The Hindu Business Line : Stand out from the crowd

"Be on-demand and on-the-move. Anticipate consumer trends and respond quickly if you want to keep up with customer demand and market change," says Sophie Ann Terrisse, Founder and CEO of global brand management firm, STC Associates.

The New-York based company recently executed an extensive global campaign (online, print and television) for Tata Communications, which is creating above-the-line buzz after almost seven years. Globally, STC works with technology multi-majors such as AIG and Switch & Data.

In a chat with eWorld, Terrisse talks about the market and potential for branding of technology companies (read IT & Telecom) in India. Excerpts from the chat:

How do you evaluate the branding strategies adopted by Indian technology companies?

When it comes to telecom companies, we are very interested in the Indian market, especially in those firms that have been given new telephony licences. We believe that the positioning strategies of telecom companies should be more to do with notions and perceptions on reliability and thought worthiness. When it comes to IT services companies, several times I see these companies making positioning or messaging mistakes that do not necessarily convey the kind of confidence that the customer requires today. IT companies have not yet reached a level of sophistication in the way they express their solutions. The marketing designs of some of the top IT companies are very muddled and I believe that could be a key area of change for them.

Technology companies in India are generally not very well known when it comes to deployment of an end-to- end branding strategy. Moreover, we are living in a highly volatile economic environment.

So how does that change your interaction with customers?

The most obvious thing in these times is that companies have slashed their budgets. The least obvious thing is that several companies are truly struggling; since they had to slash their budgets they now have to go in for some of the less traditional models such as social networking which are available to them.

However, the truth is that they do not fully understand these new media. As a partner, the challenge in the current economic environment is to spend more time with the customers during discovery discussions for more clarity on their needs.

In a typical telecom circle such as Mumbai where you have nine mobile operators, how does an operator really drive a differentiation strategy?

I agree that at the end of the day mobile telephony is a highly commoditised service. Differentiation is not so much about being different from somebody else. It is more about how one is able to extract oneself from the crowd in the customers' mind.

If there are nine telecom companies in a circle, it all boils down to which of these will quickly realise the gap in its niche offerings and take advantage of it at the earliest. We, as a company, will tell you that this is the niche which has been untapped as of now and this is your play in that area.

Till about two years ago, competition in the Indian telecom landscape was all about prices. However, that is changing as many companies now want to position themselves as operators who can add value.

For instance, an operator which recently came into the Mumbai market focused its energies more on connectivity than on cost. All their messaging and marketing activity was centralised around why it is important to stay connected with friends through, say, a facebook or a twitter. That is where the differentiation comes in. If the niche is about providing value-added services then the question is where exactly will you add value. Am I going to give an Internet card with my cell-phone connection? There are the typical consumer minded questions that the vendor ought to answer.

adith@thehindu.co.in

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