Everything is fair in war: Big TV teases Airtel Digital TV
Sumedha Srivastav - Televisionpoint.com | Mumbai
It looks like the rivalry between Bharti Airtel and Reliance Communications has entered the direct to home (DTH) space. The war between the telecom majors started off with Reliance trying to take on a teaser advertisement campaign of Bharti Airtel.
Digital TV, the DTH venture from Bharti Airtel, had carried out a 10-second pre-launch teaser advertisement on various television channels for last one week. The teaser campaign starts by revealing a unique character that utters, 'See you at home soon', which is followed by a big red couch flying in and landing with a thud. The campaign has been created by JWT Delhi, while the media duties are handled by Madison Delhi.
The Digital TV's campaign did not show any brand name, company logo or any indication as to which company, it represented. It was basically a teaser to generate curiosity among the customers and the full version was to be launched later on, more precisely on October 08.
However, in an attempt to take the advantage of the curiosity generated by the teaser of Digital TV, DDB Mudra, advertising agency of Big TV, decided to do some teasing of its own and launched a similar ad campaign with a red couch but this ended with the logo of Big TV, the DTH brand of Reliance.
Reliance wanted to show that the teaser was actually its own campaign for Big TV, which it may have succeed to some extent as Airtel was caught off guard.
Teaser advertising is a tactic for gaining the audience's interest and involvement by disclosing only an incomplete and puzzling version or versions of the eventual advertisement.
A Reliance spokesperson termed its advertising as a "smart marketing move", whereas an Airtel spokesperson, who sounded very upset, refused to comment.
Meanwhile, Digital TV's campaign, replete with a cricket and Bollywood ensemble, features actors Kareena Kapoor and Saif Ali Khan, cricketers Gautam Gambhir and Zaheer Khan, as well as current Airtel ad stars Madhavan and Vidya Balan, and music composer A.R. Rahman.
Big TV hopes to grab a 40 per cent market share in the DTH space and is distributing its service through 1,00,000 outlets across 6,000 towns, piggybacking in part on affiliate Reliance Communications, which ranks behind Bharti Airtel in the country's competitive mobile phone services business.
The competition in the DTH space would intensify further in the near term. There are five private operational DTH players. At present, major chunk of users are with Dish TV and Tata Sky. There are about 7 million DTH subscribers.
The ambush is similar to what Pepsi did for the 1996 Cricket World Cup when Coca-Cola had touted the official drink status of Coke at the tournament. Pepsi countered with a 'Nothing Official About It' campaign. And in 2005, publisher Bennett, Coleman and Co. Ltd grabbed a teaser campaign that was being used by newspaper Daily News & Analysis in Mumbai.
Read Also
Bharti Airtel to launch Digital TV DTH on October 9 | 07, October, 2008
Bharti to launch its DTH service by October | 29, September, 2008
It looks like the rivalry between Bharti Airtel and Reliance Communications has entered the direct to home (DTH) space. The war between the telecom majors started off with Reliance trying to take on a teaser advertisement campaign of Bharti Airtel.
Digital TV, the DTH venture from Bharti Airtel, had carried out a 10-second pre-launch teaser advertisement on various television channels for last one week. The teaser campaign starts by revealing a unique character that utters, 'See you at home soon', which is followed by a big red couch flying in and landing with a thud. The campaign has been created by JWT Delhi, while the media duties are handled by Madison Delhi.
The Digital TV's campaign did not show any brand name, company logo or any indication as to which company, it represented. It was basically a teaser to generate curiosity among the customers and the full version was to be launched later on, more precisely on October 08.
However, in an attempt to take the advantage of the curiosity generated by the teaser of Digital TV, DDB Mudra, advertising agency of Big TV, decided to do some teasing of its own and launched a similar ad campaign with a red couch but this ended with the logo of Big TV, the DTH brand of Reliance.
Reliance wanted to show that the teaser was actually its own campaign for Big TV, which it may have succeed to some extent as Airtel was caught off guard.
Teaser advertising is a tactic for gaining the audience's interest and involvement by disclosing only an incomplete and puzzling version or versions of the eventual advertisement.
A Reliance spokesperson termed its advertising as a "smart marketing move", whereas an Airtel spokesperson, who sounded very upset, refused to comment.
Meanwhile, Digital TV's campaign, replete with a cricket and Bollywood ensemble, features actors Kareena Kapoor and Saif Ali Khan, cricketers Gautam Gambhir and Zaheer Khan, as well as current Airtel ad stars Madhavan and Vidya Balan, and music composer A.R. Rahman.
Big TV hopes to grab a 40 per cent market share in the DTH space and is distributing its service through 1,00,000 outlets across 6,000 towns, piggybacking in part on affiliate Reliance Communications, which ranks behind Bharti Airtel in the country's competitive mobile phone services business.
The competition in the DTH space would intensify further in the near term. There are five private operational DTH players. At present, major chunk of users are with Dish TV and Tata Sky. There are about 7 million DTH subscribers.
The ambush is similar to what Pepsi did for the 1996 Cricket World Cup when Coca-Cola had touted the official drink status of Coke at the tournament. Pepsi countered with a 'Nothing Official About It' campaign. And in 2005, publisher Bennett, Coleman and Co. Ltd grabbed a teaser campaign that was being used by newspaper Daily News & Analysis in Mumbai.
Read Also
Bharti Airtel to launch Digital TV DTH on October 9 | 07, October, 2008
Bharti to launch its DTH service by October | 29, September, 2008
|
Copyright 2005 - 2009 Televisionpoint.com. All rights reserved. A Bhash Media Private Limited Company.
This site is best viewed in Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher versions, at a resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels.