India is a marketer’s haven when it comes to selling telecommunications, be it service providers or handsets. Down the years as giants like Nokia, Motorola and Samsung have been churning out handsets one after the other, the last few years of this decade has seen a new breed of phones fighting it out amongst themselves—Smartphones.
Beyond the rudimentary exchange of handsets for money, another battle has been brewing in the Indian media space, the battle for eyeballs of an evolved group of consumers!The Smartphone Market
InStat, a market research firm has stated that about 18 million smartphones have been sold in the APAC region in 2006 and is expected to increase to 64.2 million by 2010. As per IDC, 70 percent of the mobile devices would be smartphones by 2010. A couple of years back, the market for smartphones was 38 percent. Again, a recent study by research firm Gartner revealed that social networking will replace email as the primary vehicle for communication in one in every five businesses across the world by 2014. The company also predicts that by then, email will be replaced by social networking services as the primary vehicle for interpersonal communication.
The Indian mobile phone market has been largely dominated by overseas brands such as the Finnish Nokia and the two South Korean firms – Samsung and LG. But the homegrown Micromax is now challenging the Koreans, after overtaking rivals such as Motorola, Sony Ericsson and HTC, according to recent researches and reports. Apple’s iPhone redefined the smartphones market globally, but failed in India primarily because of the high price of the phone. Apart from that, other domestic companies such as Zen Mobile, Gee Pee, Intex and Simoco have also jumped into the bandwagon by launching the so-called chat phones.
Communicating the brand
Considering that the consumer is initially dependent on advertisements of the product to arouse interest in the brand and build up a purchase decision, it is quintessential for brands to not to fall into the ‘me too’ trap. But are they really doing that? Taking up four of the most active smartphone brands (advertising-wise) in India in the recent times, (Nokia E series, Blackberry, Samsung Corby and Micromax) here’s a look at some of the key similarities and differences in the advertising campaigns of these brands.
What’s common?
Given that almost all the players offer similar features, the advertisements for these brands also embody a similar look and feel. Like others, one is most likely to find feature-based blurbs that talk about emails, messaging and social networking.
Though Nokia is the largest player by far in the market, the untrained eye may mistake certain models of the E series for a Blackberry and vice-versa. The layouts of both these brands use bold and dark colors and have an overall serious and executive feel to them owing to the corporate crowd they target. As a result, most Blackberry and Nokia E series ads would feature models in neat and formal attire and have surroundings that reflect an office ambiance. Both these brands have been heavily promote emailing as a mode of communication.
Again, if we take up the recent Samsung Corby and Micromax range of phones, they have a youthful ambiance in common. So, typically both brands have a lot of young people having fun with their phones and use a lot of vibrant colors straying away from the usual black and grey. Both brands heavily promote chatting and social networking as modes of communication.
Both Blackberry and Nokia haven’t been advertising much on TV but are visible in the print media, as well as other mediums like OOH and digital.
What’s unique?
Nokia
For those who have seen Nokia ads previously, the brand has an uncanny habit of blending the consumer or the individual with the product to create one unique identity. The ads which are executed in India by ad agency JWT, rely on a copy that stresses on the consumer’s identity borne out of certain key features of the product in question. So for example, in this particular ad, the proposition is ‘How we respond is who we are.’ Last year when Nokia launched a category of stylish phones, the proposition again was ‘It’s not just a phone; it’s who we are.’
Blackberry
Launched in 1999 by Research In Motion (RIM), Blackberry is unique in itself that it doesn’t advertise much, but gets promoted by the service provider that is selling the brand in a bundle offer. So, may it be a Vodafone or an Airtel or Tata—one is sure to have found feature-based Blackberry ads time and again. However, RIM, which has its limited campaigns executed by the ad agency Collateral in India, generally relies on ads that announce the arrival of a new variant which generally have a hero shot of the phone with bullets or a summary of the features and what’s new in it. The brand relies on its reputation and word of mouth as advertising. A year or so back, Vodafone had introduced the Blackberry Storm, which featured F1 ace driver Lewis Hamilton promoting the brand. The company generated buzz by coining him the first to use the Storm.
Samsung Corby
Corby has been making a lot of noise these days with heavy advertising in all forms of media, especially TV. One of the major reasons for that is the phones’ which come preloaded with the popular social networking sites, are targeted at the youth.
Corby is unique in itself as it brings a lot of spunky colors to this particular series of phones ranging from yellow, orange and red! This instantly sets the brand apart as the consumer can distinctly recall the product from what he has seen in the ad. The TV ad created by Cheil Communications, encompasses all walks of life of the youth, may it be emailing, partying, clicking pictures or capturing videos, sharing them and also keeping up through social networking and chatting. The ad also has a distinct proprietary tune playing through it in the form of a jingle that helps generate recall.
Micromax
The Gurgaon-based firm, which entered the business about two years ago, is already giving serious competition to the established players. The brand that uses the tagline ‘Inventing surprises’ and targets the youth is unique in itself as its premium category, which is solely comprised of QWERTY keypad handsets will keep focusing on ‘easy chatting’.
The brand has recently invested Rs 100 crore for advertising and has appointed Lowe Lintas as its creative partner. It has also signed up Bollywood biggie Akshay Kumar as the brand endorser, a move that would help gain more visibility.
The brand had launched an advert in Hindi, set in a college classroom with a bunch of teenagers having fun with their phone. As a result, it managed to differentiate itself from a Nokia or a Blackberry, in being more youthful, casual and fun.
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