The Unusual Billionaires by Saurabh Mukherjea

Author:Saurabh Mukherjea [Mukherjea, Saurabh]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789386057679
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2016-08-16T18:30:00+00:00

Brand

UTI Bank became Axis Bank on 30 July 2007 and it is the only example of a large private sector bank completely changing its identity. To put things in perspective, the rebranding involved changing signage across 600 offices and 2457 ATMs in 346 cities, towns and villages; all this in addition to new letterheads, visiting cards, chequebooks, etc.

While the UTI brand name was useful in the earlier years to set up the bank, it had lost most of its brand value by 2007. Firstly, UTI Mutual Fund had lost market share to several private sector players. Secondly, UTI’s stake in Axis Bank had dropped to 27.4 per cent by FY07 from 91.7 per cent at the incorporation of the bank. Finally, and most importantly, UTI had been bailed out by the government in 2001 following the infamous Ketan Parekh scam (which involved price rigging in many stocks). The bailout involved splitting UTI into a Special Undertaking of Unit Trust of India (SUUTI—which held investments that the government took over from UTI, including its stake in Axis Bank) and UTI Mutual Fund (all other investments held as mutual fund). As per an old agreement between the government and the UTI, the UTI brand was to be shared free of cost by UTI’s nine subsidiaries, including UTI Bank, until 31 December 2007. Starting January 2008, the bank would have to pay royalty to UTI Mutual Fund for use of the name.

Nayak used this opportunity to rid the bank of the UTI association. ‘We had to change our name to have our own brand and identity. We had to give up the UTI name after using it for thirteen years as we were not prepared to accept the terms and conditions (including royalty) from UTI AMC to use the name. Now we will be seen without a public sector connotation,’ explained Nayak in 2007.17 The name Axis Bank was chosen from among fifty names. ‘We wanted to be a pan-India brand and were developing international ambitions. We avoided some funky names since we were corporate bankers. We shortlisted Capital Bank, but there was a local-area bank called Capital Trust Bank in Punjab and hence we finally selected Axis Bank,’ Kaul told me.

Kaul also recalled the lengths to which the bank’s board of directors went to ensure the acceptability of the new brand name. Sensitive of the World War II connotations of Axis—the name given in the war to the united forces of Germany, Italy and Japan—the board even reached out to Jewish associations in the US to clear the use of the name. The brand campaign, created by advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather, involving twins, was memorable. It had the tag line, ‘Everything is the same, except the name.’

The second major investment in branding was done when Sharma was at the helm in 2010. As mentioned earlier, this began with the Badhti ka naam zindagi advertising campaign in 2012. The bank continued with its brand’s alignment towards customer’s aspirational needs and, to this

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.