It has been said that half of the money spent on advertising is wasted, but no one can find out which half. Also, it has been said that just as in war, the strategy is half the battle; the other half is the advertising itself.
Commuting around Mumbai, one's eye can't miss hundreds of bright orange and white coloured bus shelters reaching out to you with a common theme "while you drive", forming part of the Max Touch's (Hutchison Max) latest campaign. The messages painted may be worded differently but hit the same chords: "Turn your car into a conference room"; "Conference held in bumper-to-bumper traffic"; "Deals clinched at 50 km per hour"; "Three meetings conducted at a traffic signal"; "New business acquired at a zebra crossing". And, now there are teasers: "Make important calls instead of reading this message"; "Clinch deals instead of reading this message". All driving home the message and the benefits. Focused on the commuting business segment.
One also can't miss the cute little car-stickers carrying similar messages: "Honk less! Talk more"; "Don't disturb. Meeting in progress"; "My private PCO-STD-ISD booth". Today, these are believed to be quite in demand by car-owners though initially introduced purely at the latters' discretion.
The campaign has music too: the lilting jingles on FM radio based on haunting melodies from old Hindi and Western classics: "Manubhai motor chaley, pomp-pomp ..."; "Babu samjho isharey, horan pukarey, pomp-pomp ..."; "Baby you can drive my car, yes I'm going to be a star ...". Customers even cared to call back customer care centre: the calls of success.
In order to accelerate the demand, it is important toeducate the users about benefits of a product or service,in a very simple easy to understand message. |
If in business, one can't miss the impact of such a powerful though simple message. It is the business segment, the early majority, that realizes the benefits of cell phones first and dominates cellular revenues initially. It can't be sheer accident that the campaign coincided with great spurt in subscribers in Mumbai.
In order to accelerate the demand, it is important to educate the users about benefits of a product or service, in a very simple easy-to-understand message. There are many cases of poor start-up of similar services due to lack of such an effort. In the UK, we hear paging operators launched with ads which were able to attract attention but made little impact, the message being too abstract to convey the benefits. David Ogilvy says, "A good advertisement is one which sells the product without drawing attention to itself." In some neighboring countries, we hear of cellular service becoming popular only after monopoly was broken by bringing in second operator resulting in promotion of service by both.
In India, this task is even greater and the cost of undertaking such an exercise can be extremely high. Therefore, all players need to participate in such an educational exercise to generate and accelerate the demand, by popularizing benefits of the service, be it economic or social say, security and status. A generic educational campaign for a new service like cellular helps all the players but sets the leadership paradigm.
Mark Twain when informed that the phone cable had reached all the way from Maine to Texas.... "But do the people in Maine have anything to say to the people in Texas?" The sceptic half! Beware!
Niraj K. Gupta, from my cell, Voice & Data, December, 1996.