The Hindu Business Line : What IT takes to build brands

HCL Technologies recently launched a mega corporate campaign titled `Fearless HCL,' which talks about its qualities of courage and leadership. The campaign catches your attention not only in niche IT magazines but also in mainstream dailies and magazines. Similarly, Citigroup's financial services BPO, e-Serve, has billboards across cities, print campaigns and television ads claiming that it is an ideal place to learn all about the financial services industry.

The above campaigns indicate a trend of IT services companies moving towards more organised brand-building instead of sending out the usual mailers, publishing recruitment ads in dailies and other run-of-the-mill PR-driven activities. IT branding, says R. Ramkumar, Director (Corporate Communications), Cognizant Technologies, over the years has definitely become more targeted and sophisticated. "It has moved from transactional branding to referral and relationship branding."

He says that the quality and time invested by IT services companies in branding is far higher today than it was a few years ago.

Hemant Bharadwaj, Vice-President (Marketing), Polaris, feels IT companies have realised that they can't survive without branding. "As the market matures with more and more niche verticals emerging, companies have to talk about their skills and capabilities."

Bharadwaj also attributes this trend to the supply of talent, which today, has overshot demand. Apart from this, the emergence of companies offering similar services has also created a clutter. "Companies are forced to come up with differentiators as clients, who have more choice now, have started questioning as to why they should invest in them."

A challenge

Unlike product companies, as the industry doesn't have a tangible product to sell, observers say branding in this domain is definitely a challenge. The most important resource of this industry is its talent, so most campaigns are tailored to attract quality talent. "We are trying to sell something intangible, unlike products which people can touch and feel. Hence, the challenge is bigger," says Ramkumar of Cognizant.

Bharadwaj of Polaris adds to Ramkumar's view by saying that not only is it difficult to create a service brand, but equally a challenge to build a consistent brand. "If I say that my company stands for excellence, then all the other employees should represent the claim consistently. And due to high attrition rates, maintaining that consistency is definitely a challenge."

"It is a people's game in the IT services industry," says Vijay Gopal, Executive Vice-President, RK Swamy BBDO. "To tell the client about how good a company's services are depends on the kind of talent it has. And with attrition rates growing, the key issue is to retain talent, for which the companies have to figure out what the talent is seeking."

Branding efforts

IT branding today, say observers, is not just restricted to newsletters and mailers. While some players are investing a huge sum in outdoors and television, the focus still continues to be on various surround activities such as participating in job fairs, organising events, participating in college events, internal communication and so on. "Companies are making a more focused attempt to interact with their target audience at various touch points," says Bharadwaj.

Cognizant, for instance, has an exclusive newsletter for colleges and university campuses in which alumni now employed at Cognizant, talk about their experiences at the company. "Our branding activities are based on referral and relationship mediums. We have got our employees to speak for us even in our recruitment ads," says Ramkumar.

On the other hand, Ravan Boddu, Chief Executive Officer, iSoft, says that as branding in the industry revolves around retaining talent, the company firmly believes in social branding. "We feel that unless we are recognised by the people around the person, we won't be successful. Therefore, each time we participate in a career fair, we take equal interest in talking to the parents of a candidate and try to tell them about the opportunities a career in iSoft offers."

iSoft, globally, promotes several health causes like supporting leukaemia patients in Australia and breast cancer patients in the UK, and Boddu says that they would be carrying out activities in India too.

He says brand building needn't necessarily be driven by advertising. "It would be myopic to think that corporate branding is ad-driven. If we were to launch a corporate campaign, we would rather concentrate on associating ourselves with events where we can interact with our target audience. In fact, we recently sponsored the Nasscom HR Summit as well as Sarang, IIT Chennai's annual fest," says Boddo.

Echoing Boddo's ideas is Raja Ganapathy, Vice-President of ad agency, rmg david. "IT branding has to go beyond advertising," he says. Ganapathy feels that as the IT companies cater to a very small audience, a mass-media communication strategy doesn't make too much sense for them. "They should instead concentrate on direct marketing activities and advertise only in trade magazines."

In fact, Ganapathy feels that these companies should try to make their recruitment ads more interesting. "Most recruitment ads are boring and have nothing new to say. As talent acquisition and retention is the goal of most IT companies, they should pep up their recruitment campaigns by talking about distinct brand differentiation."

Future of IT branding

U. Jayraj Rau, Vice-President and Client Services Director, JWT, says that while the first phase of IT branding is focusing on talent retention, in the second phase, these companies would try to pick up equity from the market, in addition to attracting and retaining talent.

Rau says that 2006-07 would be a year of IPOs in the IT-ITES industry, so that they are able to convince the public that they are not a bubble, like the dotcoms that went bust. "An IPO will help them to invest further, pick up real estate, and for this they would spend at least Rs 5 crore - Rs 10 crore on advertising."

However, Gopal of RK Swamy BBDO feels that IT branding in future will also continue to focus on talent acquisition and retention. "As long as businesses keep coming in and the number and quality of students passing out increase, the hunt for people would continue."

Gopal also has a word of advice for the IT services players. "The brand is a verb and everything it does has to be part of its DNA ... and whatever is being said about it has to be based on its credibility. Branding has to be built on credible and solid foundations."

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