Telecom switches to just the right ad mix

Dean Taylor

With Saatchi & Saatchi's T3G campaign heading Telecom's comeback on the mobile phone market, general manager Dean Taylor has every reason to smile.

"We've got some people doing double takes. That's exactly what we wanted," he said yesterday.

The British ad veteran recruited to head the agency's Telecom account last year said the campaign for its third-generation mobile network - T3G - was one of the meatiest advertising tasks Saatchi had taken on.

"When we came to market, Telecom-bagging was a national sport. How were we going to change that?" he said.

But with figures yesterday re-establishing Telecom's lead over its rival in new subscriptions for the second quarter in a row, there's little doubt Saatchi's work has played a significant part in the upswing, which traces back to the campaign's November launch.

From its early appeal to patriotism with its focus on children, the campaign has broadened to reflect on-the-street youth culture and, more recently, a tongue-in-cheek take-off of the British invasion for the Lions Tour.

The aim has been to inject excitement and funkiness into the brand and steer perceptions of the country's largest phone company away from its business-like, practical roots.

"Previously, Vodafone had owned all that excitement. It had owned youth, it was the leader and was trendy with picture messaging and so on," Taylor said.

The approach has been to loosen up the advertising to reflect modern culture.

"We've tried to get into the youth psyche and be more innovative."

One approach has been its "rubbish film fest" in which owners of Telecom video-capable phones enter 20-second streaming video clips into the competition to win a trip to Hollywood.

The competition, which has been running for two months, has been remarkably successful with more than 900 entries so far and more than 500,000 hits on the website.

The concept, which Taylor says is the world's first online mobile film festival, played on the fact people fooled around with the technology and took silly videos of themselves.

"The [rubbish film festival] ads are interesting and funny. Viewers feel that's the type of thing they could be part of and make themselves," Taylor said.

Telecom mobile marketing head Kevin Bowler said T3G was one of the company's most successful mobile campaigns.

On-going tracking of advertising cut-through - whether people see the ads, identify the brand and absorb the messages - showed Telecom's cut-through had more than doubled in the past year.

"We haven't had a campaign in mobile that has done that well in four to five years so it represents a new standard for us," Bowler said.

And the figures speak for that.

The Christmas quarter saw Telecom overtake Vodafone in subscriber figures for the first time since 2002, with a record 96,000 new connections compared with Vodafone's 74,000.

Yesterday's figures show the world's largest mobile-phone company is clawing back that 22,000 lead, gaining 60,000 subscribers for the three months to March compared with Telecom's 64,000.

Telecom has had an obvious advantage in being the first to market with a faster third generation mobile data network, offering high data speeds and a range of new services such as the ability to record and send short video clips.

Vodafone is not due to launch its third generation mobile data network until later this year. Until then, its advertising agency, Lowe, is not able to say much about what is in store.

Vodafone New Zealand managing director Russell Stanners said its recovery in the March quarter was pleasing and it was still the market leader with a 55.4 per cent share of mobile phone users, with Telecom making up the rest.

But there was no denying the market - nearing saturation point with more than 80 per cent of Kiwis owning mobiles - was now much more competitive.

Stanners said the company was not looking to take its advertising account elsewhere. "Lowe is a key partner and does a fantastic job."