Vodafone looks to revamp brand, marketing strategy

Vodafone, the world's largest mobile services firm, will revamp its brand and marketing strategy in the UK for the first time in four years in a move to beef up its image, a media report says.     

The mobile-phone giant is ditching its "Make the most of now" tag line after four years in favour of "Power to you" as it prepares to launch a suite of new services to capitalise on the growing popularity of the mobile internet, The Times has reported.     

The report quoted the company chief executive Vittorio Colao as saying, "It is not the brand talking any more and telling the customer what to do. It is the customer who will decide. I am trying to steer the whole company in this direction."     

The new tag line would begin appearing on all of its communications over the next six weeks, daily said.     

The report said, Colao wants to transform Vodafone, which has 315 million customers, into one of the world's best-loved brands and drive switch to smart phones such as iPhones and BlackBerrys.     

This autumn it would take on Apple's "app store" by launching a service to sell applications that can be downloaded from other content providers, the report added.

"Power to you" is only Vodafone's second global brand campaign since "How are you?", introduced into several markets in 2001 after a spree of acquisitions. Vodafone spends almost 600 million pounds a year on advertising.     

The launch comes amid concerns that Vodafone has fallen behind in Britain, where it could drop into third place when T-Mobile and Orange merge.     

"We built Vodafone UK with an incredibly strong position in the business segment. The consumer DNA has come later than, say, in Portugal or India," the reported said quoting Colao.