How does a telecom brand restore its tarnished network reputation and business,

when usual sources of accreditation are over-used and dismissed as not credible?

For telco Vi in India needing to restore its battered network reputation, the disruptive creative strategy was in identifying an unlikely on-ground partner.

We partnered with the 134-year-old Six-Sigma-rated (99.9% success-rate) human-network of Mumbai Dabbawallas (tiffin-carriers), to ‘improve’ and ‘approve’ Vi’s network - helping drive a 500 Basis-points uplift in network perception, 857 Basis-point uplift in user consideration, ~9.5% reduction in churn and 30% more new user acquisitions, leading to 4.72 Million incremental recharges post-campaign.

We prioritized markets based on telecom user-base and concentration of high value customers.

If the approach worked, we could then scale it up for other markets.

Mumbai was selected as the ground zero of our rebuild. With a population double that of Belgium,

Mumbai is one of the metros with highest telecom user base. It also has a high concentration

of high value customers, and as the financial and media capital of India, is a perception driver for India.

However, negative perception of Vi’s network was most acute in Mumbai and people were lapsing out in droves. Even Unlimited Data Recharges, our core business metric, was completely flat in the two months leading to our campaign.

This informed our chain of objectives:

TURNAROUND BUSINESS IN MUMBAI AS REFLECTED IN UNLIMITED DATA RECHARGES

BY

REDUCING CHURN

BY

REBUILDING BRAND CONSIDERATION AMONGST USERS

BY

REPAIRING PERCEPTION OF Vi’s NETWORK QUALITY IN MUMBAI

A nation of 1.4 billion with 1.15 billion mobile connections - Indian telecom category is saturated.

Growth requires poaching competition users or growing usage, reflected in recharge volumes.

95% of the market is prepaid (no contracts). Users are promiscuous, but promiscuity isn’t triggered by price – India has price parity and the 3rd-cheapest data in the world (~ $0.17 for 1 GB Vs global average

of $4.211). Instead, network experience and perception are the biggest drivers of choice.

To support investments needed for upgrading network infrastructure, Vodafone and Idea Cellular merged to create Vi - becoming market leader with 38% share.

However, mergers as we know can be messy - consumers expected a bigger, stronger network from the merger. But the actual result was quite the opposite due to network integration issues, impacting brand perception severely. Less than 5 years later, by Q2 2023, Vi had slipped to #3 position with just 20% share.

Competitors Jio and Airtel rushed in to grow at Vi's expense, on the back of their latest 5G networks, telecom packs and significantly higher media budgets. Their job was made easier by constant stories in media about our bleeding subscriber base and consequent inability to upgrade our network.

We had to reboot our network perception despite these headwinds. But the conventional approach

of enlisting 3rd-party network-rating agencies like OOKLA or Open Signal or Instagram-wielding influencers for ‘network quality claims’ had lost credibility. We needed a disruptive strategy to drive reappraisal of our network and turnaround business.

The business challenge: Vi’s unlimited data recharges were flat in the two months leading up to our campaign. We had to find a way to increase recharges.

However, new user acquisitions as a means to increase recharges was a bridge too far, especially because our own users were leaving us.

Hence, the marketing challenge: How to plug the leaky bucket and win back the trust of our own users?

But in the last year itself, there had been in a massive decline (722 BPS) in consideration for Vi

amongst its users in Mumbai. Hence, the brand need: to turnaround decline in consideration.

With network experience and perception being the key drivers of consideration, our comms task then became: To repair perception of Vi’s network quality amongst users in Mumbai

We had to effect a hard reboot and get users to believe that Vi’s network is fast and reliable in Mumbai.

Vi engineers had brought the network back to acceptable performance.

But Mumbaikars demanded for it to be fool-proof!

Unfortunately, Mumbai is a vast cobweb - it would be humanly impossible for the engineers

to reach and improve all network spots.

3rd-party network-rating agencies like OOKLA and Open Signal, or IG-wielding influencers

could have helped, but their over-use by our competitors had stripped them of all credibility.

People were more trusting of friends, family and social acquaintances inquiring which network is good.

Our insight: People don’t trust claims by paid-for 3rd-party experts or IG-wielding influencers –

they trust actual network experience of others.

But we couldn’t rely on the experience of just anyone – it had to be someone

who Mumbaikars believed in.

The disruptive strategy: Get Mumbai's only Six-Sigma-rated, 134-year-old human network – Dabbawallas (tiffin-carriers who visit every corner of Mumbai, every-day) to experience, restore our network and our reputation.

Dabbawallas are a 134-year-old, Six-Sigma-rated (success rate of 99.9%) network of tiffin-carriers

who traverse the vast, intricate cobweb of Mumbai to deliver dabbas (tiffin-boxes) every day. In doing so,

they reach places that even our engineers can’t reach. If we could ensure Dabbawallas had a good network experience at all the places they visited, it would be an uber-credible proof of our network quality.

This was our creative idea: Human network testing telecom network.

We brought this to life over 2 phases:

Phase 1: Restoring the network in Mumbai

Vi’s network engineering team gave handsets to the Dabbawallas to highlight strong and weak network spots in real time, while delivering their dabbas. Our engineers then strengthened the areas with poor network, to deliver an unmatched experience.

Phase 2: Restoring reputation

Once the network experience had been restored, we amplified the experience of the Dabbawallas, to reboot our perception.

Our strategy impacted perception to brand to business:

REPAIRED PERCEPTION OF Vi’s NETWORK QUALITY IN MUMBAI

500 Basis-point INCREASE IN NETWORK PERCEPTION – ‘Provides a fast and reliable network’

post-campaign

TO REBUILD BRAND CONSIDERATION AMONGST USERS

857 Basis-point INCREASE IN CONSIDERATION post-campaign

TO REDUCE CHURN

~9.58% reduction in absolute churn in the quarter post-campaign

The positivity spread, and we saw a 30% spike in new customer acquisitions in the quarter post-campaign.

TO TURNAROUND BUSINESS, AS REFLECTED IN:

•4.72 million incremental unlimited-data-recharges in the 2 months post-campaign.

For context, that’s more than double the population of Paris.

•1.85 million incremental first-time recharges by new users in the 2 months post-campaign

With Vi’s Average Revenue Per User at 1.72 USD, the total incremental recharges we drove roughly equates to 11 Mn USD worth of revenue.

Our strategy had a halo-effect on our overall brand, improving our overall positive social sentiment by 32%.

When in need of strengthening network experience and perception, telecom brands globally as well as our competitors in India enlist 3rd party network-rating agencies like OOKLA or Open Signal. Alternately, they turn to Instagram-wielding influencers for “network-torture-tests” – all in service of testing and certifying network quality.

However, the overuse of these strategies by our competition had stripped them of all credibility.

We had to pivot and find a disruptive new strategy to establish network quality and experience.

Leveraging the 134-year-old, Six-Sigma-rated, Harvard-acknowledged human network of Dabbawallas to restore our network and reputation tapped into the consumer tendency to prioritize credible personal experiences over 3rd party proof points to evaluate network quality.

It also created new language in network-experience-certification in India and globally – one that we intend to build on with more human networks testing our network in the future.