What customers perceive and what employees experience make the Airtel brand

In September 2017, the much-awaited “BrandZ ? Top 50 Most Valuable Indian Brands 2017” report from WPP (with valuation and methodology support from Kantar MilwardBrown) was published. For the fourth year in a row, Airtel stood at the No.2 rank, this time with a brand value of $10.2 billion, placed next to the No.1 ranked HDFC Bank. The next Indian telecom brand which was valued at $ 2.4 billion, came 11th in the overall rankings. The focus of the report was more on the intangibles than the actual dollar valuation.

Reproduced below are some interesting highlights from the 2017 report.  (Link : https://brandz.com/admin/uploads/files/BrandZ_Top_50_Most_Valuable_Indian_Brands_2017.pdf.pdf)

Knowledge, intelligence and insights

The report said: “India is changing rapidly, with GDP defying expectations and growing faster than all other major economies, despite several recent disruptions - demonetization and the GST- aimed at driving the economy even faster. This speed presents brands with a dilemma : move too cautiously and miss opportunities, or move too quickly and make avoidable mistakes”.

“Brands that remain in the India Top 50 are significantly healthier than Indian brands overall, based on their Vitality Quotient (VQ), our new BrandZ ? measurement of brand health. In fact, the health of the India Top 50 brands is comparable to the health of the Global Top 50, the most valuable and powerful brands in the world”.

“Which brings up the question of how the world views India, a vital topic at this point in India’s rise to global player. Business decision makers rank India low on some business dimensions, like transparency, but they rank India No. 2 in the Movers category of 'up and coming' economies”.

“The consumers driving all this change and growth no longer live only in Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, or some other major metro. They live throughout India, in cities of all sizes and in rural areas, too. Marketers need to think about Multiple India’s—an India where people want to be the best they can be— wherever they live and whatever their background”.

“We take a 360-degree view that includes market research, media management, futures, advertising, digital, promotion, public relations, public affairs, shopper marketing, content creation, and activation”.

“Another global trend has reached India—distrust. Rather than rely only on brand communications, or even word of mouth, Indians particularly in cities, are more likely to research online to corroborate brand claims. Having been disappointed by some brands, they do not want to be disappointed again. Brands need to earn the trust of Indian consumers. And brands need to communicate in ways that inspire trust. Reaching young people requires projecting authenticity, for example. Idealized celebrity brand ambassadors or overly romanticized commercials will resonate less than messages presented with a sense of realism.”

Vitality Quotient – five indicators

“To rank in the BrandZ ? Top 50 Most Valuable Indian Brands is a significant accomplishment that raises these questions: what distinguishes high-value brands from other brands; and what actions do brands need to take to remain in the India Top 50 or rise to that level?  A new BrandZ ?  metric called Vitality Quotient (VQ) supplies some important answers to these questions, along with insights for building and sustaining healthy brands. The VQ score is a composite of these five indicators for monitoring brand health:

1.    Brand Purpose : Healthy brands begin with a purpose. It does not need to be a grand purpose about changing the world, but it does need to be a clear purpose that leaves consumers believing that, in some way, the brand is improving their lives.

2.    Innovation : Brands become stronger when consumers see them accomplishing their Brand Purpose through innovation. Consumers see innovative brands as Meaningfully Different from the competition, as leading their categories and setting trends.

3.    Communication : To benefit from Brand Purpose and Innovation, brands need to amplify these indicators with effective advertising and other relevant communication. Brand Purpose and Innovation produce good stories, and the stories need to be told.

4.    Brand Experience : Communicating a brand’s story well helps persuade consumers to try the brand—as opposed to trying a competitive brand. If the Brand Experience delivers the promised Brand Purpose and Innovation, then people decide that the brand is for them.

5.    Love : The outcome is Love, which adds resilience and helps brands sustain their relationship with consumers over time, as brands cycle through normal periods of innovation and iteration.

VQ scores correlate closely with BrandZ ? 's Meaningfully Different scores. Brands viewed by consumers as Meaningful (fulfilling rational and emotional needs in relevant ways) achieve greater market share, and brands perceived as Different (distinctive, even trend-setting) can command a higher price premium. So, it is not just about being Salient.

The Airtel DNA

While consumers are voting for their trusted brands with much thought and experience, the next set of questions are all about the company. What sort of a company is Airtel for it to be No.2 for four years in a row ? More contextual is the question : what makes Airtel come out on top every time competition turns up the heat ? And the most important question of all : who are the people who make this happen for Airtel ?

The answers to these questions lie in Airtel’s DNA. For the last 22 years, Airtel’s unique culture and leadership mindset have shown the way forward for its employees. Whether you start top-down or bottom-up, you encounter the same culture. The Airtel DNA is a composite of these five behaviours :

1.    Customer Centricity : Customers are at the heart of everything that people in Airtel do. We spend all the time putting in their best efforts, day and night, to delight customers. We punish ourselves if we have not anticipated the experiences that a customer goes through. Empathising with the customers makes all the difference. Our leaders show the way by setting the tone at the top, by exhorting employees to put customers first.

2.    Be entrepreneurial : Living an ownership mindset is the best gift one receives when you work in Airtel. The boundaries between shareholders and employees are fungible when it comes to creating value. This mindset finds expression when employees resolve to work with finite resources, as an owner would do. The ultimate manifestation happens when employees are found not just working to achieve today’s priorities but are obsessed about securing the future. Commitment to discovery and innovation stems from this mindset. The company’s digital agenda gets progressed when employees embrace change. Leaders encourage risk taking, and empowerment flows down the ranks. Airtel’s entrepreneurial culture is best exhibited in the frontline when employees interact with customers, and not just in the auction rooms where bidding for spectrum happens.

3.    Execution excellence : A strong bias for action marks Airtel’s orientation. Speed of action is paramount in this company. Employees and leaders lose patience alike, when faced with delays. Decisions and actions are data-driven, and objectivity rules the roost. Commitment to customer satisfaction, network experience, cost savings, wastage reduction, creating value – all these are KPI driven, and employees are fed the metrics on their mobiles. You experience dynamism every moment of the day.

4.    Collaborative behavior : The telecoms business is an eco-system. Employees understand very quickly that the company’s success is underpinned by the collaborative way of running the business. Leaders underscore the inter-dependencies in ways of working. From the top, collaboration is encouraged and emphasized. Awards for cross-functional achievements are much valued in Airtel. Functional silos are soft enough to permeate. Matrix reporting is accepted as a natural ingredient. A ‘pitstop’ approach is the true Airtel style of solving problems.

5.    Developing people and teams : Airtel’s strategy has ‘winning with people” as one of its pillars. Leaders emphasise that it is not possible to win in the market without people feeling a sense of victory. Conversely, people cannot declare victory unless the company is winning with customers. This deep realization of the need for goal alignment places a premium on development of people and teams. Leaders are increasingly spending enormous time on softer aspects of human performance. Mobile tools enable employees to provide feedback to leaders ‘on the go’.

In March 2017, we had a fantastic opportunity to interact with Doug Lipp, Author of “Disney U”. Doug had helped set up the Disney University to teach Disney employees what and how they should think and behave, for customers to perceive the Disney brand as “magical”. It was déjà vu for the Airtel group, as we had been deliberating how to create ‘delightful’ experiences for our 370 million customers.

In summary….

At Airtel, we are concerned about how customers are perceiving the brand both in rational and emotional terms. Equally, we are obsessed about the employer brand “Airtel”, and how people are experiencing the brand inside and outside the company. The five indicators of “Vitality Quotient” and the five traits of “Airtel DNA” together have created the Airtel brand, as telecom and as an employer. A brand that both customers and employees trust.

“Your brand is what people say about you when you are not in the room” …… Jeff Bezos