Telecom is one sector which is known to produce some of the best marketing and communication plans across all industries. Whether it be the “ZooZoos” of Vodafone, “What an Idea Sirjee!” for Idea, Stand-up comedy of Ranbir Kapoor for Tata Docomo or the legendary “Har ek Friend Zaroori Hota hai” of Airtel; each is well known and recalled by all. Where Airtel moved on to “Jo tera hai wo mera hai”, Idea to “Honey Bunny” and Vodafone to “Zumi Zumi”, Tata Docomo decided to enter into a different strategy for selling their products. I am talking about the, “When doing this, think of us because leading xyz companies use our network, do you?” ads.
I believe that these ads are inclined at increasing the B2C (Business to Consumer) customer base of the company by leveraging on their B2B (Business to Business) clients. So instead of using the usual formula of getting a brand ambassador as the trust factor for the product, the company thought of making better use of what they already have: the known brand names that people associate with!
Divya Sreenivas, a trainee at Tata Administrative Services currently with the Teleservices department concurs with this and says, “These ads help in generating top of mind recall by building associations with things that people look upon as favorable like pizzas or trustworthy as banks… Since people don’t connect emotionally with a network, you remind them of the things they
like or trust!”
If we look at the typical ad in this campaign, it has got many things right: the all too familiar Docomo soundtrack, regular looking common people for better association, a trust factor in the form of the known brand names and to-the-point message communication. Yet I feel that somewhere this campaign does not hit the bull’s eye. These ads are not in the usual foray of the telecom ads, the ones which either makes you hum the tunes or bring a smile to your face as you get impressed by what you just saw. Also, personally as a customer, I don’t really get affected if Pizza Hut or India TV uses Docomo or not (unless I am a huge fan of India TV!) and this is the reason why Telecom ads seldom sell their products and often sell the brand association; something which is not very connectable in this case. In the words of Barney Stintson, “It does not contain the right amount of Awesome!” :P
I do not know whether these ads have actually worked for the company or not but I feel that this B2B to B2C brand association may not be that effective and that they need to come up with something better and bigger if they want to stay afloat in this market where change is the only constant. I remember Tata Docomo took the industry by storm when it entered and was the only thing people talked about in those days! Hope to see a much improved campaign from them!
A few Ads from the current campaign:
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