Tag Archives: tv

India: IPL, TV Industrial Complex and Social Media

That new technology, trends etc take their own sweet(not so) time to reach and permeate the Indian market is a well known and accepted fact, and Social Media is no different. While marketing and advertising companies/teams from other countries(especially from the west) might have already dipped deep in the Social Media waters, their counterparts in India are no where close.

When Pepsi ditched Superbowl and chose to spend their budget ($20 million) on a Social Media campaign there were celebrations amongst the Social Media folks world over and everyone(Including we in India) felt that Social Media has finally arrived and the game has changed from being Traditional Media centric to Social Media being equally if not more important. If you think that’s the same with India (transition from Tradition Media to Social  Media at a considerable level), think again.

In the course of last year or so I’ve met numerous Social Media enthusiasts/marketers/analysts and quite a few advertising/media agencies and some guys who are in-charge of marketing campaigns for the brands they represent. Little has changed since last year if we talk about how people who offer Social Media solutions feel and how those who should be using those Social Media solutions feel. Despite all the jazz around Social Media, in India particularly brands are spending a bare minimum percentage of their marketing/advertising budget on Social Media. Not just this, what’s particularly interesting is the fact that in India some brands have started spending more(and not less) on Traditional Media. If these figures are anything to go by

AD Rates for IPL3 and T20 World Cup 2010
you can get an idea of how things seem to be moving in the Indian market. We are increasingly spending more money on Traditional Media and it’s not just TV ads, the print media is also on a roll with Realtors and FMCG companies booking full page ads like anything.  It’s not just a co-incidence that there aren’t any remarkable Social Media campaigns around IPL despite all the hype and hoopla.

Keeping in mind all this and the response that these Traditional Media campaigns manage to get I would like to believe
that the days of TV-Industrial Complex are not yet over in India and it will be another few years before significant changes start to happen.

Aircel Sucks!!

Call it generalization but I’ve always felt that Customer Service is just lip service for most small and big companies in India. The bigger they(companies) get the ridiculous their customer service becomes. Talking about customer service or its non-existence brings me to Aircel.

Aircel is a joint venture between Maxis Communications (Malaysia) and Apollo Hospital Enterprise Ltd (India) and has more than 18 million subscribers(source: wikipedia). Those in India would remember Aircel from its awkward tune and TV ads starring Indian cricket team captain MS Dhoni which were aired endlessly for months. Aircel apparently has a 200cr media budget and it shows by their massive ad spend both offline and online. Aircel is a typical case of  The TV-Industrial Complex which goes like

Buy TV Ads –> Get More Distribution –> Sell More Products –> Make a profit –> Buy TV Ads

While they maybe doing a a good job at buying more ads and getting more subscribers I seriously doubt if they are doing any good beyond it. In case you are wondering why do I think so, here’s the thing.

Last Friday(25th sep) I happened to buy an Aircel connection on a whim. Actually I was out to buy a vodafone prepaid connection for my brother but due to its unavailability we thought of giving Aircel a try and given the plans I was told it definitely looked like a wise decision. The new connection was activated in minutes and I was a happy man but that happiness wasn’t for long. When I reached home (about 5 minutes drive from the Aircel showroom/office) I was surprised to find that phone had no network coverage and putting the new sim in three different cell phones didn’t help a bit.

Freaked that I was I tried getting in touch with their customer service but despite hearing ‘we are keen to talk to you’ messages I couldn’t get through the customer care executives in 4 different(2 by my brother) calls that I made which lasts 2-3 minutes each. While cursing Aircel I thought of checking out their site for a possible solution and got to this page

aircel

(Aircel doesn’t think it’s useful to give phone numbers of its various offices/showrooms)

and immediately sent them an email

aircel_email

As you can see I wasn’t really hoping anyone at Aircel would read that email, let alone act upon it and Aircel lived up to its expectations. However that wasn’t it, I went to their store the next morning (10:30 AM) and got the executive there to register my complaint and on being asked how much time will it take to get it resolved and should I really expect any solution for my problem(I really don’t expect them to put a tower near my locality just because I complained) I was told complaints are addressed in 24 hours and they(Aircel) are installing 10 new sites a month based on customer feedback (like I will buy that).

That was Saturday morning and I waited in vain till evening to get a call on the alternate number I had given (Email reply is obviously out of question). I asked a local shop keeper about Aircel network and he too agreed that their network coverage is quite bad. Without wasting any time I bought a new Airtel connection(which is doing pretty good). Curious to see what others think of Aircel I did a search on Twitter

aircel_twitter

and a quick search on Google revealed

aircel_mouthshut

More Aircel Complaints can be read here and here. There’s also a post by Abhishek aptly titled ‘Aircel India: false start

Now that we’ve seen how bad things are with Aircel one can only wish if Aircel was listening and spending money on building better network/services instead of spending millions on roping in celebrities for lame TV ads.

How has been your experience with Aircel?

PS: Had it not been for a long weekend and some optimism on my side in hoping for a reply, I would have written this post on Saturday itself

Television Banking: ICICIActive on DishTV

Got this email from ICICI bank yesterday about launch of what they call “Tevelision Banking”.  All that the email contained was this image.

icici

To be honest this is the first time I heard the term “Television Banking” and I found the proposition intriguing.

Just when you can’t seem to figure out why are most banks/branches closed on a sunday ? or why a cheque deposited on a Thursday afternoon won’t be credited till Monday morning ?, this innovative new concept from a bank seems cool and definitely useful.

Here’s a visual walkthrough of what happened after clicking the link for online demo.

Screen 1

icici_11

Did you notice the URL for this page?

Screen 2

icici_2

Screen 3

icici_4

Screen 4
icici_6

This gives you fair idea of what “Television Banking” is all about. Also, the ability to pay your dishtv subscription from your ICICI bank using your TV is definitely useful.

While not everyone might need this, but the sheer thought of banking(though limited) on your TV while lying in your bed at any time of the day, wants you to give it a try.

What do you think ?