Docomo has been in the news for its unexpected and aggressive market share capture by per second billing. A good sound short term strategy; a little hasty; but that’s not what we are going to talk about.
But is having the right strategy enough?
It evidently is not, as strategy has to be supported by a really good ad campaign. For most products, the ad campaigns that introduce the product or service, spend the first phase educating the people about what’s different in their product. Differentiation is the key to capturing eyeballs and creating a favorable opinion of the product. After this first phase, which can go on for quite some time; depending on whether the product has to be introduced or just differentiated; comes the stage of creating emotional appeal, where people are already aware of the brand name.
This is where docomo thinks it is. Considering the ad below:
What is wrong with this ad?
- Well a bunch of people start singing something sounding like “du du du...do do mo mo”
- Then suddenly the very boring train transforms into something like a singing express, and you are stumped for what the ad is actually trying to tell you
- It makes you think quite a bit about what just hit you, which is not something one wants to do, because though thought provoking is good, it’s no good, if your thoughts run all over the place with no specific direction.
- It also ends with the really corny “Do the new” tag line, which just clashes with the friendly “du du du” and all those friendly smiling feel good faces. It seriously reminds me of “Do the dew”, and makes it feel like a rip off by a creatively handicapped ad team.
- I personally feel it’s too early to tap into the emotional quotient of the market it’s just captured.
It somehow seems that the Docomo campaign has been handed over to some over eager MBA right out of his marketing strategy classes, who wants to implement all that he has learnt, all at once..
For what it’s worth, this ad definitely has recall value, but I have serious doubts about whether it’s going in the right direction.
Airtel on the other hand, has effortlessly mixed the emotional with the product, where SRK in his characteristic style asks a simple question “kitna waqt lagta hai kisi ko manane mein – sorry” … and ends with a “per second billing by Airtel”
It might not be the best of ads, but its effective, and it gets the message across without any hassles, clean and the right amount of emotion, that people can identify with. Though they could start experimenting with their ads, the Airtel ads rarely disappoint.
Maybe Docomo would do well to filch Airtel’s ad team along with the market share!!
2 comments:
Nice to read some analysis of this particular ad from a marketing person.
When I see this ad, I find it pretty... dumb (for the lack of better word). But then as you said "this ad definitely has recall value". Sadly, these days ad campaigns focus more on "recall value", without considering that the memory the ad leaves may not necessarily be positive.
Thanks Jayesh,
Yes, sometimes recall is all is that is needed to influence customer decisions, irrespective of whether the recall is unpleasant or not. But I guess companies have started applying that as a general rule, which is really harmful...
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