Brand Marketing Lead

Airtel Brand Philosophy:

How do you build brand love in the most hated category on social media? And how do you do that in the face of cut-throat competition, in the middle of pricing wars, missions to give everything free, and incredibly fast-changing technology, which is making user experiences patchy? Telecom is a service - a service where the quality varies from one person, one home, one street, to the next.

We talk about how our network is the best and there is always someone in whose house for some reason the network is not working and it's preventing them from doing the things they love. And therefore they are not very happy. To put it mildly. So if there is a news item saying Airtel's network is the best video experience network in India, or Airtel has launched a revolutionary new intervention, all you see in trail posts are the users commenting on how their network is not working. Forget brand love. Forget your persona. It's damage protection, you were thinking about all the time.

We needed our customers to believe in us. Trust us. And give us the chance to serve us best.

This took us on a journey back to people and leadership. Why do we instinctively like people and follow certain leaders? Are they just perfect? Are they never wrong, or make a mistake? And the answer is No.

They are fallible. They make mistakes. And yet some are loved and liked by a vast number of people, and develop passionate followership.

The secret sauce is trust. Trust leads to great leadership.

Authenticity. Courage. Responsibility and Care.

1. The first tenet of successful leadership (and thereby successful followership) is authenticity. Authenticity is a sync in your say and do. It starts from a value system. And being true to your roots. Inauthentic people, fail to generate trust. Because, over even a little bit of extended time, people can see through your put-on façade.

2. Second tenet is Courage. Leaders need to show courage. Make the right choices and the difficult choices. Not the easy ones. Not the popular ones. Right for the cause they are championing. The people they are leading. Courage to say the way things are. Courage to take the blame, if a mistake is made. And courage to look adversity in the eye.

3. Third tenet is Responsibility. And fourth is Care. They go hand in hand. A Leader will always take responsibility for their actions. Responsibility of their people. And deeply care for those they lead. Feel for them. Connect with them.

Think about leaders who only talk about themselves. How they have changed the world. Think about leaders who never admit they made a mistake. They may dazzle you in the short term. Do they evoke long-term trust?

How does this tie back to our brand you may ask?

We put these leadership principles into building our brand. In a trust–deficit category we attempted a few things:

1. Authenticity – In 2016, we opened up our network to our customers. (Open Network) –The most closely guarded secret in the telecom industry was put out for the world to see. Anyone could see Airtel's network and how far each tower was from your house.
2. We then launched a program called Open Telco internally. This was all about proactively messaging consumers and letting them know when we had some network issues/ faults in their area. Anticipating that they would face an issue and letting them know before some felt let down. This was a big move internally as well as we normally tried hard to hide our faults. And we did this 500 Mn times a month. We are getting better, but nowhere perfect on this.

1. The consumer insight is that at a basic human level, what we all want is control. So you don't mind if your delivery is delayed if you have been informed in advance but you really mind if you have ordered a gift for your wife on your anniversary and it gets delayed without any intimation to you.

1. Courage – What if I told you our brand did a large advertising campaign telling people that consumers decided to leave our brand and try the cheaper option? That consumers troll us with expletives on social media. It takes courage. Courage to acknowledge that you weren't chosen. And we did it. And it turned around the brand metrics. "Sab try karo, phir sahi chuno"

1. Responsibility – Authenticity is about being honest, and responsibility is about letting people hold you responsible, ask you questions, and demand answers. What if I told you we are putting out advertising in Kolkata talking about how people are demanding a better network from us? And what if I told you that when we did this at a national scale it increased our core brand metrics among competition users by 600 basis points Telling people we have received a lot of feedback and we are working towards it. Just that. And putting our heads down to do it. And then report back to our ultimate bosses – our customers, that the job is done.

What we have learned is that all the things that are perceived to make you weaker, actually make you stronger. We admit our mistakes, make audacious promises to our consumers, and live up to them.

Our size and scale:

Airtel directly touches the lives of 300 Mn Consumers – that is 300,000,000 consumers every single day through SMS, App, Retail stores, General trade outlets, digital media, Social, Outdoor, Radio, Print, and TV.

Airtel isn't just one brand – we operate across Mobility, DTH and Broadband.

Who we are looking for:

An experienced brand leader who wants to create an imprint on this brand.

Core skills:

Creativity

Extremely passionate & high bias for action

High self-drive

People Management & Strong Inter-personal Skills.

• When you become a Brand Manager at Airtel, you become a Brand Manager of the zillion partners that we work with, spanning multiple industries like Music, Video content, Handset brands, Online education, Insurance companies, etc. So 1 job, multiple exposures
• What proposition should we launch next and for what consumer cohort – Well you'll have a say in that
• Make the communication come alive on all the possible channels that you can think of and for 300 Mn users – SMS, App, Retail stores, General trade outlets (posters, banners, and the lot), Digital media, Social media, Outdoors, Radio, Print, TV, 3rd party apps, website, etc.
• Work extensively with the app growth & internal design teams – the expectation is to set up industry benchmarks on communication for effective use of own channels

Educational Qualifications

MBA from Tier 1 institute preferred

Work Experience

6-9 years with at least 4-5 years of core brand experience