Interesting to see the two rivals advertising side-by-side.
Can you tell where is this? Easy enough as there is a hint in the picture.: photo courtsey of Lahore Metro Blogs. Read full story here to see what happens when sun goes down.
Almost after a year of its arrival to Pakistan, China Mobile is making a big impact on the telecom market of Pakistan. With Paktel’s new Zong campaign it has taken a fresh, bold and humorous approach to marketing. The choice of name is interesting - a bit “Chinese” it seems. I found the ad hilarious (Himmat hey to pass kro warna bardasht kro). No doubt, the bar has been raised.
Another notable point was that the pre-launch buzz was created by using quite a few channels including social networking. The TV campaign has been well received as well. See the clip below.
The last promotions and service packages caused a big surge in subscribers to Paktel. Let’s see how this one goes!
A reader of the blog shared a very interesting article about dealing with telemarketers. Also see previous post on the topic of unwanted calls.
The article gives you ideas on what to say and do when you get these annoying marketing callas. For those of you who have been a victim this will make a lot of sense. These tips are mainly for the US market but the general theme can be used in Pakistan and anywhere else!
Here’s some guidance and suggestions from InsideCRM. See the full article on InsideCRM site.
Quite interesting - some will find it hilarious. Looking to raise your social standing and got money to spend? Ufone is giving these so-called ”Golden Numbers” through online bidding as you can see from the screen snapshot.
This is a worldwide fact that certain phone numbers (or number plates!) carry prestige and social status and are worth substantial money. As you may have read in my previous posts, this is something which is part of our social fibre. Ufone is using an interesting approach to make money from this craze. By the way there are some comments on this blog where readers want to know how they can get a premium number .. so here you go!
Thanks to Tee Emm for bringing this to my attention. Tee Emm provides some insights:
Numbers that contain a repeated pair within their entirety are called silver number. Hence, by this mob definition, this number would be considered a silver number: 03xx 384 7788. Next comes the golden number - four or more similar numbers. Generally, the companies would make a geniune effort to provide their post paid customers with a silver or a golden number either free or at a cost.
With certain of its marketing practices being somewhat ’slack’, when Warid launched, their telemarketers used to call every 0300 post paid number telling them that their ‘Warid’ number is already reserved and they just need to call from the mobilink number to get it activated in their name. Hence, they blocked the entire series from the general sales.
Here’s more from Ufone site about the bidding process.
You are required to enter the serial number and 12-digit secret PIN from an unused Rs.100 Ufone scratch card every time you want to submit a new bid.
Your bid will only be accepted if it is at least Rs.5000 more than the current highest bid of your desired number. Bid amount should be in multiples of Rs.5000. Bids will only be accepted between 10:00am and 10:00pm every day.
This new series will bring you interesting telecom and technology news bytes and headlines from around the world. Please share comments on whether this is something you’d like to read on a regular basis.
Cell phone helps Japanese stay in shape. NTT DoCoMo introduced a “Fitness Phone,” designed to help the user stay healthy — and avoid bad breath (just breathe into the phone to get a reading). The primary target groups are said to be fat-fighting middle-aged businessmen and young women on diets. Sounds like a great combination of market segments to me! See a video demo here.
China Mobile and other Hong Kong telecom stock peaked recently because of 3G expectations. Telecom stocks also gained after the Chinese regulator said it is relaxing the pricing and other policies in the mainland’s fifth 3G license auction. “Talk in the market that China will issue the 3G licenses soon and restructure the sector drove telecom shares higher,” said Jackson Wong, investment manager at Tanrich Securities.
India is planning 50,000 WiMAX based Internet kiosks. BSNL is set to issue tenders for setting up 50,000 Common Service Centres catering to semi-urban and rural areas across the country. The project has a target date of Aug 2008 and is expected to get a special spectrum clearance. BSNL has bigger plans for WiMAX rollout in urban areas as well.
Adobe released new version of its flash player for cell phones, Adobe Flash Lite 3. This version promises to bring the quality of live video on cellular phones closer to that of video on computers. More than a billion Flash-enabled devices are expected to be available by 2010. Nokia is betting on this new version to bring rich content such as videos and animated ringtones to its phones. More here.
Vodafone is increasing its push to India and Chinaamong other countries. Vodafone CEO Sarin’s main strategy is to increase Vodafone’s presence in countries that are driving regional economic growth and gain a majority stake in the right companies. Vodafone has majority stakes in wireless firms in India, South Africa and Romania. Is Pakistan part of Vodafone’s plans? No indications so far.
Disney will shut down its branded cellphone service. It had planned to sell phones featuring Disney content and services aimed at children and their parents. However, MVNO model failed to take off. Disney will instead license its content to other carriers.
Thanks to TM for sharing these at his blog. I loved these ads for their topic, message, presentation, and the fresh approach to marketing. As Atif pointed out with a few other ad campaigns covered here and here, this is a great way to provide a public service message and promote your brand. The fact that it is a departure from the usual ads in Pakistan makes it even more fun.
You can see additional ads in this series here.
Good news for Mobilink’s Jazzy customers: Jazz Advance, a new product feature has been introduced by Mobilink. Mobilink’s website describes it as: Jazz Advance enables customers to obtain advance balance by simply calling 123. So you can complete your conversation and keep talking.
Jazz Advance adds value to the brand’s personality while assuring brand loyalty within its customers and offering another attraction for prospects.
The thing that kept me laughing and enjoying TV was Mobilink’s commercial regarding introduction of Jazz Advance. The story board, characters (especially Aslam Bhai ) and message was very clear and well knitted around the brand’s strategy and target segment. Have a look:
Now coming back to the service, on reaching minimal balance i.e. Rs 3.50, one can avail an advance balance of Rs 5.00. The advance amount will be deducted from next recharge. Here, the amount is not big but the help being provided by this feature is important because there could be many situations where one already has felt need for such convenience consciously or unconsciously.
The effect of cut-throat competition is much visible here. Almost all GSM companies in general and Mobilink & Telenor specifically are continuously adding value to their prepaid and postpaid brands to create favorable positioning and to aggressively penetrate for higher market share.
The Customer Relationship Management (CRM) approach adopted by Mobilink is very well integrated with product development & brand management to maximize value for end user . This creates relationship barriers so that customer does not feel being left alone, lowering the chance to switch brand.
Related Items:
See this Discussion at Telecom Grid Pakistan.
I know, this sounds like a joke at first but if you think about it and the rising popularity of presence tools like Twitter, the “social impact” of mobile phones and technology starts to make sense. This post is based on a news report from Australia which tells us about mobile phone addiction. This week one reader of my blog post commented on how people in Pakistan seem to have little courtesy or etiquette when it comes to mobile phones.
Shari Walsh, from the Queensland University of Technology, has done some research on this topic. She conducted focus groups and surveyed about 500 mobile phone users and presented results at the 2007 Mobile Media Conference which suggested mobile phone addiction could be the new psychological disorder of the 21st century. Over 90 per cent of Australians own a mobile phone. Here’s more from the article referenced above.
The study says that the length of time a person spends on the phone does not necessarily mean they are addicted to it.
“It all depends on whether or not they have negative outcomes, so whether they have a distress when they’re unable to use their phone, whether there are times that they should be doing something else like driving for instance, but have such a strong conviction to use their phone that they’ll actually use the phone while driving, even though they know they shouldn’t,” she said.
Ms Walsh says people do not get addicted to phones, it is more likely they get addicted to being connected to other people.
In the gadget world, camera (mobile) phones are all the rage. The introduction of digital cameras a few years ago provided ordinary people a new level of empowerment as it allowed experimentation and room for errors. Camera phones have taken this activity to yet another level. The decline in prices of camera phones have accelerated the trend. It is common to see people use their phones to take a picture at all kinds of places. This has resulted in plenty of user generated content and many start-ups who are trying to create businesses out of this trend.
Pakistan has a large camera phone user base. In fact I think (can anyone support this assumption?) that Pakistani usage of their phones as cameras is higher than many other comparable countries. Possible reasons which come to mind: people may not afford to buy a separate digital camera, don’t have or care for a pc, they are perfectly happy with keeping and exchanging photos and videos on the phone.
The situations and scenarios for camera phone usage can be endless - and not all are appropriate (technology has always been abused). Being a personal device a phone is always or mostly with the individual so the probability to take a picture of something unexpected or fortuitous is much higher with a camera phone than with a camera. Here I am going to tell a story about a Pakistaniat blog post which would fit a scenario where mobile phone would make it easy to capture something which could be otherwise missed.
This is when the Czech prime minister visited Pakistan in May. Someone confused the Czech flag with the check flag - that is the checkered flag as in racing. Adil Najam took a photo and posted this story at ATP. Interestingly this story was picked up by the Czech media and went viral, resulting in lots of interesting comments and traffic spike for ATP. In the end it turned out as a chance for Czech and Pakistani citizens to exchange stories and some laughs.
10. No cell phones made in Pakistan
09. Not much of Urdu services or local content (who needs it when you are having so much fun)
08. Driving + talking on mobile = Accidents …. And no one is doing anything about it
07. People using their phone as a status symbol
06. No unlimited calling plans
05. Silly advertising which is completely out of touch with ground realities
04. PTA: Sleepy customer service + a lousy web site where finding information is a pain
03. Too many fancy schmancy services (eg mobile TV) but 3G and data services are still a rip off
02. Prime Minister firing off a statement every few days about rising mobile subscriber numbers, implying that all our problems are now solved and demanding that all the foreign investment should flow to Pakistan.
01. Mobile phone snatching
This picture was posted at Flickr by a Japinder Singh at Wahga, in India. I was laughing hard after reading the comments to this picture:
that is funny…apney signal te aundey ni te gawandiyan de catch kardey ne….
Translation: Can’t even get our own signals and you are catching the neighbor’s signals.
I admit right now that in translating I have not done justice to the original Punjabi comment!
Japinder explains : I wasnt getting any signal there so was searching in manual mode.. and this is what i got.
For those who are not aware - Wahga is the border town between India and Pakistan, on the East side near Lahore.
The 2007 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) which is going on in Las Vegas this week is the biggest show in its category in the US. This year Apple has caused a lot of buzz with its iPhone (see Pakistan’s wired forum discussion on iPhone in Pakistan). But there were many other interesting product and service announcements at CES as well. I would have loved to attend this show but anyway I am enjoying the online coverage of the show. Here are some excerpts from telecom related blog posts from WSJ - for the source and more posts visit their site.
Jobs Crashes the CES Party
Over at Macworld, Steve Jobs is whipping the crowd into a frenzy and striking fear in the hearts of phone companies around the world. Yes, Apple formally unveiled a new cellphone, as predicted. There were still plenty of surprises, however: The phone will have a touch-sensitive screen and no keypad, and will use a wireless connection to sync with Apple’s iTunes store. It can also browse the Internet using Cingular’s high-speed network.
Back to the Future with M
obile Broadcasts
As Internet and media companies give consumers ever-more ways to watch a piece of video programming at the moment they want it – through on-demand downloads and time-shifting – the cellphone industry is moving in the opposite direction: bringing people old school broadcasts of live TV.
In their first go at mobile video, cellphone companies have all gone with the time-shifting model — letting consumers stream and download video clips whenever they want. The issue is that the existing network can’t support large numbers of people downloading the same long-form program at the same time. A broadcast system does that much better.
Scan Before You Super-Size
And here’s one more thing you won’t see in the U.S.: a cellphone that tells you how many calories are in your Big Mac extra-value meal. The Shine handset from LG Electronics, part of the company’s “Black Label” series, was designed jointly by LG and BMW, will be available in the U.S. this year. But in Japan, the phone has an additional function. McDonald’s has outfitted food wrappers and boxes with bar codes that, can be read by cameras in Shine phones. The phones then display nutritional information, calorie counts and allergy warnings.
LG’s line of phones — including the Chocolate phone in pink, gold and platinum — are getting a lot more attention than the company’s 71-inch plasma TVs.
Cisco’s Human Network
Cisco has a new marketing slogan: Human Network. CEO John Chambers’s eyes lit up during an interview yesterday, when he was asked whether phone, cable and mainstream media companies knew what they wanted, given the onslaught of competition and shift in consumer behavior. Are they overwhelmed by such rapid changes — and are they turning to Cisco for answers? “They know what they want,” he said. “They have a vision. But it’s all about execution.” Mr. Chambers showed how a consumer could listen to the song over a car stereo, exit the vehicle and pick the song up on a handheld device, enter the home and have the option of playing the song on the stereo or watch a music video on tv. “Your content follows you on any device, anywhere,” he said.
Mr. Chambers said the consumer can not be asked to create this network and should only have to sit back and take advantage. So the level of complexity will have to be solved by Cisco’s technology and its partners.
I like these new products. I am sure many of the products will spur more discussion and there will be more posts here.
This blog was started by Babar Bhatti to share and analyse new and interesting developments in Pakistan Telecom industry. More ...
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