Marketing Warfare

Marketing is WAR!

“To err is human; to forgive is divine”.

In marketing, there is no room for such ideal, for it costs money or worst case scenario, it may cost the company their precious customers!

In the book Marketing Warfare by Al Ries and Jack Trout, 2006, the authors expounded that marketing has its roots embedded in war. Can you imagine what the consequences are if a general subscribes to the above ideal?

This book truly appeals to me because the authors shared what worked and what didn’t for companies in the West.

I have been searching high and low for Malaysian marketing case studies on the Internet but I guess Malaysians, being Asians, are not so generous with their knowledge. So I thought, why don’t I take the first step to initiate the sharing of vital marketing experiences for other fellow Malaysians by learning from past marketing campaigns by Malaysian companies.

One thing about the ‘orang puteh’ is that they speak their mind without beating around the bush. There is a saying in the West that goes: “If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, it must be a duck”. How different it is in Malaysia: “Looks like me, sounds like me, but that isn’t me”.

On 24^th September 2009, (http://biz.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2009/9/25/business/4777839&sec=business), Packet One declared ‘war’ on Telekom Malaysia with their ‘Cut Already’ (I am known as C.A. and recently I received a call from an old friend who joked that my initials meant Cut Already…) marketing campaign.

This mammoth campaign was featured by all possible promotional channels such as:

ATL (above the line): TV, radio, newspapers, internet, press releases, magazines

BTL (below the line): sponsorship, road shows, public relations, events, merchandising.

The results?

People of all ages and all walks of life talk about the campaign, bloggers blog about it, women’s NGO’s pounce at every opportunity to get the company to stop the campaign due to sexual connotations, reporters jump at every opportunity to interview officials from Packet One and etc. In terms of awareness, I am very sure that they hit their targets when their radio ad won a bronze award at the country’s prestigious Kancil Awards recently (http://biz.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2009/11/21/business/5109860&sec=business).

End of the day, marketing is about results….

Monday, November 30, 2009

4G WiMAX operator Packet One Networks (M) Sdn Bhd (P1) added 36,000 subscribers in its third quarter as reported in its financial results earlier this month.

When Telekom Malaysia Bhd (TM) announced its third quarter results last Friday, what was most significant was the further reduction of its broadband net addition subscribers to 28,000.

Last year, TM achieved an average of 53,000 net adds per quarter.

So it appears that P1, which is just over a year old and has a 30% population coverage (as at end third quarter), has beat the incumbent which has a 100% nationwide coverage.

Source: http://biz.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2009/11/30/business/5199005&sec=business

How did TM react to Packet One’s campaign?

I agree with Da Alpha Dog’s post below on TM’s ‘knee-jerk’ reaction. Check it out.

http://mytechnews.info/b/2009/11/advertising-in-malaysia-getting-too-personal.html

In my opinion, Packet One won the battle because they understood the marketing mix and did a lot of research before ‘waging’ the war. Then again, their high budget campaign tilted a lot in their favour. Imagine if they didn’t have the budget for above the line promotional / communication mix, I doubt that they could have generated this amount of awareness.

I admire Packet One for:

• Conducting extensive research (you will be surprised how many businesses in Malaysia decide not to conduct research simply because ‘no budget lah’ or ‘very expensive lah’)
• Thinking out of the box (instead of following the highway, they blazed a new trail)

There is a saying that goes “The largest room in the world is the room for improvement” thus:

Packet One could improve on:

• Under promising and over delivering instead of over promising and under delivering – look into their sales employees’ pitch immediately
• Upgrading their contact centre capacity – I heard horror stories from friends who was put on hold for far too long…..if they are understaffed, they should have a system for their agents to return callers instead of putting them on hold.

As with all wars, there are bound to be casualties. In this battle, Packet One barely scratched the hippo’s thighs (remember TM’s bluehyppo campaign? You can still find it in Google’s cache http://74.125.153.132/search?q=cache:Sa5LynWBHrYJ:info.bluehyppo.com/pressReleases.asp+telekom+bluehyppo&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=my)

I will be following this ‘war’ with great enthusiasm and rest assured, will keep you all updated. I am seeking marketing enthusiasts who can comment on Malaysian marketing campaigns for others to learn from. 

Coming up next: Celco war; who is the winner?