Cutting Room: Vittorio’s secret

What is Vittorio’s secret?

The marketing aphorism, “it takes 20 years to build a brand and five minutes to ruin it”, may be appropriate if we inspect Vodafone’s 2009 strange strategy.

A year ago Vodafone abruptly axed all of its UK trade and most of its consumer advertising.

No doubt Colao had nothing to do with this on a tactical level. It was probably more a knee-jerk reaction to his edict that, by hook or by crook, Vodafone had to knock £1 billion off its running costs.  

Doubtless Vodafone’s management had one eye on their career appraisals as they hacked, slashed, and burned the bottom line.

It’s also pretty clear that, while the fat was being lipo’d out of the ad budgets, a good deal of muscle and healthy tissue was also being excised.

In February, Vodafone’s ad plans for the year were diverted into a cul de sac.

The company followed up its UK media cut-backs by sacking its UK agency OMD and moving the account to Carat Media.

But Carat’s jubilation was short-lived. Six months later the business was back with OMD, a boomerang decision made, apparently, at Group board level. 

Who knows how many man hours and how much money was wasted on this ‘now you see it, now you don’t’ approach to ad agency management.

As any newly-graduated MBA will tell you, when you’re the custodian of one of the UK’s biggest brand names, cutting the advertising to virtually zero and dicking around with ad agencies isn’t the smartest way to run the railroad. 

Consider that it takes around six months for an agency to generate effective advertising for a new client and you can see that, by ditching OMD for six months, Vodafone lost at least 10 months of brand momentum in the UK.

Now, recessions come and go, but the march of technology is constant.
So, during the crucial period this year when the boundaries between the enterprise and consumer markets became blurred, Vodafone’s branding was nowhere to be seen.

BlackBerry moved from the high-value enterprise sector to the kids market and the world went bonkers for Facebooking and Twittering on their phones.

Vodafone’s message to consumers and the channel was conspicuous by its absence, unless you count a lacklustre summer campaign advertising that roaming rates had been temporarily reduced for the school holiday season.

Meanwhile Apple developed the new mobile ecosystem known as the App Store, and thousands of loyal Vodafone customers churned to O2 for their iPhone fix.

They had no idea any more what Vodafone could offer them.  Oh sure, the wondrous 360 integrated internet services suite is having its moment in the sun.

But what does ‘360’ actually MEAN to the average punter?

Full article in Mobile News issue 452 (November 16, 2009).

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