Airtel Magic - Selling a Pre-paid Cellphone Service
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Details
Themes: Marketing Mix
Period : 2002
Organization : Bharti Cellular Limited, Spice Telecom
Pub Date : 2003
Countries : Switzerland
Industry : Cellular
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Case Code : MKTG040
Case Length : 12 Pages
Price: Rs. 300;
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Besides the new tagline of 'Magic Hai To Mumkin Hai,' Bharti devised many ad-specific taglines to take the brand closer to masses. Some of them were 'Kabhi bhi Kahin bhi' (Anytime, anywhere) 'Jahan Chaho, Airtel Magic Pao' (Wherever you want, you will find Magic), Airtel Magic gives you the max out of life, 'Kharch aapki mutthi mein' (Costs are under your control) and 'Life banao ab aur bhi aasaan' (Make life easier with Magic). To promote the brand and retain its customers, Bharti conducted many contests for its subscribers through SMS.
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For instance, the 'Khulja Sim Sim' contest launched in April 2002, offered a treasure hunt kind of an interactive game through SMS, wherein many attractive prizes were given to the winners. Many other such contests were held, either as part of a new scheme's promotional efforts or to coincide with some local Indian festival. In 2002, Bharti entered into many new telecom circles as the fourth player. Due to the strong brand equity of both Airtel and Magic it picked up instant momentum. Magic was reportedly very popular with customers (especially the youth) who appreciated the (ease of operation, affordability and ready availability) the brand offered. The Industry Strikes BackBharti's aggressive marketing, advertising and promotional efforts led other players to focus on their marketing efforts as well (Refer Exhibit IV for competition details). Companies resorted to price reductions, new service additions, value additions and focused advertising and promotional campaigns. |
For instance, in Mumbai, BPL Mobile and Hutchison Max Telecom made incoming calls (from across the country) free to counter Bharti's waiver of airtime charges for incoming calls in Mumbai. Apart from this, BPL and Hutchison also announced the launch of new advertising campaigns in Mumbai. Hutchison and BPL also launched their 32K7 SIM cards in order to match Bharti's 32K SIM offer (previously, the players offered only 8-Kilobyte memory SIM cards).
BPL and Hutch also waived airtime charges for incoming calls and reduced their roaming service charges. Both Hutch and BPL announced a flat rate of Rs 1.49 (60 seconds) as roaming charges, as against the previous Rs 3 (60 seconds) on all partner networks. In January 2002, Spice allowed national roaming named Spice Quicky on its pre-paid card. In late 2002, in the light of price slashes by Bharti, Hutch and BPL, MTNL also slashed tariff rates of its Dolphin cellular service in Mumbai and Delhi, in order to sustain its market in these circles.
Escotel, one of the leading cellular service providers in UP (West) launched roaming services (both incoming and outgoing) for its pre-paid card subscribers in late 2002. It announced plans to extend these services to its other circles as well. In mid 2002, Idea Cellular Ltd. planned to focus on creating brand awareness and launched an aggressive advertising campaign with an ad-spend of Rs 630 million (7% of its net revenues).
The company developed new TVCs to highlight the company's tagline 'Liberation through idea.' Apart from its advertising strategies, the company announced plans to offer various value-added services that included games on mobile, SMS in 9 languages and pre-paid roaming facility. However, the company decided against the usage of celebrity endorsements for its pre-paid cellular service, Idea ChitChat.
7] The SIM card offered certain value-added services such as details of train/flight schedules and movie timings, check bank balance and download music tunes or pictures on their cell phones.