapania, the MD, sums up the company’s future policy, ‘Our future goal is not to be complacent about our growth leadership position. We will continue to be a contrarian brand, constantly challenging ourselves and annoying the competition, and ensure that we always lead, both on thoughts and practice in real and digital worlds.’

  ECOSPORT

  The making of a success story

  A market is never saturated with a good product.

  —Henry Ford

  Apopular automotive blog in India captured the frenzy around the Ford EcoSport launch in 2012 in these words, ‘A local Ford showroom was holding a dealer launch, with snacks to welcome customers. I guess they would need a lot of samosas today because the number of people w
alking in a Ford dealership easily outnumbers the amount of walk-ins in a Hero showroom [two-wheeler showrooms have significantly higher footfall]. If you haven’t met your friends lately, you are bound to clash into them at a Ford showroom near you, I know, I met a few childhood buddies who came to check out the EcoSport.’

  Taken together, this real life situation and Henry Ford’s quote are reason enough for the story of the great marketing success of Ford EcoSport to be recounted here.

  The first-generation Ford EcoSport as a mini sport utility vehicle (SUV) was being built in Brazil by Ford Brazil since 2003 and it was the time for the second generation to be brought to India. Ford EcoSport was a perfect example of how Ford’s global One Ford strategy works.

  The Ford philosophy

  The One Ford philosophy was initiated in September 2006, when Alan Mulally was appointed chief executive officer (CEO) of Ford Motor Company. The major component of the strategy was belonging to one team and having a single plan for a global enterprise.

  Traditionally, while Ford’s regional operations functioned as autonomous business units, the One Ford philosophy encapsulated the concept of a unified entity that knit together disparate operating units.

  To describe One Ford in Alan Mulally’s words,

  At the heart of our culture is the One Ford plan, which is essentially our vision for the organization and its mission. And at the heart of the One Ford plan is the phrase “One Team.” Those are more than just words. We really expect our colleagues to model certain behaviors. People here really are committed to the enterprise and to each other. They are working for more than themselves. We are a global company, so we really have to stay focused on the work. There are so many people around the world involved in our daily operations that it has to be about more than a single person—it truly has to be about the business. Some prefer to work in a different way. Ultimately, they will either adopt the Ford culture, or they will leave.