Pink is now Red!

Months after the acquisition of 75% stake in Hutchison Essar and making it Vodafone Essar, the brand Vodafone has finally arrived in India. I was in Kochi Hutch office watching it turning into the Vodafone office.

The brand transformation was surprisingly hurried and not complete on the scheduled launch date 21st Sep. The ads announced the new website vodafone.in but when i checked it was inactive and hutch.in was still on the go. The whole makeover is expected to have cost around Rs. 200 crore to Vodafone. It included a full day Vodafone-only ad breaks in Star network channels! As Vodafone CEO Arun Sarin promised, they have kept the pug. In fact about 75% of all ads were featuring the pug! In branding Hutch had set a benchmark and Vodafone will have to try hard to keep that intact. Despite the pug, the ads were not fresh in presentation which was the speciality of Hutch ads. Regarding the brand ambassadors of Hutch, Rahul Dravid and Irfan Khan, its unclear whether Vodafone will be using them or not. The hutch.in site now redirects to vodafone.in. In my opinion, vodafone failed here. The site doesn't have that good a feel which was offered by hutch.in. There is excess of colours, with red, blue and green boxes spread in white background, while hutch.in did magic with pink & othet mild colours. To be frank, the brand makeover from orange to pink that hutch had earlier was much more quick and complete. In one night, the whole of orange turned pink! Vodafone might have started low, but they are the world's biggest mobile operator. They have the potential and resources to accelerate themselves by introducing new features and services, which they already offer in other countries but are new to India.

Vodafone do have a big role to play in meeting the needs of world's fastest growing mobile communication market.