Airtel has entered the heated up DTH space. A bit late, but an entry nevertheless. It has launched an ad campaign, which runs for 10 seconds and tells the audience “See you at Home”. I could not guess what was happening and did not know it was for Airtel’s DTH. There was no logo or anything that can be related to Airtel except the red sofa. How do you expect me to guess it with a sofa? I could not guess but someone else did.
Watch the ad below:
Reliance guessed it. It used this as an opportunity and busted Airtel. It has used the same kind of ad and ended the ad with Reliance Big TV DTH service. What a way to bust Airtel ! Some call it cheap; some may even say, “How can Reliance stoop so low”. Reliance’s logic was there was no name to the ad and so no trademark’s associated with it. So why not capitalize on it. I agree. That’s a shame but its true.
I am not judging Reliance on what they have done. Either they are right or they are wrong. But what it has done is it has killed the teaser ads before it started (“shuru hote hi khatam ho gaya). This could as well be the death to teaser ads.
Airtel’s complete ad is much more interesting with celebrities like Saif Ali Khan, AR Rehman, Zaheer Khan, Gautam Gambhir, Kareena Kapoor, Madhavan and Vidya Balan.
Watch it below:
This is not the first time Reliance has done something like this. If you remember, Reliance has done the same thing with Big Bazaar. Note the name for the Big Bazaar of Kishore Biyani’s Future Group. Reliance ADAG has made it Reliance Big Bazar. In the Internet world it is called a typo. In the real world it is trademark infringement or any other fancy name you can come up with.
Leaving the niceties aside, one should appreciate the thinking of the Reliance ad campaign and the way Anil Ambani fights competition. Be it with elder brother Mukesh Ambani or any other rivals in any of the verticals he does business with. If Anil Ambani were a boxer India would have won more than one gold medal by now. I am just glad he is not a boxer and he is a shrewd businessman. India is winning much more.
Unfortunately, I could not get my hands on the Reliance buster video.
What do you think about Reliance’s bluffing Airtel? Do you think it was in the right spirt?
one should use the better product and services an not look at best advertise as for as Reliance is concerned they always use the best Technology.
Get Real guys! If the competitor leaves the door of opportunity open for you, then only a fool would not like to make most of it. I have not personally used any of the services of Relaince apart from their mobile phne but must say yes they are not too good at the customer service front but have a great network and we can never deny that it was RCOM that is responsible for bringing down the prices of the mobile calls to this level. Salute to Jr. Ambani for this and hoping much more mud slinging in ads and costs in the timed to come and hopefully they would pull up their socks on the customer service count too.
Big TV has ruined its iimage before it could have gotten built. This is ridiculous stuff. They’ve got to get their act together and concentrate on timely deliveries and sounfd customer service, instead of getting into such acts. There is something called as “Brand Respect” which ADAG would never have understood for sure. This act of theirs is another vidication of it.
Thanks for the comment Vipsy.
I think Reliance plays with other’s brands because they have the political muscle to fight anything that comes out of.
I am not a big fan of Reliance and i have already blogged about it. It is not one services which suffers but all the business ADAG is suffering from the malaise.
Link for the previous post with Reliance experience : https://trak.in/tags/business/2008/10/05/online-police-squad-bloggers-negative-feedback/
I am not inclined to take Big TV because of this.
“Leaving the niceties aside, one should appreciate the thinking of the Reliance ad campaign and the way Anil Ambani fights competition. ”
And do you think, playing with others ads and brand name is brave thing a businessman can do?
Just try Reliance ADAG’s services, Big TV, Broadband, Movie rentals etc.. and you will cry for the lousy customer service and with same Pen and ink you will blast Anil for creating all this mess.
Not agree with you on this….!!
In my opinion Big TV should use its own campaign their ad will create confusion in minds of the audience and who will benefit from it nobody knows. One could perceive the Red Chair as Airtel’s symbol and associate all the features and selling points of Big TV as that of Airtel.
I personally dont like such ads, even sprite has this reputation. But coming back to relaince big tv, they should have strictly stayed away from all this.. quite a poor showbiz from a company like reliance
Reliance Big TV has gone too low in doing something like this. I mean they have just managed to kept their reputation with such ad. Obviously it was in a very bad spirit, but I sincerely feel they have just wasted money in this campaign. Basic fundamental of advertising was simply missing in their ad. Airtel definitely got more mileage since people started discussing that ad more often because of big tv.
mpeg4 is just a compression technology. Reliance keeps on creating a hype around mpeg4 but it has nothing to do with the picture quality. With mpeg4 more channels can accomodate in a transponder. And am very sure other players will also sooner or later shift to mpeg4. its no big deal. Using big tv am really fed up. instead of acting on airtels advert, they should concentrate on improving their quality of service.
In Reliance(both brothers) there is no such thing as corporate ethics.
But i think ADAG wasted money, in fact actually helped Airtel.
Airtel’s longer version of advertisement has already communicated the existence of their DTH service.
Whenever people get to see the BIG tv’s hijack advert, they seem to believe that it is Airtel.
Airtel has very strong presence in mind. Rather than confusing people ADAG ends up advertising Airtel DTH.
That is what i think, just ask some aunty what she thinks the BIGtv’s hijacked advert is selling.
ADAG is hyping up mpeg4. Seriously almost every mobile phone / video camera etc etc can playback this “technology”. I have not seen others offering but they too must be using this “technology”. Don’t fall for such things, ask them which “part” of mpeg4 they are using, AVC/H.264 especially the Nero Digital AVC is what we should demand.http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=90784
But this is worth nothing with our TV sets.