Showing posts with label Bharti Airtel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bharti Airtel. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 09, 2013

If 30 second films win hearts, this one ropes-in the mind too!

This is Docomo’s third ad-campaign during the IPL season, making it three in a row. Expectation from the brand is overblown, but the TVCs are bound to leave an impact

For every minute that went by in February last, Tata Docomo lost 44 customers in the domestic telecom market. That reality was unique to just Docomo. Every other telecom operator’s subscriber base grew during that month. While the industry’s overall base grew 0.82% to reach 911.17 million in February, Docomo lost 2.1%. In terms of customer additions during the month, while the top four players showed a remarkable rise – Bharti Airtel, Reliance, Vodafone and Idea, Docomo’s m-o-m growth fell 24.6%.

While industry watchers blamed the brand rejig exercise (that saw all brands of Tata’s telecom – Indicom, Photon & Docomo – being brought under the Docomo umbrella) for this performance, company sources told 4Ps B&M that the fall in customer base was only because they got rid of all non-active customers from their database. Sounds fair. Whatever be the cause, we have seen the effect. As for the company, by launching a TVC campaign (of four ads so far titled, Idli, Menu, Spoon & Cricket match), it made a prominent mention that it will try all to rebuild equity of the brand, and not slip beyond the 6th spot on the whiteboard.

Like the previous two years, the company chose the IPL season (April-May) as the months to step on the gas as far as advertising is concerned. The campaign also marked a hattrick of togetherness for the trio – Ranbir Kapoor (RK), Docomo & IPL. Unlike the previous two years however, this time, the TVCs contain that extra dash of humour. There is a common production set used for all four ad-films, and the character count is limited in each TVC. Though the scripts used are brief, the creative concept from the shelves of DraftFCB-Ulka helps in getting the message across to the audience without burning much air time. That is praiseworthy. Then of course there is Ranbir, who plays the role of an old ‘phlegmatic’ man, and as expected, does well. Talking about the advantages of roping-in the popular young actor for the third IPL in a row, Ritesh Ghosal, Head – Brand Marketing, Tata Teleservices, says, “In a cluttered window as IPL, where I get 120 seconds spot in a three hour game, in order to stand out and make the most of this very expensive media property, I needed to do all I could to make the ads work. So, we kept the ads short. Also, with Ranbir Kapoor, you get the direct benefit of his fan following, besides being guaranteed of a good act in your TVC to appeal to your TG of 15 to 35 year-olds.”


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
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Saturday, July 28, 2012

4G Calling: Are we Ready?

Operators in India are still fixing the loose ends in their 3G networks but 4G technologies are already knocking on their doors.

The rollout of Fourth Generation, or 4G, services is the next big thing for India’s telecom sector. Operators like Reliance Industries, which has broadband wireless access (BWA) spectrum in all 22 telecom circles in India, are already chalking out plans. According to industry buzz, RIL is finalising vendors who would supply broadband equipment based on LTE technology for rolling out wireless broadband services by the end of this year. The other operators with BWA spectrum are also conducting trials to test 4G-based technologies. Qualcomm, Bharti Airtel, Aircel, Tikona and Reliance Infotel are some of the major players who own spectrum in the 2.3 Ghz band and are planning to launch 4G-based broadband services. The largest private telco, Bharti Airtel (which got BWA licence in just 4 circles), says that its 4G strategy depends on future allocations in 700Mhz and FDD 2.5Ghz bands and on its technology trials for BWA launch.

Fourth Generation telecom services are the next generation to the 3G and 2G families of cellular wireless standards and 4G is already the buzzword in many parts of the world. It is the next step in the evolution of mobile data transfer. The services are currently on offer globally by 64 telecom service providers in 31 countries. In the US, Sprint and T-Mobile have already launched 4G-based LTE networks. But in truth, 4G services as we know them today are more like 3.75G, or late stage 3G because “true 4G” networks are still in the works. The important thing, however, is that these networks are ready to be upgraded to full 4G once it arrives, which is expected between 2011 and mid-2012. Also, the underlying technology for providing 4G services is not the same. Sprint and T-Mobile, for example, use WiMax technology for their 4G network, while another player Verizon Wireless uses LTE. But irrespective of the choice of technology, 4G wireless is designed to deliver up to 100 Mbps of download speed and 50 Mbps of upload speed. On an average, 4G wireless today is anywhere from four to ten times faster than the existing 3G networks.

In India, full-fledged 4G services could be some years away as telecom operators continue to grapple with issues related to 3G infrastructure. So far, even the response to 3G rollout has not exactly been encouraging. Analysts estimate that India currently has 10 million 3G subscribers, or approximately 1.25% of the country’s total wireless subscriber base. While the number of 3G subscribers may be small, it is still significant considering that till date, there are only 11 million wireline broadband customers. Despite the poor quality of service to customers, the numbers are clearly on a rise and are expected to reach 142 million in 2015. Wireless networks have already started offering third generation capabilities, which provide benefits of increased data transfer speed and easier access to applications and Internet from mobile devices. The migration to 4G technologies (WiMax and LTE), which offer even better wireless connectivity speeds between 100 Mbps and 1 Gbps, is only to be expected. Predictably, more action on 4G is almost a certainty over the next couple of years as the demand for even more efficient data-centric services keeps growing. The trend is already visible in the increasing hordes of users accessing richer and more customised content, and asking for greater, faster and more efficient forms of delivery. Analysts project that by 2015, mobile internet traffic will increase to 23 Exabytes, which will be equivalent to 6.3 billion people downloading a digital book every day, 50% on laptops and the other 50% on small devices like mobile phones. As a result, the demand on laptop capacity would go up by 1000% and on small devices by 10,000%.


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