"
Strong partners have the knowledge to measure promise against reality, the flexibility to seize opportunity, and the experience to deliver certainty"
So reads
Tata Consultancy Services' (
TCS) full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal. The message is reiterated in the company's corporate brochure and other media outlets as part its $10 million 'Experience Certainty' advertising campaign.
Why blog about an advertising campaign, you ask? That's because unlike the myriad of campaigns run by global IT giants IBM,
Accenture and so on, or even the Indian service providers
Infosys or
Wipro, this is the first branding exercise ever by India's oldest and largest IT services company.
And many might argue it's due. A recent
Business Today article reports that with annual revenues of over $4 billion,
TCS is the eleventh largest player globally. In terms of market capitalization, the company is ranked fourth globally, behind IBM, HP and
Accenture. The company's headcount of 89,000-plus employees also ranks fifth in the global order. Further, this workforce is truly global with almost 10% of the employees located outside India, thereby, facilitating global service delivery models and significant scale benefits. Yet, it is
Infosys that finds mistaken mention in the
Economist as India’s largest it services company and forms the context for Tom Friedman's yarn on the flat world.
But
TCS is not aiming for brand recall among Indian outsourcing providers. Based on the findings of a recently
commissioned study by strategic branding firm
Siegel+Gale that people were not sure which outsourcing firm was third in the global pecking order after IBM and
Accenture,
TCS wants to fill that coveted position.
And the new campaign is a part of a 10-month effort of becoming a familiar name in the boardrooms of Europe and America.
Experience certainty.
Labels: outsourcing, service providers, TCS
