BSNL ropes in Euro RSCG, Mudra, Percept H and Prachar

The government owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) is about to go on a fresh brand-building binge across its entire services portfolio. The country's largest integrated telecom services provider needs to hold on to customers in the face of severe competition from arch rivals like Bharti Airtel, Reliance ADAG, Vodafone, Idea and their ilk. BSNL has just empanelled in some of the biggest agencies like Euro RSCG, Mudra Advertising, Percept H and Prachar Advertising, to handle its creative business and to vitalise its mobile, landline, WLL and broadband services and new offerings in all telecom circles, sources said.

Sources inform that the company has allocated Rs 500 crore for marketing initiatives in financial year 2009. Sources also claimed that no media agency pitched separately for the business. The media business will be awarded to Motivator, which has pitched for the business along with Mudra and Prachar. A source at Sanchar Bhawan said, "The aim of BSNL is building brand loyalty among its legions of subscribers by establishing direct connectivity with its customers across land line, mobile, WLL and broadband segments. The biggest challenge will be coming up with communication solutions to tackle issues like customer churn, apart from building deeper levels of trust."

The incumbent agencies in 2006 were Grey Worldwide, Euro RSCG and Media Direction (the media arm of RK Swamy BBDO) that had won the various portions of the BSNL portfolio. Grey Worldwide looked after Cell One mobile services and Euro RSCG took care of land line/broadband, while Media Direction was the media agency. A tender released by BSNL in July 2008 specifies that four agencies would be empanelled for its media, creative duties for two years and can be extended for one year depending on performance. The performance of the empanelled agencies would be reviewed every three months.

In the event of a performance being unsatisfactory, BSNL may terminate the contract with an agency by giving a written notice of one month. After empanellment, each agency would be asked make a creative presentation and also provide an annual media plan. BSNL may select any of these plans or even come up with its own plan based on the presentations. Once the media plan is finalised, BSNL would invite all empanelled agencies to quote the price for the implementation of the selected plan for one year.

BSNL signed Bollywood actress Deepika Padukone after the company's contract with Preity Zinta expired last August. The star was brought in to help BSNL shed its PSU image (public sector unit) and market its services on a par with private players. BSNL is also gearing up to share its active infrastructure with other players to boost its revenues. The active infrastructure includes antenna, feeder cable and transmission system. The department of telecommunications (DoT) allowed active infrastructure sharing early last year.

Kuldeep Goyal, chairman and managing director of BSNL, said, "We are in the final stages of working out a scheme for active infrastructure sharing. We will be ready in a couple of months to share our cable systems with private players. This will help to further fuel the telecom revolution in the country, where 10 million connections are added every month." Apart from strengthening its mobile network, the state-run company is also expanding its broadband capabilities across all media, such as copper cables, wireless, 3G and fibre optic cables. BSNL has placed orders worth Rs 1,600 crore to purchase eight million units of broadband equipment, Goyal said.