Airtel Rebranding - A case of fine execution

Rebranding an existing brand for any reason is one of the toughest thing a business goes through. Airtel recently spent obscene amount of money to rebrand itself with a different logo and tune. There was a huge uproar in the blogger community regarding this move(here). Various tweets were floating around about how AR Rehman has lost it, and how funny and stupid the logo looks. But all said and done there is a lesson of fine execution to be learnt from Airtel.

Today morning as I picked up the newspaper, TimesofIndia’s first and second page was Airtel’s ad with their new logo. Good. As I walked out of the house to buy some bread I was actually surprised to see the new Logo already up in the local Kirana store. Excellent. In the afternoon I had to take my daughter across the town (from uttarahalli to ITPL, for those familiar with Bangalore) for a birthday party. Decided to take the Volvo bus. What I saw across the city was quite unbelievable. From large hoardings, to banners to small kirana store in the nooks and corner of the city, every Airtel Ad had the new logo. I don’t remember seeing it yesterday (or it did not impress on me yesterday). Unbelievable.

I am in sheer awe with the way Airtel executed this exercise. Rebranding is not just changing the logo or the tune. It is doing at the right time and doing it such finesse that new logo is imprinted on everyone’s mind immediately. If this exercise (changing the billboards, and advertisements in all stores) was not done overnight imagine the confusion Airtel would have had to deal with displaying both the logos simultaneously.

Hats off to whoever in Airtel executed this re-branding. Your thoughts?