Vodafone gets future ready with brand revamp; strategic merger on the anvil

Vodafone has announced a significant evolution of its brand positioning and visual identity in India, which focuses on the theme of optimism about the future and positions Vodafone as a modern contemporary, inspiring and future fit brand, using the new tagline – ‘The Future is exciting. Ready?’ 

It is a significant metamorphosis for Vodafone, since the ‘Power to you’ tagline was introduced in 2009. This new positioning, part of Vodafone’s global rebranding exercise across 36 countries, is designed to underline the company’s belief in new technologies and digital services playing a positive role in transforming society and enhancing individual quality of life in the years ahead. 

Launching the new brand identity, Sunil Sood, Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer, Vodafone India, said, “India is entering a new exciting era - an era of Digital, Convergence, Big Data, IoT, Cloud, Augmented Realities, Robotics and Artificial Intelligence. The real and virtual worlds are converging at an unprecedented pace to create a bold new future. Our new brand positioning emphasises Vodafone’s mission and purpose to help customers and communities adapt, navigate and prosper from the remarkable new trends reshaping the world. At Vodafone, we are excited about the possibilities ahead and are ready to enable our customers to conquer this new world.” 

He further said, “It’s a huge market out there. This is an exciting technology. We will compete and collaborate with other market players like Facebook as they play on the layers of connectivity we provide.” Vodafone will be helping its customers navigate this journey to embrace this technology and enter this new future full of excitement, Sood added. 

The new visual identity will place greater emphasis on Vodafone’s iconic ‘speech mark’ logo – the biggest change to one of the most recognised symbols of Vodafone since the hallmark logo was created in 1998. The ‘speech mark’ will now appear as the central graphical focus overlaid on all marketing and marketing communications collateral. The logo will also appear in a new 2D design in place of a skeuomorphic 3D approach. 

Following a dramatic rise in digital literacy and adoption in India – a trend that’s being reflected across demographics and geography, Vodafone’s new brand positioning is a visual and intrinsic representation of its ‘Readiness’ to equip and empower customers to stay connected with their world…From saying ‘Hello’ with conversations on the go, accessing the myriad offerings of mobile internet, content, fin-tech, M2M and IoT solutions, Vodafone has consistently raised the bar in its offerings to cater to the evolving needs of retail and enterprise customers. 

The Campaign 

Over the years, brand Vodafone has been iconic with the much loved Pug and the ZooZoos. This new positioning further strengthens brand Vodafone and takes it to the next level. A multimedia marketing campaign will look at simple human stories of embracing technology through the eyes of recent ‘common man’ icons Asha-Bala. These stories will be told across multiple media with a high-decibel 360-degree campaign – from TV to Digital, incorporating the latest technologies. 

Elaborating on the new campaign, Piyush Pandey, Executive Chairman & Creative Director, SA Ogilvy & Mather India, said, “Any campaign is only an expression of the belief with which a brand is moving forward. Vodafone’s new campaign is a statement of new philosophy of bringing newer and newer stuff to ease your life and make it as easier for you to actually benefit from it. The new tagline, ‘The future is exciting. Ready?’, is a more inclusive line as compared to the previous one, ‘Power to You’.” 

Commenting on the USP of the new campaign, Sunil Sood said, “Digital is a reality, therefore, it may have its own speed. We believe that we are the first ones to take a position which is completely ‘Future Fit’ and which will take us to the next step in our customer journey. Technology cycles are only becoming shorter. India has a large start-up empire. As a telecom major, we meet all the people who are dependent on technology and provide them with the connectivity layer, therefore, we are best positioned here and that’s why we say the future is exciting, are you ready?” 

Meanwhile, referring to the company’s future plans, Balesh Sharma, COO, Vodafone India, said, “A merger is coming up and we are very optimistically looking forward to it. All options are open thereafter as to the branding. In the foreseeable future, both the great brands will be given a new shine to Vodafone as we get in.”