BRANDING STRATEGY OF BANGLALION AND QUBEE Introduction: The image and value of the brand is critical in consumer markets and a strong one is invaluable to an organization especially in today's global economy, where the battle for customers is intensified each day. Having a strong brand helps a company to build a lasting relationship with its consumers. This can help guarantee business for the future of the company. A company's goodwill, reputation, and brad name is the most valuable property a company can acquire over time. Branding is a powerful and strategic weapon for a company while distinguishing a company from its competitors. Qubee and Banglalion are modems emerging Wimax Internet connection without using any cable. These two wimax modems are playing a significant role in internet access. After Citycell they have introduced faster internet modem in Bangladesh. To market their product they are using different branding strategies to grab the opportunity to make extensive market share though their branding strategies are slightly different from each other. Projecting few basic functions of WIMAX, which might help you understand and how those works.
Banglalion Wimax: Banglalion Communications Ltd is the leading BWA operators in Bangladesh having nationwide license in 2.5 GHz band. It is the first ever wimax operator in Bangladesh has started
their service offerings from 1st of June, 2009. Banglalion has started their internet and data connectivity service in Bangladesh. And the service is 4G based Technology. Brand Name: Brand names can be extremely effective short hand means of communication. Banglalion also has tried to make its name meaningful so that the name’s meaning can help register or activate in consumers’ memory within just a few seconds. The name “Banglalion” is emotional as well as fanciful name. Because the term “Bangla” represents that it is for Bangladeshi. So they can perceive “It’s our product”. But “lion” has no obvious meaning although it can expose the dominative wimax modem in Bangladesh. Theme lines: Theme lines uphold the brand’s status shortly by few lines. Banglalion’s theme line is “WE CAN’T MAKE YOU FLY… BUT WE CAN PROVIDE YOU FASTEST ACCESS TO INFORMATION HIGHWAY” This strategy is much more effective and irrefutable. Because they confess what is their inability but also strongly assert what they can do. This is an emotional technique to place the brand in people’s heart. Logo of Banglalion: Logo is a visual brand element which can play a critical role in building brand equity. Banglalion uses its logo which has conformity to the brand name. Meanwhile, this logo has make the sense of recognition among consumers. Beneath Banglalion’s logo is showed:
Expand the business: Banglalion first started its journey from dhaka. But now Banglalion is already present in 7 divisional headquarters (Dhaka, Chittagong, Sylhet, Rajshahi, Khulna, Rangpur and Barisal) with its network. Almost every day Banglalion is covering new areas through planned network expansion to cover whole Bangladesh gradually.
Brand Awareness: Banglalion has taken various activities to make recognized and familiar to the product. Several strategy like road show has already been arranged by authority in Dhaka city. Soon the road show will be continued in the other remarkable cities and towns. Recently in October, 2010 Banglalion Wimax has sponsored Challenge Cup PRO-AM Golf Tournament, 2010 at Curmitola Golf Club which is considered as effective effort to catch glance of people. Banglalion starts the shopping mall activation. Customers can know about Banglalion WiMAX & enjoy subscription at their nearest shopping Mall. Following is the activation Calendar.
Core Benefit and Basic Feature: •
Banglalion provides its service through Wimax technology.
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A dedicated network solely built for data service (i.e. internet). No sharing with other type of service (i.e. voice).
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The only WiMAX operator in the country with a strong presence in 7 (seven) divisional cities and the highest number of BTS
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Stable & high speed internet
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Convenient refills of Tk. 300 and Tk. 600 through scratch card
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Charges are on actual usage up to the byte level
Price and Package: Banglalion has two types of packages like prepaid ans post paid package. Which are described below: Prepaid Package: No contracts! No monthly bills! That is the flexibility and convenience that Banglalion Prepaid offers you. Postpaid Package: Consumers can pay bill after a month, this package is for them. Selling strategy: Deliver affordable and reliable broadband. Use economies of scale and superior technology to achieve a customer proposition of affordable and reliable broadband. Maximum earning from market: Banglalion took the first mover advantage. By using price skimming strategy Banglalion attempts to acclerate earning in short period. Because the market is not yet competitive. So this is the right time to dominate in the market. International Scalability: On-going pursuit of opportunities for geographical expansion and way of carry out spectrum acquisition and network roll out in several territories simultaneously. Competitive advantage: Greenfield provider Banglalion Communications Ltd. selects Alepo Technologies, Inc. to provide BSS/OSS solutions for WiMAX deployment, citing the company’s maturity and experience. The flexibility and scalability of the Alepo solution will allow Banglalion to become a multiplay provider and achieve their goal of providing nationwide coverage in Bangladesh. The decision of using 4G technology also gave them competitive advantages. So this can be a great advantage for Banglalion to brand its product. Brand Customer Relationship: Banglalion has made closer relationship with customers. There are several customer care centres for service for customers. They are always for serving customers. Round the Clock Customer Care • 24x7 Hotline.
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Live Support.
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Quick response to queries.
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Dedicated support team.
Promotional Activities: Banglalion has extensive promotional activities. So very soon people have accepted Banglalion with great enthusiasm. Their promotional activities are: •
They mainly promotes their products through telecasting Banglalion Wimax advertisement which has help make huge customers. Because skipping this most responsive media it was hardly possible to promote their product.
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Banglalion’s advertise can be visible in many newspapers of the country.
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Facebook is an effective media. More important thing is that the users of Facebook alo use internet. So it is the easiest way to reach the target customers with less hassle through advertising in Facebook. Banglalion is now advertising their product in Facebook.
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Other activities like sponsorship and road show are other sorts of promotional activities of Banglalion Wimax.
Recommendation: Banglalion is really doing well to brand its product. But some activities should be changed or taken to make the brand value superior. Regarding the problems some recommendations are: Banglalion should keep stable the speed for browsing and download what they heve promised Because most of the customers’ claim is that Banglalion doesn’t keep their promise. The speed even fluctuates so consumers don’t like the variation in speed. Banglalion should highlight about country of origin (they bought modem from GERMAN) while promoting product, because Bnagladeshi consumers has strong faith over foreign product. It will help Banglalion to have a lime light over their product price and quality as well. Banglalion should offer more packages and features : Though Banglalion offers various packages for people of different segments. But they may be quite insincere about business people. Banglalion has already offered 2 Mbps speed with no price change. It is a comfortable offer for business people. Banglalion can adopt this policy by offering such tremendous features. Banglalion should consider pricing of their product. Bangladesh has price sensitive market. At present consequence, it has seen Banglalion has high price. If Banglalion wants to continue with this price they should focus over their quality service and promote their product on this basic.
Banglalion should offer some discount for existing users to create brand loyalty. Like: discount over uses. Banglalion can offer high speed with reasonably lower cost which can make consumers substantially enthusiastic consumers to use it spontaneously. Banglalion should cover the whole country. As internet access has been grown not only in the main towns or city, rather people of every district people need internet access. So Banglalion should focus on broad area coverage through out the country. Qubee QUBEE Wimax: Qubee is a new and exciting company from Augere providing fast and reliable broadband internet services to residential and business customers across Bangladesh. Augere's first commercial network launched in Pakistan in July 2009 and was closely followed by the Bangladesh network in October 2009 under the brand name QUBEE. QUBEE believes that everyone should be able to enjoy trouble-free access to the internet and the world of opportunities that it brings. The company’s aim is to make a magical internet experience available to everyone, everyday, without exception. Brand name: Basically “Qubee” is a Latin American word which means head, without work . Unlike Banglalion they didn’t use any Bangla term which can attract people emotionally. So this brand name “Qubee” doesn’t convey any significant or descriptive meaning for consumers. Besides, it’s not easy to spell. In this section Qubee lags behind Banglalion. Theme line: Qubee’s theme line is “The Real Internet Experience”. It is a strategy to emotionally attract consumers. Through the theme line they have tried to explain that their product will give you the real internet access amusement. Logo of Qubee: To remind the consumers about their wimax modem Qubee uses logo in various perspective. But unfortunately still they can’t make the logo familiar with consumers. The logo of Qubee is:
Expand the business: Qubee had coverage in Dhaka. In 2010 Qubee expanded its coverage area in Chittagong. Therefore, still other areas are out of Qubee’s networking zone. As a new company it is difficult for Qubee to expand its service in other areas. Their strategy is that if they get positive sign from people, then they will expand Qubee’s service. They are aggressively expanding their network coverage. For that they are sharing and hiring other telecommunications network infrastructures along with their own infrastructures to expand rapid network coverage.
Now on they have hired Banglalink, Grameen phone and City cell’s network to expand their network. Brand Awareness: Qubee is trying to place their product in consumers’ mind. For this purpose they have taken substanstial steps so that Qubee Wimax can be more familiar with people AS Qubee has its own slogan which is “speed is happiness”, keeping this in mind they decided to come up with this unique idea of launching a campaign. Qubee being the service provider of their product WIMAX arranged for a virtual gaming contest. On Pohela Boishakh Qubee has sponsored in a band show in Dhanmondi, Dhaka. This show got huge popularity among people. Core benefits & features of QUBEE: • Qubee is the real wireless broadband internet from Augere, an MNC incorporated in Netherlands. •
Qubee is the name of a commitment for high speed and uninterrupted internet experience for users in Bangladesh.
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Qubee provides its service through WiMAX technology.
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It must be Magical: It’s not about magic, it’s about being magical. It’s about us bringing delightful touches to the customer experience.
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Qbee offer Fixed WiMAX service for Home & Business (SME) use.
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Qubee product is differentiated by Speed ( 256 Kbps, 512 Kbps, 1 Mbps, 2 Mbps etc.)
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Fixed Monthly Billing for Sky Packages ( 256 and 512 packages)
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User Name & Password stored in Modem and connection “Always On”.
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Any PC Connected to devise will be on Internet without extra Authentication.
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You can share the bandwidth among multiple PCs using a Router or LAN.
Price and Package: Qubee is following value based pricing. They consider the purchasing power of their customers while deciding the price range. However they evaluate the speed and maximum access which can be provided by them within that range and fix the price for every segment. QUBEE Internet Speed has been DOUBLED. Yes, now consumers will enjoy up to 2 Mbps speed with no price change
Qubee also has prepay offer through which consumers can enjoy up to 1 Mbps speed.
Competitive advantage: QUBEE is trying to grab the ISP market of Bangladesh in both home user end and corporate clients. QUBEE’s main competitors are Telecom operators, existing ISP companies and local providers. QUBEE’s competitive advantage is having the wireless broadband technology or WiMAX. Another competitive advantage for QUBEE is having Aamra Networks as their local partner (shareholder). Aamra Networks is the leading Corporate ISP in Bangladesh and they have a very good reputation in this sector. Selling strategy: Identify emerging market opportunities. QUBEE's selection criteria is based around sound business planning principles which identify markets based on a number of key success defining factors such as population (and urban density), literacy levels and GDP. Availability and access to spectrum. Each country has a unique process for the allocation and pricing of its spectrum. QUBEE has a robust methodology for assessing the ultimate value of the spectrum. Ability to rapidly 'operationalize' in country. Technology roll-out and integration, coupled with intensive training on the ground allows QUBEE to quickly bring its services to market.
Brand Customer Relationship: Qubee has very few customer care centres in Dhaka and Chittagong. As a customer you can be always with customer care people as 24 hour hot line is activated for you. This centres help customers understand about their service, their offers, packages, features etc. The Marketing department provides help for other departments such as the front office and services marketing in order to promote QUBEE packages to both current and new customers. This cooperation is very much effective in handling cases of dis-satisfied customers and also in case of adjusting customers with old packages who have to be convinced to upgrade their packages to the new ones on offer. Promotional Activities: As Qubee is very new organization and WiMax is a very new concept that’s why Qubee have to give too much effort and promotional activities to let the people know about their product and services. They are trying to promote their Qubee product. They have organized different events to promote their product. • •
At first they do a campaign in different universities, which worked a lot. At present they are not branding their product extensively but they have a plan for extensive branding. Qubee is now giving advertises to different renowned news papers in Bangladesh like Prothomalo, the Daily Star, Jugantor, Ittefaq and other renowned newspaper.
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They are also giving advertisement to the different website to promote their product.
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They also giving advertisement in the Radio like Radio Amar, Radio Foorti etc.
Recommendation: QUBEE is trying to grab all the opportunities to be successful in Bangladesh Broadband Market. But considering Bangladeshi consumers, we would like to draw their attention over some of the following facts. Qubee should have network coverage through out the country. Qubee covers only area of Dhaka and Chittagong. But Qubee should have a glance at the other commercial as well as geographically important towns and cities. Qubee should Reduce modem cost. Comparing Banglalion wimax, Qubee costs much more. Generally Qubee wimax modem costs 3000 taka where Banglalion’s wimax is of 999 taka only. As Banglalion is the main competitor of Qubee, so to grab consumers, it is urgent to reduce modem cost as early as possible. Brand name should be easy to understand and communicate. But QUBEE is a Latin American word which means Head, works without wire. It’s really appropriate for Broadband service. But for Bangladeshi consumers may not accept it properly. We have several examples in telecommunication industry that became successful by adoption local names (Like: Orascom as Banglalink, Telenor as Grameenphone) and some failed (Like: WARID with ZEM and ZAHI packages)to continue business for their foreign name.
QUBEE could offer more product packages with variable features to compete the other broadband companies. Like: Banglalion has more product variation than QUBEE. More product variation helps a company to be unique. Even it creates threats to competitors if they try to challenge the company. Even Banglalion has more product variation than QUBEE has. So, they should offer more product packages with variable features. QUBEE should come up with TV advertisement as early as possible because as they are launching new product in present market so their prime function to create consumers. Here Television media has no alternatives. They may provide expert opinion (IT engineer) or celebrity’s opinion through their advertisement. And of course they need to highlight the various uses and benefits of using wireless broadband services. Qubee should control sudden disconnection of internet line. Often Qubee users blame that while browsing or downloading there is sudden disconnection in internet line. So they have to restart download of any document or video files. Qubee should strongly control it with higher importance. Conclusion: Banglalion and Qubee have branding strategies which are quite similar in some perspective and somehow these are different in another perspective. But both are performing an outstanding performance to brand their product. Qubee and Banglalion are doing well; it can be said because they are growing much popularity and placed them better than Citycell. Though both of them have improved and contemporary branding strategy, but those branding strategies are not flawless. They should be more conscious about improving their product quality. If they ponder over the matter to increase the branding effectively and follow the recommendation, than surely Qubee and Banglalion Wimax can capture the whole wimax internet market by throwing away the old competitors as well as interrupting new users’ advent.