Of course I didn't watch the Hutch(oops Vodaphone) TVCs on now the
much hyped Star TV block. There are more interesting things like the Twenty20 on the tube!
Hyped as a major media innovation( although I fail to see why it's an innovation.)
It's a big budget ROAD BLOCK rather than a Great Idea.Well, finally Hutch - the country’s fourth-largest mobile service provider has changed it's identity yet again. And I think it has done it the right way. Almost too right I feel:-)
1. Retained the cute, lovable pug as well as the two animated characters (the girl and the boy)
2. Promises to retain the tagline -
"Wherever you go, the network follows" especially for the network related ads.
3.
“Hutch was a well-loved brand, and all the things which the customer found endearing will continue to be projected,” said Harit Nagpal, the company's marketing and new business director, on agencyfaqs.com. Well, that again is the most sensible thing to do. Indian marketers I feel are too trigger happy with change. Very often change for change sake!
4. The company insists, Vodaphone will be a more mass brand, offering value-added services, in all the existing 16 circles rather than maintaining an up-market brand imagery from it's international lineage...
5. It's among the most humongous brand name changes in Indian marketing, affecting the lives of almost 35 million customers across 400,000 shops! And looks like the client and the agency have done a great logistical job!
From the little that I have seen of the name-change, it's bang-on and correct but somewhere my expectations from Hutch( sorry Vodaphone:-) and the agency Ogilvy in particular were a bit higher...But it's still early days!
Ogilvy has a habit of surprising everyone with great advertising particularly towards the year end:-)
On the back of a strategically sound ad campaign for the Hutch name change comes this unlikely bouncer from Ogilvy! Maybe there is more to follow, but the first burst leaves me cold...
