China Mobile has announced last week that a new branding strategy, focused on different market segments, will be implemented soon.
The initiative has the aim to raise awareness about the company individual services: GoTone, the company flagship brand that supports international calling and roaming; M-Zone which targets the young; and Easyown (also known as Shenzhouxing), the company brand covering prepaid services for both national and international calls. At last but not at least, the new branding strategy also points at enhancing the value of its overall corporate brand and TD-SCDMA third generation 3G service that was launched just before the Olympics.
China Mobile seems to have devised this more segmented branding approach in response to the emerging competition. In fact, after a series of mergers and acquisitions China Unicom and China Telecom are becoming rising threats: the first one, after the merger with China Netcom in the biggest deal of this kind in China; the second one, after having acquired China Unicom’s CDMA mobile network and China Satellite Communication.
China Mobile brand value ranks first among Chinese brands. Still, the brand value has been driven also by monopoly the company has enjoyed domestically up until recently when the Chinese government has reorganized the telecom sector.
Given the current challenges the Chinese giant has decided to invest in improving the quality of its services and brand these to targeted consumers in a meaningful and relevant ways.
Will China Mobile succeed and maintain its no 1 position? Agencies responsible of accompanying the company in this challenge have not been appointed yet, but a targeted, more personal and thus more relevant approach can be certainly constitute the base of a successful strategy and brand communication plan.