Airtel DTH seeks to break out of the clutter in the direct-to-home service space by banking on a Bollywood-like plot
Saif Ali Khan recognizes the lost love of his childhood from the colorful necklace with a butterfly at the centre, courtesy the clear picture he sees on his Airtel direct-to-home service on television. But he flips for Kareena Kapoor just before his reunion with her. New age Bollywood morality at work?
Maybe. What matters, says Airtel Senior Vice-president (Marketing) R Chandrasekar, is that the commercial which broke on August 21 has improved the brand recall of Airtel DTH. It is still early days, says he, to measure the impact on sale, though Airtel call centres are flooded with calls about the campaign. “Everybody has a point of view on it. In a cluttered market, it is important to be memorable,” says he.
DTH indeed is a competitive category. There are well-entrenched players like Dish TV and Tata Sky, a price warrior in Sun Direct and newcomers like Big DTH, Airtel and now Videocon. Dish TV is endorsed by Shah Rukh Khan, Tata Sky by Amir Khan. Dish TV has awesome reach, Tata Sky tremendous goodwill and Sun Direct great brand equity in the South. There are no numbers for the DTH market audited by an independent expert. But it is an open secret that the industry is mired in losses. The key to break the clutter therefore is product differentiation.
When it had launched in October 2008, Airtel had promised magical entertainment. The first campaign showed a bevy of celebrities visiting the home of a regular person. This was followed by a kid living with animated characters. It also offered one remote control stick for the television and the DTH box, and value-added services like home delivery of pizza. But none of these could be called a killer application.
“Consumer mapping showed that our picture clarity was a big thing. Our technology enables better compression of signal and hence better output,” says Chandrasekar. Airtel does not have exclusive rights over this technology but is the first user. This, the company decided, could be the differentiator, the first mover’s advantage. The issue was how do you express picture clarity in a way that it sticks to the consumer’s mind? Cameras and television makers had already beaten the concept to death.
“I believe DTH and entertainment are all about story-telling. The brief to the agency (JWT) was to tell a story,” says Chandrasekar. Finally, what Airtel and JWT zeroed down on was a Bollywood-like story, complete with romance, emotion, song and music. Thus was born the commercial with Khan, Kapoor and model Sarah Jane. The film was shot in Chennai and Puducherry by Vinil Mathew of Footcandles.
Three days before the launch, Airtel ran a teaser in the print media – Khan in search of a girl with just an old photograph for clue. Press releases were sent out in the name of Khan. Television news channels and radio stations picked it up. Posters for Dil Titli (Butterfly Heart) were put up at PVR theatres. The campaign was kicked off on a Friday, that day of the week when new releases hit the screen. It was as close to a Bollywood release as Airtel could take it.
Once the campaign broke on television, an interactive microsite was activated on the Airtel website. Windows were created on popular websites that made the picture quality better. A video of the theme song of the campaign has been shot and will make it to television channels soon. Music downloads and Hello Tunes of it are also available. Music CDs have been stocked at mobile phone stores.
More than anything else, says Chandrasekar, interest in the two-month-long campaign will be kept alive with regular twists to the storyline. A new film will thus be put out in a few days. More will follow in the weeks to come. The lead actors of course will remain the same: Khan, Kapoor and Jane.
Careful viewing will show that Khan moves around in the commercial in a Chevrolet. This is another brand he endorses and its placement cannot be ignored. Mixed signals? According to Chandrasekar, consumer studies have shown that Chevrolet does not stick out in the commercial, and neither does the Samsung television that Khan watches.
Rivals say that the campaign may have improved brand recall for Airtel, but that is a small part of the DTH jigsaw puzzle. The company needs to ramp up its distribution, especially in the rural areas where growth is faster than in large cities. Also, the number of television channels it offers is way behind rivals like Dish TV, Sun Direct and Tata Sky.
Chandrasekar agrees that Airtel’s DTH numbers are still small. “In mobile telephony, we are the leader. In DTH, we are the challenger,” says he. “We are growing fast, although from a small base. Every fourth new DTH customer today comes to Airtel.”
