State of Telecom Industry in Pakistan

Recently I stumbled upon Mobile Marketing Association website. I found the information there to be quite useful. One of the report on their site was about consumer guideline and best practices for marketing to consumers. The context is US market but the principles mentioned in the report are applicable anywhere. I hope that the designers and implementers of mobile marketing programs in Pakistan and Asia pay attention to these. Otherwise mobile advertising may be looked upon as another form of annoyance.

The complete report in pdf: Mobile Marketing Consumer Best Practices

Some of the topics covered in the report include:

• Unsolicited Messages
• Opt-in Mechanisms
• Privacy
• Sweepstakes and Contests
• Free to End User Programs
• Billing (charges related to marketing)
• Customer Care
• Dispute Resolution

Guest Post By Umar Farooq

This post is referring to the service you use on your mobile device, which is powered by your location at the moment in time. It could have GPS working behind it or could be the network operators Base Stations ( Antenna Towers ) where your location is being calculated.

In the recent past, operators have a hard time deciding whether to offer Location Based Services or not. Arguments in favor of the debate include,

1) Large Subscriber bases
2) Increasing mobile penetration
3) Availability of more advertisement real estate

and against the debate,

1) Substantial infrastructure cost
2) Market readiness
3) Driving safety

There are more arguments on both sides but these could be taken as primary ones at the moment. Looking a the arguments in favor, the only point which will effect the service for the end-user is the where it will enable operators to use it as an advertisement real-estate. Subscribers will be bothered every-time they pass by a pizza outlet, which has placed its advertisement with the respective operator. An SMS on your handset every time you pass near a boutique, can become quite irritating.

Arguments against the service keep in view that market may have become quite large but it is not ready to take on complex services at this moment. It will be sometime before market matures itself to the point of absorbing this service.And then the disturbance it will cause while you are driving, could be significant enough to mark an increase in road accidents.

While keeping all of this in view, it would be worthy to find out what the readers of this blog feel about this service, if introduced into the market.

Please feel free to post your comments about the possible pros and cons of this service.

Umar Farooq is currently working as Director at a telecommunication services and consulting company. He has worked with Ericsson in the past, with its Systems Integration unit. Umar is a graduate of Ghulam Ishaq Khan Insitute.

Here’s an interesting marketing trend inspired by mobile phone culture. Building on the popularity of Text messaging advertisers are using the texting acronyms (omg, bff, g2g etc) in their ads. I’m sure phone companies are enjoying this attention — after all data has become one of their major revenue producers. I have also noticed this in magazines. However all this new vocabulary may leave parents confused and that is not exactly what the advertisers want. This goes back to the generation gap post I did a while ago. A recent Wall Street Journal article notes this trend emphasizes that it is important to explain the shorthand, otherwise the ad will miss a large number of its audience!

Young adults 18 to 24 years old spend about 32 minutes a day texting, according to the Yankee Group, a research company. The texting phenomenon has given rise to acronyms like “paw” (parents are watching), “lol” (laughing out loud), “g2g” (got to go) and “ooc” (out of control).

Some of the ads that use the shorthand have drawn a big audience. Cingular’s spot has attracted more than 1 million views on YouTube thus far. The ad, for an unlimited texting plan offered by the carrier, featured a mom questioning her daughter, Bethann, about all the texting she was doing. Bethann’s response: “o-m-g, i-n-b-d.” (Translation: “Oh my gosh, it’s no big deal.”) She explains to her mom that she is texting her “bff Jill.” The ad has spawned numerous imitations on YouTube.

Frito-Lay, McDonald’s, AT&T and others have tried to demonstrate their street cred to the teenage set by using text-messaging abbreviations in their commercials. An Internet video ad for McDonald’s in Korea shows two men warming up their vocal cords to sing the McDonald’s “I’m lovin’ it” jingle. At the end of the video, a voice-over chimes in: “Are you ready?” The screen reads: “r u ready?”

Mobilink offers SMS marketing as one of the business services. The page on the MobilinkWorld site boasts of the 20+ million subscriber base. This service allows up to 1o million messages to be sent. So if one has the funds and wants to reach tens of millions of mobilink customers, its that easy. And the 10 million limit does not seem to be an absolute one, I am certain there are ways around that if the price is right.

What about subscriber rights? Can the subscribers opt-out? In the terms and conditions its mentioned that “Subscribers will be given the option to opt out of receiving broadcast messages“.

This is a typical case of the provider keeping the control and limiting choices for subscribers. I am not singling out Mobilink but using it as an example. It sounds to me that only after the subscribers start getting these messages they are given the option of taking some action to stop future messages. What action is needed for customers to avoid getting these messages? Where is the policy defined?

Wireless week has a special report out on mobile advertising- its challenges and rewards. As with any new technology, business is trying to make sense of what will work. The report points out that “advertisers are familiar with working with print, TV, radio and the Internet as separate entities. But mobile networks can bring together the Internet, video, text, gaming, music and more.”  An important point as emphasized in the report is: Advertisers want to buy audiences and not technology.

I am including an excerpt about the sms based advertising in the US. I consider this approach relevant to Pakistan’s market.

Text-based campaigns and WAP sites have become the two main avenues for brands to reach mobile subscribers.

One of the companies involved in text-based advertising is qtags, a Houston-based mobile marketing company that uses short codes to provide mobile interactive content, including promotions and coupons. Its clients include Accenture, NAS Recruitment, Fidelity Investments, Toyota, Verizon Wireless, American Express, CITI and Hewlett Packard.

“Our goal,” says founder Allison Gower, “is to help the consumer control their advertising.” Qtags connects consumers and brands off-line and online, Gower says, by making content interactive via SMS. An example is texting a keyword like “Verizon” to qtags’ shortcode, 78247, and the user gets information about jobs available at Verizon Wireless. The texts are saved online. Many of the current campaigns are job recruitment related.

The service can help brand names build communities of consumers who have an interest in their products, Gower says. The overall service is free of advertising although community sites might have sponsored sites.

Mobile provides context of time and place, she says. When someone enters a store and sees a promotion, a consumer can text to get specials listed on their phone.

Read more »

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.

Google, Yahoo and others are in a fierce fight to grow and capture the mobile phone advertisement market .  Yahoo came up with new search and web 2.0 features earlier this year in support of its mobile ads. Localized versions are available as well such as Yahoo India. Google has made its popular applications available on the mobiles as well but is still not as dominant in this space as they are on the Internet. The most recent trend is to pre-load the apps on mobile phones to make it easy for end users and encourage higher usage. The hard part? Google has to work with phone companies - example of this was the deal with SK Telecom. However dealing with each service provider is a slow and tedious approach. Wall Street Journal reports about this struggle.

Google, which has made billions of dollars in Web advertising on computers, is courting wireless operators to carry handsets customized to Google products, including its search engine, email and a new mobile Web browser, say people familiar with the plans. It wants to capture a big chunk of the fast-growing market for ads on cellphones

Google has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the cellphone project, say people who have been briefed on it. It has developed prototype handsets, made overtures to operators such as T-Mobile USA and Verizon Wireless, and talked over technical specifications with phone manufacturers. It hopes multiple manufacturers will make devices based on its specs and multiple carriers will offer them.

For wireless operators, the plans are a double-edged sword. Google’s powerful brand and its popular Web services could help operators sign up more subscribers to data packages, on which they increasingly rely as voice revenue declines. However, operators have been wary about losing control over the mobile-ad market.

Read more »

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.

As I reported earlier, Google gives cellphone users a mini version of its search engine which can be used via sms and speech. Now Google wants to become a gateway for finding and paying for mobile media content. It is also trying to come up with a service to broker ads for other mobile web sites, competing with Yahoo and start-ups in the lucrative mobile advertising space.

According to Yankee Group, global sales of music, video, ring-tones and other content reached $27.4 billion last year, and they are expected to grow to $59.3 billion by 2011. With the new system by Google, users would search for a piece of content – such as a popular ring-tone — and get back a list of providers as well as links enabling them to easily purchase the material. Google can charge companies for high placement in the search results, much the way it offers “sponsored links” on computer Web searches.

WSJ reports on this:

Google has been working for months with content providers — including large entertainment companies and smaller mobile-media aggregators — to index their material and make it available via mobile search. But the project has been marred by a series of technical delays, people familiar with the matter say, illustrating that there’s a learning curve as Internet giants adjust to the peculiarities of the mobile world. It isn’t clear how soon Google plans to launch the service.

Read more »

I thought this picture which appeared at BusinessWeek.com was interesting - advertising of mobile phones on wheels. As you can read here, this van is used for advertising Nokia phones in rural areas of India. I find this no different than the specially painted Hummers jeeps used for advertising at local gatherings in the US but somehow the picture above is more colorful than anything I have seen in US. According to the story:

Staffers park these advertisements-on-wheels in villages, often on market or festival days. There, with crowds clustering around, Nokia reps explain the basics of how the phones work and how to buy them. Nokia has extended the concept to minivans, which can reach even more remote places.

As the story mentions, Nokia offers special features for phones in rural areas such as dustproof cases (crucial in dry rural areas) and flashlights (helpful during the frequent power outages). The designs are one big reason Nokia now claims more than 70% of the Indian market for GSM handsets (India has CDMA as well). Obviously the rural areas in Pakistan can take advantage of these phone features as well.

Another interesting note refers to community buying - something which women commonly organize in Pakistan and refer to it as “committee”.

Through conversations with slum dwellers, Nokia learned that many people form buying clubs, pooling their money to buy handsets one at a time until every member has one. The members draw lots to see who gets phones in what order.

I am not sure though how easily do people in remote areas deal with the phone menus. My guess is that they learn the basic operations and are unable to take advantage of other features. Hopefully as mobile handset companies pay more attention to the next billion of users they will find some solutions.

Voice search for mobile phones is one of the killer applications  - just think of all the people for whom mobile is the main tool for connectivity and they do not prefer to - or simply cannot - type. How nice it would be if the phone understood your speech and provided accurate information based on your voice commands? Well we are not there yet … but there are some positive developments. When Google and Microsoft step in, things move fast and people pay attention. Here’s a summary based on a recent WSJ article.

Google released a free experimental service last week called Google Voice Local Search. It allows users to dial a number 1-800-GOOG-411 (in US) and search for businesses in specific cities, using technology that recognizes what callers speak. It will connect you to the business or you can get the results via SMS.

Google’s test announcement comes a few weeks after Microsoft announced plans to buy Tellme Networks  for a price that people familiar with the matter put at $800 million. The closely held Silicon Valley company specializes in services that combine voice-recognition technology with the Web, and already provides automated directory-assistance services for AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless, a joint venture of Verizon Communications Inc. and Vodafone Group PLC.

Yahoo is also planning to enter the voice search race, which is largely driven by the huge opportunity to sell ads that will run on mobile phones– and by the fact that Google doesn’t dominate that business, as it does for searches that use computers. Yahoo officials say spoken queries could eventually become an option; two executives from Tellme recently joined Yahoo.

The Journal Adds:

Until recently, voice recognition has mainly been used by telephone carriers and companies to lower their costs by reducing the need for live operators. Recently, that technology also has been used by some new entrants to provide free, ad-supported alternatives to paid directory assistance, such as Jingle Networks Inc.’s 1-800-FREE411 service.

The latest push by technology companies is also designed to make voice-based searches better, not just less expensive.

Google’s experimental service, like the Web, can work even if callers don’t know the name of a business they want. A user can ask about a type of business, such as a coffee shop, and specify an intersection or ZIP Code. The service will read off a list of nearby businesses that fit the criteria.

Another step, being pushed by Tellme in a service it has been testing, is to let users start with a spoken query, but display the results from that question on the display screen of their handset. Besides the name of a pizza shop, for example, a user could instantly see a map to it. That capability, which requires software downloaded to a handset, could also ultimately help the user complete a transaction, such as order a pizza.

“Voice is a great way to input information,” said Angus Davis, a Tellme co-founder. “It’s not always the best way to get output.”

Combining other kinds of information also can improve searches. Verizon, using technology from start-up Medio Systems , allows users to speak the name of ringtones, games or other things they want to buy. The technology can guess whether callers are interested in, say, the weather in Seattle or a band called Weather in Seattle by analyzing their past searches, said Brian Lent, Medio founder and chief executive.

Microsoft, besides mobile search, says it plans to use Tellme technology to add voice input for many products, including computers and hand-held devices. A spokeswoman for Google said, “having quick, free access to local business information over the phone may prove to be very valuable to our end users.”