Telecom Promos in Overdrive

Back in December 2013, we covered a story on mobile freebies. Both Airtel Zambia and MTN Zambia had good morning Zambia and Mwauka Bwanji Zambia promotions respectively. Since then, Airtel Zambia has gone on to add 1 free minute and most recently 50 sms to the package. Today’s Airtel advert is Valentine’s Day themed encouraging people to say ‘I love you’ every morning instead of the usual ‘good morning.’ All you need to do is dial *141# to subscribe. Seems like Airtel has extended the Christmas promotion into the “month of love.”

On the other hand, MTN Zambia has the Chadiba promotion which requires you to register for K1.50 daily and get 480 minutes of talk time between 22:00 hours to 06:00 hours, plus 30MB of data from 06:00 hours to 10:00 hours. So far, there is no end date reflecting on the Chadiba promotion. The claim is 10 to Ten but the services are split in such a way that voice minutes can only be enjoyed during the night while internet data can only be enjoyed in the morning hours. Realistically, how many people will wait up for 22:00 hours to take advantage of the 480 minutes and have to get up for work the next morning?

That is just the tip of the iceberg concerning the promo war among the telecoms on offering the best deal to the customer. The WINA Big and Chadiba campaigns were just launched last week but no news from Zamtel yet. I guess they’ve got their sights set on a bigger scheme, we’ll see.

WINA Big has mostly gone the newspaper route with a scattered 3 page spread in today’s Post Newspaper. While Chadiba has taken to billboards and the social media route. Airtel seems to have reserved the social media slot for the good morning Zambia campaign. A quick assessment of the marketing strategies shows that the use of different advertising platforms demonstrates the various target groups for these advertisements. Social media: 18-24 years old demographic; Billboards: general public, motorists, pedestrians; Newspapers: the employed, families etc. Most of the feedback from customers can be easily traced through social media. Therefore, it is easier to assess the impact of the promotions. For instance, the general complaint with the Airtel good morning Zambia campaign is that one free minute is not enough. Whereas the MTN Chadiba promotion has been deemed confusing.