Ufone Nokia N8-banner

It seems that Ufone has paid heed to that advice by forging a brand alliance with Nokia, but it has gone one step further by introducing a high-end mobile – the Nokia N8- as the first outcome of this alliance. Brandasy had suggested starting slow with a safe bet like the XpressMusic 5230.

So, would the idea kick off? There’s no question that the idea is going to be a stellar success. However, starting off with a pricey toy like the Nokia N8 would require a lot more effort than would be needed otherwise.

So how can Ufone and Nokia make this work? Well, for starters, Nokia and Ufone would need to hold a couple of competitions just for the sake of dishing out several sets for free to the opinion leaders. Then instead of placing the same print ad announcing the joint venture with the picture of N8, they should create a series of print ads and web banners. Each individual ad would be dedicated to highlighting a single feature or benefit of the N8.

Both Nokia and Ufone have already covered some ground in this respect which is evident from the fact that blogs like Propakistani and Pak Reviews have already written about this deal, not to mention Herald Tribune which seems to be at the forefront of such news.

This is just the bare minimum that Nokia and Ufone needs to do. Free giveaways to select bloggers for word of mouth in the blogosphere, positive videos on Youtube, preferably posted by the consumer, demonstrating the power and possibilities of the N8, these are just some of the tactics these two giants will need to follow.

So, are there any flaws to this deal? About the brand alliance, only time will tell, but the Nokia N8 campaign may not turn out to be as successful as expected. The reason is the hefty price tag. Although the blogosphere is emanating with the news that Ufone is launching the N8 at 25% discount exclusively for the Pakistani clientele, the price still comes out to be a whopping Rs.41,800. Most of the die-hard fans of smartphones have the pocket for anything between the range of Rs.20,000 and Rs.35,000. Anything above that, and they’re gonna wait till the price drops.

And therein lies Ufone’s conundrum. They have the exclusive rights to sell the N8 for only a month. After that it’s fair game for everyone. And before that deadline, chances are slim that bulk of the target market would be able to afford it. So in all probability, this launch has more of a symbolic importance  rather than any chance of worthwhile profitability.

The other reason that N8 may not sell well here is that for this much amount, any discerning consumer will first check with the grapevine, in this case, the internet. And the internet, especially the Pakistani blogosphere is awash with speculations that N8 with its Symbian 3` operating system is not the best option what with the Google Android and company offering more powerful features. Iphone, Blackberry and now Samsung with a number of smartphone brands like Galaxy and Omni are right up there in the same price range. So what possibly can the N8 offer that these versatile brands don’t?

Whatever the outcome, this alliance is a step in the right direction and even if this doesn’t turn out to be a bestseller, would pave the way for further exciting possibilities.

If I’m right, we’ve got another rat race on our hands. What’s next? Zong-Samsung, Warid-LG, Motorola-Telenor?

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1. Ufone -Yawning Gap between Brand Promise and Customer Service One of the worst things you could do as a...

So one fine day, we decided to test Ufone’s brand promise and not surprisingly, Ufone fell way short of expectations, even more so than those telecoms who don’t claim to provide good service.

Here’s what happened:

The most basic package Ufone is offering is for Rs.150 with the option to add the bells and whistles later on. In addition to that, it had launched a subdued version of mobile+connection packages that are so common in the Western market. Currently it has discontinued that package but is still offering the mobile at only Rs.1200.

The only catch: you can’t run the mobile on any other service. So you have to invariably buy an Ufone connection.

Of course you can unlock the code from one of those mobile specialists in the mobile market akin to what people do with the ones brought from abroad, but the cost of this ‘bare-minimum’ mobile from Huawei doesn’t justify going to all this trouble.

Back to the story, I bought one of these Huawei Ufone sets along with a Ufone connection for Rs.1350 from their franchise in Dhoraji. Now this was my first interaction with the Ufone people, and I was met by two sullen fellows who looked even more crestfallen to see me approach them. After buying the package, I asked the guy who was tending to me to activate the sim for me, he curtly replied that I should do it myself by calling 789 from the cell. For some reason, I put off activating the SIM at the franchise and instead tried to do it later on at home. Little did I know that this small action would lead to tortuorous consequences later on.

Now their activation procedure requires you to confirm your CNIC number although you have already submitted a copy of the original CNIC as well as shown the original one to the customer rep.  Calling that 789 number is an ordeal in itself. I called five times the first time before I got through to a CSR.

When I gave my CNIC details, the guy at the other end told me that I need to take my original CNIC to one of their customer service centers for verification as my CNIC had insufficient details. As a consumer, this didn’t amuse at all as I had deliberately bought the connection from an obscure franchise to avoid the hassle of a company-owned customer service centre which is always flooded with people, especially that of Ufone.

So, I asked the guy who had dropped the bombshell on me that why should I again go and show my CNIC when I had already done that. If I hadn’t shown my original CNIC, how the heck did I get the connection in the first place?

The poor chap had no answer to my demands, he just kept repeating the same line which he had delivered previously parrot style albeit with rising crescendo, showing that he was getting angry himself. Seeing that I was getting nowhere, I hung up.

I then tried calling the number again in the hope that maybe that rep was a newbie and didn’t know what was wrong and maybe this time I would be able to get in touch with an experienced one. So I called after two hours.

This time I couldn’t get through even after five tries. Tried the next day at 7am in the morning, 12.30 pm, 2.15 pm, 4.30 pm and finally at 5.50 pm when I finally got through for the second time.

All in all it had taken a whopping 17 tries to get in touch with a rep. Then just as I was telling my CNIC no. to the guy, the line dropped.

Can you believe that? The line dropped when I had finally struck gold after 17 tries!

In utter dismay I tried one more time, and this time got through on the first try. Again I gave my CNIC number but unfortunately the response was the same. Insufficient details on the CNIC data gathered from NADRA and that I had to visit the customer service centre myself with the original CNIC.

The centre closes at 6pm and since I had spent the entire day trying to reach their rep on phone, it was closing time and I had to wait another day to activate the connection.

Next day I did visit the centre at 2.30pm. My turn came at 2.50pm, majority of which time was spent standing since there wasn’t sufficient seating arrangement.

This time around I came across a feisty lady for a service rep. She wasn’t impolite or anything, it’s just that her persona didn’t match that of a customer rep. You got the feeling that one false move you made and she would have devoured you right then and there. The way she was bossing around her male colleagues, she ought to have been their team leader instead of dealing with the customers.

But the bottom-line is I got out of there unscathed with the lady finally resolving my problem after getting me to sign some more signatures along with even more thumb impressions.

I asked her why did I have to go through all this trouble, and she explained that there was some ‘fire’ at one of their centres which curtailed their ability to extract complete data for the NIC. This she said was also the reason for lack of response at the UAN number.

Whether this is true or not is not clear, but in any case the customers should have been informed of this development. Good companies even when going for unscheduled maintenance let the customers know and apologize in advance. This is the bare minimum requirement to be deemed as a good customer service provider. And Ufone is proclaiming to be the ultimate in customer service.

So what does this story tell us? Simply that the brand essence of any brand is determined by the perception in the mind of the consumer and not necessarily by what the custodians of that brand are projecting it to be. Sure that projection can become the brand essence if it is consistently effective over a long period of time. Think BMW. Think Caterpillar.  Think Dalda  Think Hamdard. It took ages for these brands to create a desired essence in the consumer’s mind.

So what’s the brand essence of Ufone? Definitely not customer service, they fail at this brand promise of theirs miserably. Only Zong fares worse at this.

The real brand essence of Ufone as perceived by the consumer is that of a youth-oriented brand that comes up with the most cost-effective and unique packages and conveys them in a humorous undertone.

You can argue that Zong has the cheapest offerings but it doesn’t. The connection fee for Ufone is Rs.150 while for Zong it is Rs.300. On top of that, Ufone is the only provider that is offering service cum mobiles in the Pakistani market and that also dirt cheap. That’s the bottom line and the consumer knows it well, hence the brand essence.

So what can Ufone do about this yawning gap? Stop projecting itself as a custodian of the perfect customer service by scrapping the ten commandments. (The funny thing is, these service commandments are not even on their website. They can only be seen at their outlets in the form of a huge poster hugging one of the walls.)

Yes it can continue to use these mantras internally to ensure that its employees don’t wander too far away from providing good service, but don’t advertise this fact.

Then raise the level of its customer service just a few notches up. It doesn’t need to compete with the likes of Telenor and Mobilink on this parameter because it’s definitely not Ufone’s forte. The thing is Ufone can get away with average customer service if it continues to hammer on its current positioning of unique and cost-effective packages. Instead of offering Blackberry packages to no use, it ought to upgrade its basic connection+mobile packages on the Western market model.

Right now it’s offering the most basic cellphone at Rs.1200. It should introduce better models, maybe even have a brand alliance with Nokia to give those mobiles along with the connection and of course free airtime.

How about a Nokia 5230 customized for Ufone and 150 free minutes for let’s say Rs.14,000?

Or how about a Samsung Corby Pro for approximately Rs. 13,000?

Consumers are increasingly being wooed by the cellphone manufacturers to embrace the touch-screen category and Ufone ought to jump on this bandwagon right away.

Throw in mobile insurance as well for good measure and you’ve set the ball rolling for a paradigm shift in the way  consumers in this part of the world buy cellphones and telecom services. And right now, Ufone is in the best position to induce this behavioral change.

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First, a little about the ‘The Second Floor’. The Second Floor now rechristened as the T2F 2.0 is the brainchild of Sabeen Mahmud, a sort of a social entrepreneur. The brand is positioned to be a haven for intellectual pursuits, from book-reading to Singing workshops to Entrepreneurial seminars, it aims to be in the thick of creative endeavors of the city.

This session was coordinated by Jehan Ara, the president of PASHA in the absence of Sabeen Mahmood.

Here are the highlights of what transpired at the event:

(Shahjehan kicked off his presentation with the famous social media video that has become the norm at all such events:

• How many users are there on Facebook in Pakistan?
• About 1 million and the numbers are increasing exponentially.

• That’s the paradigm shift in cyberspace. With the proliferation of social media platforms, news spread instantly, virally and exponentially.
• I can try any brand and then blog about it and hundreds of people would know about it right away.

• A product can make or break by a single post from the user because everyone is connected to everyone else.

• Social media has stirred changes in publication in the following way:
  • Publish:  Infinite as opposed to few
  • Comment: Feedback as opposed to Monologue
  • Share: Viral as opposed to limited distribution

• If HBL for instance provides unpleasant customer service to just one person like me, I can spread negative word of mouth in the online arena and within no time HBL will have a serious problem just because of one disgruntled customer.

• However, you just cannot write something about a brand or a person and get away with it. When you are writing for a publication in the real world, credibility is neither established nor wiped away instantly, but online the entire world can comment on your article and everyone else can see what the others have said about it. So credibility is quickly built up or destroyed virally solely by the commentators of the article who themselves may not be the experts.

• As an entrepreneur if you are thinking what am I going to say to my customers online, then you are asking the wrong question. What the customers are saying about you is a more pertinent question.
• How to create enormous value for your business at virtually zero cost is a real possibility and ought to be the ultimate aim of any business aiming to use social media.

• T-Shirt Wars (Showed the video on Youtube) is a video made by a couple of budding entrepreneurs on a shoe-string budget and yet it has been able to generate enormous interest, having 4 million views to date.

• In contrast brands like Mobilink and Telenor spend crores to generate the same level of interest.

• The new mantra is to create an experience around your brand to engage the consumer instead of just communicating the message which is a fundamental flaw of marketing of today’s era that communication wins customers.

• The fundamental mistake of advertising is that repetition works. Of media is that content is king.

• Offering a platform to the consumer to interact and engage in the brand, generating his own content along the way is the new age strategy.

• Facebook is most effective in spreading information because of the news feed feature. Anything one person updates or writes about gets permeated to all the connected people. But the new itself ought to be enticing enough so that people pass that down to their connections.
• Coke Studio was a culturally relevant product which appealed to this connected world, becoming a mega-hit in the social media sphere and not because it was produced by Coke.

• In networked markets where there are hundreds of thousands of blogs, e-zines and what not on every topic under the sun, the commodity which will be the most scarce is Attention. You get the attention of the consumer and you’ve made it in the new world. Hence this is the age of Attention Economy.

• The best way to get the attention of your target market is to engage them in something that excites them. Threadless, a small start-up was able to do just that by offering customers the opportunity to design their own shirts which threadless would then manufacture.

• Daily Fashionist is doing well on Facebook having made 70,861 fans.

• However, as a small start-up don’t expect to reach this number anytime soon and that also without spending money. If you want to be popular on Facebook having a large number of fans, you need to advertise on facebook.

• And without a huge number of fans, you cannot expect to create a viral campaign. Just don’t expect to create a facebook page, put all your friends on it as fans and expect to go viral any news you put in your network no matter how good it is.

• Until and unless you have at least thousands of fans for your brand, you cannot create a viral campaign on Facebook.

• The good news is that advertising on Facebook in Pakistan is extremely cheap. For just a $100 or so, you can generate a lot of fans provided you advertise the right way. Instead of directing your target market to your website, you should direct them to your facebook profile and urge them to become a fan. That way you can stay connected to them and entice them with good offers as opposed to making them visit your website where they’ll just visit once and forget about it.

• Also while creating the ad campaign on facebook, choose the CPC (Cost per click) instead of CPM (Cost per impressions) because by choosing the former you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. In the latter option you would have to pay for every impression generated which is a waste of money because if you bid too low, facebook won’t show the stats of the impressions that your ad got.

• Also while choosing the target audience, don’t choose the sex. For instance if you choose female, chances are you’ll end up with a very low turnout. It’s best to choose all options under Pakistan. That way you’ll have the maximum possible reach.

• On an average expect to pay Rs. 3 to 10 per fan. But that can wary enormously depending upon a number of variable. For instance a brand about fashion and style is going to generate a lot of fan following because these are the topics dear to the Pakistani heart especially women.

• Facebook advertising in Europe and USA is very expensive, and if the same rates are applied here as well, then you would be better off using the traditional modes of marketing.

• Remember that fans on facebook do not necessarily translate into sales. You have to engage the fans in a meaningful way for you to cajole the fans into buying your brand.

• Twitter although an effective viral tool in the world is not so in Pakistan because not many people here use it. You need to have a critical mass on a particular platform for it to be effective. Until more Pakistanis embrace, it won’t.

• The same goes for Youtube. Do a search for Pakistani videos on Youtube and you would be hard pressed to find a single meaningful one. That’s because Pakistanis are not that active on Youtube and most of the videos they themselves refer are foreign videos.

This was just a brief account of what Shahjahan presented at that talk.

Now, the brand valuation of the brand that is Shahjahan Chaudhary. Shahjahan is one of those budding entrepreneurs that are specialist in a field that didn’t even exist a few years ago. But he’s sensible enough to know that promoting yourself the traditional way in the real world is still the best possible strategy. Giving presentations and interacting with people face to face still reigns supreme, and he’s capitalizing on that to build his personal brand.

However, he does need to spruce up his presentation style. Nothing wrong with his delivery or confidence, it’s just that his presentation sounded more like a lecture in the university rather than an allusive speech on social media. Captivating the audience for two hours straight is no child’s play, and to capture their attention even for brief moments of time within that time frame is no mean task. He was able to do it for small bouts interspersed in dull passages of time, which was evident from the audience’s body language.

To be fair he did manage to engage the audience in the dying moments of the workshop and ended on a high note. Plus he was candid enough to state the ground reality about facebook instead of raising it to the altar of invincible success. He was forthright about the pitfalls and limitations of facebook and other social media tools which most other ‘social mediapreneurs’ won’t tell you about. He even explained about how to advertise on facebook on your own instead of seeking his help.

What he needs to do is instead of just explaining things like ‘being honest is going to be effective in the social media sphere’ or giving hypothetical examples, give concrete examples. The shirt wars and threadless were good examples. He needs to inundate his presentation with such examples, giving an example for each point he’s making, preferably even giving examples from his own experience. People warm up to you when they hear about your own success or failure story.

Shahjahan got off to a good start showing the famous social media video, but then he launched in a sort of monotonous lecture devoid of real-world cases. Even the slides were bland at most.  The slideshow is available on slideshare. Judge it yourself.

The thing is, if you lose your audience in the first five minutes, you’ve lost them forever.

To Shahjahan’s credit he managed to recapture his audience to an extent. And every time he piqued the interest of his audience, it was either due to a real example or a pragmatic way to boost up their business, and that’s exactly what he should be doing for majority of his presentation.

The most mindboggling thing about this whole event is its lack of coverage, let alone mainstream media, even online. The most amazing thing is that there’s no post-event review even on the organizers’ websites, t2f 2.0, PASHA or on Jehan Ara’s blog even though she seemed to be filming the whole event. There’s no video on Youtube.  Then there were quite a few people from the media side including Dawn and Synergizer yet no one bothered to cover the event online.Maybe there is some sort of mention of it in the dark recesses of the net, which is as good as non-existent.

Then Shahjehan has a blog of his own by the name of Billion Dollar Workshop which he seems to have abandoned after just a single post more than two years ago. If he’s not going to be using it anymore, he ought to completely delete it instead of letting it stay in a state of limbo because it’s showing in the search results. You don’t want any material floating around that doesn’t augment the brand image that you are trying to project, not if you can help it.

Bottom-line: You need to capitalize on every available opportunity to promote your brand even if it’s just a presentation in the real world or a blog in the virtual world.

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Why would you expect this viral campaign to go big?

There are a number of reasons for that. One, it is being conducted by Nestle, the largest MNC (Revenue-wise, surpassing even Unilever) operating in Pakistan. Secondly it is being simultaneously conducted on the viral networks of today, viz. Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, augmented by a dedicated website 7days1night. Thirdly, and more importantly, there are an estimated 2 million online users in Pakistan, more than 500,000 of which are on Facebook. Nestle’s campaign falls way short of  this number. How do we know that? The evidence is right there in the number of comments the website has received (about 6,200) as well as the number of Facebook members which stands at a mere 5,438 members.

nestle fruita vitals-facebook

nestle fruita vitals-twitter

nestle fruita vitals-youtube

nestle fruita vitals-website

But even if you ignore these figures, how many people do you know who spend a majority of their time online knew about this event? Many of my net-savvy friends didn’t know about it. I deliberately search for such online events and even I almost missed it.

The premise is simple enough. You need to state why you should be the one to be adjudged the winner. The interesting thing is you can give as many reasons as you want, but no two reasons should be posted within five minutes of each other. The even was divided into two parts, the winner of the first stage got an Ipod Touch and the second stage winner got to have an HP Notebook in addition to a limo ride and dinner with six friends.

This pretty much ensures that each and every visitor spends a lot of time on the site and brand profile pages on facebook and twitter. Simple but cunning nonetheless.

The other thing surprising about this event is that it hasn’t caused any major ripples in the blogosphere. Apart from Teeth Maestro and ProPakistani, no one has really bothered about it. Even both these bloggers have just posted the most basic of information.

If you google the phrase nestle fruita vitals, most of the results reflect material posted on the net by Nestle itself. Not many independent reviews, unfortunately for Nestle. In fact, even most of the independent reviews are just reverberations of Teeth Maestro’s post.

So, is it a failure? Not really. It all depends upon the goals set by the brand manager Beenish Pervaiz. If her goal was to target a particular niche of young people, and the interaction was more important than the penetration, then it may be construed as a success. It all depends upon the perception and objectives of the people running the show.

It won’t figure prominently in the list of top viral campaigns, that’s for sure. The Lays Chips Haram controversy was more viral than this even though it was merely spread through email which then got picked up by the bloggers. But then it had more time to ‘germinate’ than this one. After all, a couple of weeks is too short a time to spread the word, even if it is online.

To Nestle’s credit, all the communication material online is immaculately thought out and designed including the Facebook profile. The one thing missing is the lack of Facebook applications.

Remember Burger King and their double whopper application on facebook where you could get a free whopper for sacrificing your facebook contacts? This innocuous tactic spread like wildfire in the online community so much so that Facebook had to step in and shut it down.  This was an ideal opportunity for Nestle to do something along those lines.

And these viral events really get you thinking what are the essential ingredients of a successful viral campaign? Here is Nestle, a giant of an MNC which has come up with a pretty safe campaign strategy which encompasses all the electronic media, and yet it doesn’t achieve the magnitude of an epidemic outbreak which, let alone organizations, mere individuals have been able to attain.  

Remember the ‘Numa Numa’ video (fat kid dancing) on Youtube? That video has been viewed over 900 million times all over the world and has made a star out of that guy. His investment was a  computer, internet connection and a webcam. He comes nowhere even close to the effort and time and money put in by Nestle. So what gives?

If Nestle’s aim was to nurture brand evangelists, then this campaign which concluded two days ago was right on target. The winner along with his six friends is definitely going to have a stupendous experience which he’ll associate with the brand, and hopefully stay loyal and vocal about the brand for life, unless of course, things don’t go wrong terribly.

Pakistani marketers have had some good success with their online campaigns like the Samsung Treasure Hunt, but none so far have matched the viral speed of the controversial emails that spring up in the Pakistanis’ inboxes from time to time.

It’s high time that some brand came along that swept the whole nation off its cyber feet. And it better be something positive.

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The movie sky-rocketed to the top of the charts. Why? Did it have a plausible plot? Hardly? A riveting name? Far from it. Movies with song titles abound but very few end up making a decent sale. A star-studded cast? No.

So what was it about this movie that moved the audience so much that it topped the charts?

In a nutshell, the story is about a group of friends whose friendship lasts unscathed beyond the college days. The group is dominated by Jay aka ‘Rats’ (Imran Khan) and Aditi aka ‘Meow’ (Geledina D’Souza), two inseparable individuals who don’t think they are in love until they start going out with other people. It’s a rehashed story as easy as they come in Bollywood. There are no twists and turns and the ending is predictable even for a three-year old.

Although the Indian consumer seems to have an insatiable appetite for romantic chick flicks, many such movies bomb at the box office. And yet Jaane Tu was able to break through the clutter.

There are no hot shots to enthrall the audience apart from cameos from veterans like Naseeruddin Shah, Parish Rawal, Arbaz and Shahbaz Khan.

What gives then? It’s the infectuous and the eccentric chemistry of the Group with all its nuances and innuendos that carries the day for the movie. The direction is good, but without this particular group dynamics, the movie would have fallen flat on its face. It’s the aura permeated by the characters that they’re really having the time of my lives which rubs off on the audience, and not just the antics of the hero and the heroine.

And therein lies the lesson for any marketer looking to make its BTL activity resonate with the heartstrings of the consumer. Remember the contrasting BTL activities of Minute Maid and Zong and how Zong came out to be more successful in spite of the fact that its presentation wasn’t as immaculate as the Minute Maid’s?

The same principle was at work there. Zong had hired a number of youngsters who appeared to gel well with each other and looked to be enjoying themselves. Their positive group dynamics projected a contagious aura on the consumers loitering nearby and they were drawn towards the group to inquire what the occasion was.

In short, any brand, and I mean any brand at all can hire a bunch of youngsters, make them dorn attires according to the brand essence of the brand to be projected, and then let them loose with the strict instructions to just enjoy themselves and be pleasant to anyone who approaches them. And Viola! You’ve got a successful BTL activity.

 Of course, you need to work upon the presentation and the embedding of the brand in that particular environment, but that in reality is a secondary consideration, contrary to what the BTL pundits would have you believe.

The movie didn’t offer only this lesson in branding. There were a few others as well. For instance did you notice how Coke was neatly embedded in one of the scenes? In fact it was so brilliantly and yet subtly promoted as a viable alternative to liquor when at the end-of-college party the fat friend dejected from Meow comes to the bar and asks for Coke – on the rocks – and the bartender responds with a straight face as if it was the most natural thing in the world to do.

The element so fascinating about this scene is that most of us as kids tried to emulate the drinking phenomenon we saw in the movies using Coke as an alternative. Coke was considered the best alternative because if you pour just a pint of it in the glass, it doesn’t look its usual color of dark brown but instead gives a yellowish orange glow, just what liquor looks like on the big screen.

This is not the first time brands have tried to embed neatly into the storyline of a Bollywood movie. Bachna Ae Haseeno had the main actor Rambhir Kapoor working on the development of a video game for Microsoft. So while Hollywood have had a great run embedding brands subtly into the plot lines for decades, Bollywood is just starting to copycat the phenomena like it is used to copying the entire scripts of Hollywood flicks. Is anyone from Lollywood listening?

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Wi-Tribe print ad

THE POTENTIAL LOOPHOLE:

WiMax may have become the new buzzword amongst the net-savvy niche of Pakistan, but for some inexplicable reason, Wi-Tribe has decided not to use the word Wi-Max to define its service. This could prove to be either a very shrewd strategy, or a self-destructive strategy.

The major reason for this is that WorldCall is offering wireless broadband service based on CDMA technology, and the service has been lambasted by most of the consumers. The website Bolta Consumer is brimming with vile for WorldCall. Now if Wi-Tribe is also going to brand itself as the wireless broadband with no mention of WiMax, the consumers are going to associate Wi-Tribe with WorldCall (whose reputation is already in tatters) instead of the WiMax players Wateen and Infinity.

Result? Those looking for a good WiMax experience are not going to touch Wi-Tribe with a 10-foot pole even with the 7 days money-back guarantee.

But why is WiTribe refraining from using the word WiMax? There can be two reasons. Either Wi-Tribe is not using WiMax technology altogether, or it wants to be associated more with the wired broadbrand service providers like PTCL, LinkDotNet and MaxCom because of their higher speeds instead of the WiMax providers Wateen and Infinity which lag far behind.

The third and less plausible reason is that consumers don’t know much about WiMax. They either know wireless or broadband, and based on the results of their consumer survey, they may have unearthed some insight that ‘wireless broadband’ will sell more than ‘WiMax’. My contention is that only those consumers are going to be hitching on this bandwagon who already know something about technology and stuff, so WiMax should have been used definitely. A totally layman consumer is going to opt for the wired broadband because of the far higher value for money when you take into account the unlimited downloads feature in the wired services.

THE PERSUASION:

Wi-Tribe’s communication strategy is pretty simple. Their TVC as well as their print ad is remarkably austere sans any animate characters or curvaceous vixens. It seems to be directed at people who already know what they’re going to get out of this service as opposed to creating awareness about the benefits that can be gleaned. The latter model was followed by the other major broadband service providers.

The best campaign was surprisingly that of the PTCL that really went full throttle in explaining what enormous advantage could be had at your fingertips by upgrading to broadband from dial-up. The runner-up campaign was that of Mobilink Infinity which again focused on the benefits part especially on the gaming segment. The worst had to be Wateen which showcased minimal benefits with no explanation. What’s worse, it showed a damsel just fooling around with a purse in hand, as if that it would help the consumer get a clearer picture. Later on they took Shehzad Roy as their brand ambassador, but that was a bit too late and definitely not the best of decisions.

Wi-Tribe’s radio ad, however, is a different story altogether. It depicts a guy hanging out with a laptop on his rooftop gazing at the stars (and into the neighboring houses probably). This communicates not only a benefit but a clear-cut lifestyle positioning. Who knows, maybe this would spawn into a fad where everyone cat and dog is perched on the rooftop with a laptop.

In addition to all this, it is following the hackneyed strategy of sponsoring shows, both on television and radio.

BRAND CONTACT POINT:

 

If a particular area didn’t have sufficient strong signals of Wi-Tribe, the company would refrain from providing the connection lest the service quality and hence the image of the company suffers. For instance when asked if SITE area was covered by Wi-Tribe, he immediately replied in the negative without beating about the bush.

When asked why the company had avoided using the word WiMax in its communication strategy, he replied they had decided to focus on the broadband aspect rather than the WiMax aspect. Other than that, he didn’t exactly know the underlying reason.

 

Wi-Tribe Sales Outlet

 

Wi-Tribe Sales Centre

 

 

One other thing he revealed when asked about how their service compared to the existing WiMax players is that although Wi-Tribe has one-third the capacity of Wateen, their coverage was comparable to it. While Wateen was using 168 towers to provide coverage, Wi-Tribe was using 172 to cover the same area. This was to ensure that the signal strength didn’t drop so much that the users had to suffer.

Wi-Tribe Centre

One striking thing was that the rep was friendly in addition to being professional, willing to discuss things other than business. His sales team had a night match scheduled for that night which the sales manager had proposed and would include all the sales reps. A happy Tribe? Seems that way.

 

 

 

Wi-Tribe WiMax Outlet

What’s in it For Me?

Right now it looks Wi-Tribe is the cheapest kid on the WiMax block in addition to being the new one. What’s more, it’s not offering the moon to the consumers contrary to the other WiMax players. Its unique USP is that in addition to positioning itself as the cheapest, it is offering 7 days money-back guarantee to back up its claim of being a reliable connection. It’s not asking even for the security deposit which both Wateen and Infinity are demanding.

Wi-Tribe: Is it THE WiMax we’ve been waiting for?

Another differentiation, however minor it may be, is that Mobilink Infinity and Warid Wateen are forcing you (there’s no other way to put it) to make use of their voice capabilities. Although it includes a number of free minutes, you have to pay the line rent for that whether you like it or not.

According to Fahad, Wi-Tribe is not offering the voice facility currently, and when it will, it wouldn’t make it mandatory on the consumer to buy it. Remains to be seen.

Wi-tribe office space

 

 

 

 

 

Wi-Tribe: Inside the Office

The Verdict?

Wi-Tribe is all set to rock the WiMax boat, offering great speeds at the lowest possible price and then backing the claim with money-back guarantee.

The only thing left to seal Wi-Tribe as the undisputed champion of the wireless world is go ahead and take it for a spin.

A friend of mine did try to take it for a spin. He called their number and verbally applied for the connection. Their tech guy who happened to be sitting in Islamabad informed my friend that his area didn’t have proper coverage of Wi-Tribe as yet, and since Wi-Tribe signals weren’t strong enough in his area, the techie guy refrained from offering the normal service, saying this would result in a poor connection that would reflect badly on the image of the company. He in turn offered the solution of installing an external antenna which would require a Rs. 2,500 security deposit. Furthermore, my friend would have to buy the 1Mbps package. He refused this solution and instead went for Mobilink Infinity which would have cost him almost the same but since it has been in the market for some time now, its performance is proven and verified by the consumers.

Unfortunate for Wi-Tribe to lose a customer like that to Infinity. Still, it has got all the time in the world to dominate this market, which remains largely untapped.

So Wi-Tribe has taken over the position of the lowest-cost wireless service provider. What other USP is left for a new competitor or even one of the existing ones to use?

Unlimited download solution at less than Rs.1000 a month. That is something which any WiMax player worth its weight in gold should be looking forward to exploit. Let the game begin……

 

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