Tata Docomo and repositioning of competitors

Tata Docomo emphasizes on "Doing the new". It has a very clear positioning strategy. It wants to be perceived as the brand which believes in constant innovation. In fact, with its per second billing technology, it revolutionized the mobile operators market and garnered huge market share. When the others followed, Tata Docomo featured a new advertisement with the message, "What we do, the others follow"...perfect! Spot on with its positioning. Also, they tried to reposition their competitors as followers - the laggards.

However, they missed out on an opportunity to attack their larger competitors. Yes, their larger competitors followed; they responded to lower calling rates - 50p/sec,per second billing, etc. This is what Tata Docomo could've exploited to a much larger extent than just "Do the new, others will follow". They could've repositioned their competition as fleecing the consumers. How about an ad which conveyed the message,"If we can charge our consumers lower, we don't keep high call rates. We don't wait for someone to show the consumers the reality."

This could have delivered a major shock to the reputation of Airtel, Vodafone and Idea. Airtel would be perceived as "Express yourself (at a higher cost)", Vodafone as "Happy to help (if you pay us more)" and Idea as "What an Idea Sirji!(Charge the customers more.)". The large competitors would have taken ages to build up their brand image again and Tata Docomo could have exploited this opportunity to gain incremental market share.