Hutch’s ‘Boy with the Pug’ campaign is a benchmark that will never be reset.

Beneath his congenial smile lies a no-nonsense, ‘I know my stuff’ person. And Naveen Chopra, chief marketing officer, Hutchison Essar, has proved amply that he does indeed know his stuff. Chopra spent over 16 years at Britannia Industries before he joined Hutchison Essar as chief operating officer of its Andhra Circle. And today, he’s quite proud of the fact that as a brand, Hutch has maintained its sense of being different despite the clutter.

In December 2005, Hutch recorded a 15.02 per cent market share, becoming the fourth largest mobile operator in the country, with a subscriber base of 1,1,41,000. In a candid conversation with Devina Joshi of agencyfaqs!, Chopra talks about Hutch’s new integrated avatar, its differentiated communication strategy and the way forward for the mobile industry.

Edited Excerpts

Personally, I feel that the two industries couldn’t be further apart. Telecom is a different world altogether. It has a separate set of marketing rules and operates on a bigger scale globally, as opposed to bakery. Telecom works at a frenzied pace. It definitely scores higher than bakery on technology and innovation. This is not to say that the bakery industry doesn’t keep up with technology. Britannia was pretty much at the forefront when it came to technology in its own sector. It’s just that the pace differs.

For the telecom industry, technology is a key driver. You need to keep yourself constantly updated with global trends and think futuristically because you can’t afford to be left behind. You need to have the foresight to understand what kinds of technology can most excite the consumer.

Another important point is that telecom is not a physical medium; one doesn’t deal with manufactured produce, but an intangible service here. That, I feel, is one of the biggest differences.

In fact, the two industries are so vastly dissimilar that comparing them is quite difficult.

As a brand, it was Orange in Mumbai and Hutch everywhere else in India. The sheer synergy that arises out of one integrated brand, as opposed to two separate brands, is huge. So that’s one big, obvious advantage.

We’ve had a fantastic working relationship with Orange… that brand was owned by Hutchison until a few years ago. Obviously, the people who do own the Orange brand worldwide had their concerns about their brand being available with some other telecom operator and they were keen to have it back.

Also, I think the timing for this transition couldn’t have been more perfect. Hutch itself, as a brand name, is about three years old, although it looks like it has been around forever! (Laughs) Initially, we were a bit apprehensive about abandoning the Orange brand name in Mumbai as it enjoyed a fantastic run there. But at the same time, we realised that Hutch, too, needed its own stature. So, all the pieces kind of fell into place at the same time.

Coming to the second part of your question, we think we have made a great transition from the Mumbai perspective. Subscribers adapted to the colour pink fairly quickly. Of course, it was a huge logistical exercise, considering the number of elements we had to change, with reference to the logo change in shops, signages, our website and a million other things. But I personally think it was all done rather seamlessly and we didn’t run into any kind of consumer dissatisfaction. In some ways, they always knew the connection of Orange in Mumbai and Hutch elsewhere, so it was almost a transition they were expecting.

Earlier, we never had an Orange specific television campaign. With this development, we were able to launch a national, integrated campaign for Hutch, which has led to increase in the equity of our brand.

First of all, I don’t think any of us at Hutch have ever come to work to win awards. At the end of the day, the job of advertising is to relate to our TG – existing and potential subscribers – and give it relevant information on our services, packages and tariff plans.

Having said that, the fact that Hutch has won so many awards in the past feels nice, no doubt. But it’s not like we didn’t win anything this year… the Hutch Delhi Marathon ad did fetch us some metals.

This leads me to another point – the evolution of Hutch as a brand. For instance, our ‘Mobile Manners’ campaign, which I think deserves an award, just doesn’t fit into any one category! It could be in the public service category, or even the corporate one, for all you know… but slotting it into any of these would not fit the bill, as it is ‘this and that’, not ‘this or that’.

The thing is, awards shows have a set of predefined categories… and when we roll out communication that goes beyond these categories, there’s little we can do about it.

But if one takes a look at the brand track scores that we evaluate every month, they have rated us high on image parameters, particularly pride of ownership, especially after the ‘Mobile Manners’ ad rolled out.

The ‘Boy with the Pug’ campaign is a benchmark that will never be reset. When we track our advertising for Hutch, we realise that even if we haven’t run that ad for a long time, it still instigates recall. It’s something that is difficult to replicate. We would love to meet that standard once again, but it is far more important for our business needs to be met by advertising.

Airtel is a formidable competitor, and I’m sure from their perspective, they are doing what they think is right. Beyond that, I wouldn’t want to comment on their strategy. Hutch has its own way of talking to its consumers.

I disagree that we are a purely up-market brand. We rolled out the ‘Chota Recharge’ campaign featuring Irfan Khan, which didn’t use English at all, and was purely other languages driven. This campaign’s appeal extended from the up-market Peddar Road to the low-end Dharavi (both located in Mumbai).

I’d classify Hutch as a universal brand, which doesn’t choose the stereotypical path to appeal to customers. In fact, I would go so far as to say that we are the leaders in mass markets such as Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat. When one says that people think of us as expensive, I think people think of us as differentiated. While others harp on price all the time, we concentrate on communicating about the quality of our network and our value-added services (VASes).

We have always maintained that pricing cannot be a long-term strategy or ownership of positioning. Pricing and tariff plans are easily replicable by other brands, so in that respect, we have never used a price point as a differentiator so far. However, our business needs required us to take it up.

In June-July 2005, we found that our value for money perception scores were less than what we wanted them to be, especially since our service was becoming more mass at that point in time. So we came up with the ‘Chota Recharge’ campaign and it was a great support to our overall strategy. Even if these ads didn’t win any award, our subscriber base, which was increasing by 3-4 lakh subscribers per month in mid-2005, shot up to 7-8 lakh subscribers per month.

In addition, it sparked off a series of such ads, which we started in the first place. I’ve heard several radio spots across categories which shifted away from jingles and imitated our ad… and, like they say, imitation is the best form of flattery.

I don’t think these ads qualify as testimonials. We used Irfan (Khan) purely for his outstanding acting ability, and not for his star appeal. All I’m saying is that the trend of people talking into the camera, static frame, with no props or music, started catching on after we launched our campaign.

Value added services have always been our strength; it’s not as though we just found them. Our revenues from value added services are higher than that of other telecom players. We have a basket of services that relate to all kinds of subscribers and we effectively market these services.

In fact, our ‘H and I’ campaign, featuring the two animated characters, actually took on the role of a demonstrator/teacher by guiding people about applications such as SMS, MMS, roaming and other value added services.

The telecom situation is pretty much like this: If 100 people are yelling in a room simultaneously, one of them needs to lower his voice to be heard. I firmly believe that if a brand yells too much, it hits the consumer’s blind spot. At Hutch, we think we can communicate just as effectively without shouting like the other telecom players.

Yes, I agree that Hutch has an understated image in the way that it communicates, but it does so in a warm and meaningful manner. And I’m sure that doesn’t go unnoticed by consumers.

Growth in telecom will come in three ways, the first being aggressive network rollout, which will obviously require huge sums of money to be pumped into it.

Secondly, growth will happen from value for money propositions. Tariffs are getting lower every day. In fact, just when people think they can’t get any lower, the industry manages to surprise them.

Another barrier that is gradually breaking down is the non-affordability factor. Handset prices are coming down. Now, one can get a brand new Hutch enabled handset for Rs 1,399, which was unthinkable three years ago. And this trend will only get stronger. Communication is a basic human need and marketers are beginning to realise that.

For Hutch, specifically, we will continue to leverage our value added services. For instance, we introduced the full song download service recently. This service is efficient enough to compete with FM radios, i-Pods or even MP3 players and other music devices, which one need not carry now. This development is similar to the camera enabled phone. I know of people who don’t carry bulky cameras any more because mobile phones allow them room for impulse photography.

See, I can’t stop a bank or an airline company from calling customers on our network and bombarding them with unsolicited calls. Those companies need to understand – are they creating more opportunities or are they creating angst?

It’s true that there is no legislation in India to govern this, unlike abroad, where there is a clear ‘Do Not Disturb’ mechanism in place.

As far as Hutch is concerned, we have a very strong policy on what is communicated to the customer, such as a great service or a tariff plan that will give more value to him/her. We have guidelines on how many and what type of messages we can send to customers. Compared to other service providers, we send out fewer messages – only ones that are absolutely necessary. We know that no matter how tempting, sending out several messages a day can actually backfire and a point will come when the consumer doesn’t even want to read what’s in a message.

Apart from voice calls and SMSes, we have the USSD service through which information actually flashes on the screen, unlike an SMS, for which you need to click to read. But this service is not compatible with all handsets, only the technologically advanced ones.

No, Hutch never will because we don’t feel the need to. We believe that the mobile phone is an answer to all customer needs. There’s nothing that a landline can do and a cell phone can’t. In fact, the latter can do a hundred more things.

Why would anyone want to be connected to a wire? And this is especially so in rural India. The relevance of mobile phones is far more in rural India than in urban India. It’s easier to put up a cell tower and cover a wide radius of people, rather than lay out an elaborate network of copper wires.

See, while the industry would like to view this as an opportunity, issues of privacy and intrusion still loom large over us. I’m sure that the industry will skirt round these issues in time, but right now, we’re still not comfortable with doing that.

Consumers can now watch movies through a broadband connection or use DVBH (mobile TV, which allows content to be broadcast on mobiles), and these may involve a certain amount of advertising.

Maybe people will realise there’s money to be made by capitalising on these, but there are serious service related issues here that will have to be handled first.

That has gone for regulatory clearance. I honestly have no idea when it will happen.

V Mahesh, in many ways, is irreplaceable. I think the character, tone and manner of our advertising was largely set by him. But O&M is a large agency and I’m sure he has left behind the spirit of the brand with lots of people within the agency.

There are some legacies (ads) of Mahesh which are now in production, whereas there are some which have been thought through after Mahesh. But these, too, reflect his style and manner.

Unfortunately, I cannot comment on that.