Green out and Red in….

Generally in the real world scenario, each and every brand face hyper growth and when time comes competitors as warmongers( aggressive attackers) always give them big challenges. It is always a challenging task to defend the strong competition even though you are a market leader. People sometimes get annoyed when they see their favorite brand being pulled out from the market. Not only these changes in the market but also changes from the brand side such as repositioning, re-branding etc may also upset customers mind set. Yes I’m talking about Dialog telecom.

As a hard core loyalist to Dialog, my story of adaptation was interesting. My mobile life started with Celltel ( now Tigo), Mobitel and in early part of my University life, I used hutch and then ended up with Dialog. For more than 5 years I am using the same brand and I would say I’m a hard core loyal to Dialog. Although I changed my numbers very often, I stayed with Dialog. The reason was their excellence customer service, CSR, the awards, the corporate colour (green) and innovation kept me as a customer of Dialog. Not only me but also my friends, family members were seemed to be more towards Dialog.

But the situation changed rapidly after the entry of Airtel. In my point of view it was started to capture the market and most of the Dialog users switched to Airtel. My brother and many of my friends also changed accordingly. I was too worried those days but I got a shock when I saw the change in Dialog corporate colour which I couldn’t believe. Earlier Dialog corporate color was totally positioned well in the customers mind set. Where ever people see a green colour outboard they tend to think about Dialog brand ( even I am also the same, if I come across a green board automatically I think about a Dialog outlet) . These days daily I come across complaints and comments about Dialog. What had actually happened to them?

I list below the regular complaints I receive from my friends

1 – Changes of customer care contact and quality

2 – Change of their corporate colour. I doubt very much that the current colour will strongly position in the customers mind set.

3 – Less marketing communication about the rebranding

4 – Unattractive commercials

5 – Recent asset write off issues – see one of a blogger comment and question regarding this ( he is my friend as well)

6 – Share price reduction in the market

Anyway my total worry is about the colour change. As a marketer, I know the psychological impact of color. Color is one tool in our branding toolbox to help express brand attributes and create emotional connections with constituencies, because in the real scenario there are many global brands which created success stories by associating their brand with colour. Although IBM is connected with the most common corporate color, UPS chose one of the least-used colors brown to help it stand out from the pack. The brown uniforms and vans and the tagline “What can brown do for you?” are crucial and effective elements of the company’s brand communications strategy. Global brand very often think on changing their corporate colur because they knew the danger of it.

It is clear colour can do the changes in the following way

• Color supports differentiation – I cannot see many differences between Airtel colour and Dialog colour. For me both reflect in the same way.
• Color can have a double effect
• Color supports a renaissance

Even though there are many problems, I still like to continue my loyalty towards Dialog. I’m sure when times comes the new entrant will be taken out from the market because of their discount driven strategy and 0777 numbers always convey the professionalism. Although most of the people have switched to Airtel as their second usage still Dialog remains in the first position when it comes to professionalism. Let us wait and see the outcome in the future.

As a loyal customer I have given my views and comments and my only desire is to see Dialog in the first position as in the past.