Advertising Trends in Indian Telecom

The way telecom firms advertise, gives an approximate idea about the telecom trends. I would try to uncover some of them, which come to my mind. At the initial launch of the mobile services, they were advertised as lifestyle products. The message that sought to be conveyed was that if you have a mobile phone, you have arrived in life. A few well-healed people could afford the high call rates at that time. It was in no way for the masses. I am sure that the mobile companies made a large profit out of it. Perhaps for the first time, Indians were exposed to concepts alien to them: Customer Care Support. It saw a booming of the ancillary services and fresh graduates, stunted in mental development though, came out in droves for the well-paid jobs.

Airtel then sought the services of Sachin Tendulkar. He was the brand ambassador and saw his earnings sharply increasing. I saw his picture everywhere exhorting me buy the mobile prepaid card. After the initial publicity passed away, A.R. Rahman gave his now famous tune. All the other companies have variously tried other gimmicks to sell their connections.

However, the landscape changed after Reliance came in the mobile services. Mukesh Ambani was seen telling people about his fathers dream. The initial launch was lackluster. With the launch of the prepaid services, the punch line was “mujhme hai who baat” or “I have that thing!” I wonder how many people actually signed up after those ads. I believe that it was solely because of the “Monsoon Hungama” that Reliance was able to ramp up its numbers. Then came the ad line “Kar lo duniya muthi mein”. (Have the world in your fist). I remember that this became the butt of dirty jokes on the GSM networks! So much for imagination of creative heads of the ad agency.

The icing on the cake goes to Hutch. They designed the simple ad with the kid and cute Chinese Pug. It was a hit of all sorts. It conveyed the effectiveness of the message succinctly. I believe that it drove Hutch’s connections across the places where it offered its services. However, it was considered too elitist for the masses. The advertisement should be able to convey the message effectively; one with which people could identify with. In this regard, BSNL could claim something. BSNL’s advertisements depicted typically government mentality for awarding the contract to lowest in the tender process. The quality clearly shows. Is there anyway people could identify themselves with that advertisements? What of those places where BSNL is the sole service provider?

As the title goes, advertising trends are reflective of the current scenario in telecom. Airtel has been advertising its group card labeled as Friends. In fact, until now, the market was treated as homogenous. Over the period, classification has been sought to target the specific customers with specific needs. Airtel took the lead in announcing Senior citizen cards targeted at those above 60. The “Friends card” is for those who wish to restrict themselves to their group with low calling rates and some free messages.

Reliance has realized early on about targeting the businesses. Its offer of flat rate for making STD calls to anyone across its network is unparalleled. This way it can ensure that there would be higher converts towards it services. R-Connect is its portal that differentiated Reliance early on from other operators. It knows that future revenues are going to come from value added services. This way it has foreseen the development in the industry.

Following this, Airtel introduced its Airtel Live! I guess so have the other operators across board. The voice calls would not yield much as much as revenue as would the value added services. Hence, for the same reason they have introduced value added cards, which would help to download ring tones and other fancy stuff.

This is the reason I have always insisted that Telecom operators should get bullish on data services. 3G mobile services look good as technology demonstrators. Until the time, the prices for the 3G enabled handsets fall down to manageable levels, it would not take off. I believe that it takes up a large chunk of the scarce spectrum, which does not make any sense to introduce. WAP and GPRS were heavily promoted but have been more or less non-starters. The real differentiator would be the quality of services, cheap offering if these companies have to venture in the rural areas and the reach of the network.

In this regard, the division of India in circles is not in the right spirit. It should be taken as a homogenous land mass. The day is not far when it would be local call to call anywhere across the nation. Reliance has made this possible to some extent.

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This post was submitted by Dr. Abhishek Puri on the Broadband Blog on Techwhack.