Get your Swagg on with Airtel

28/03/201428/03/2014 Sandi

Got a K5? Never been on Airtel. Well, maybe you could reconsider right now, buy a SIM card and turn up your swagg. All you have to do buy a new SIM card and you’re all set.

Top up with K5 of airtime per week and you’re eligible for the promotion’s rewards which are as follows; every week you’ll get 25min and 25mb free for the next 8 weeks from date of SIM activation. That’s a total of 200minutes and 200MB for 8 weeks.

However, you have to have recharged a K5 within 6 days to enjoy the 25MB and 25min of call time. To check both your bonus minutes and data bonus you dial *114*8# and these bonuses are only valid up to midnight on the day they are received.

In comparison, MTN is giving away K1 upon new SIM activation and then 5 free minutes every month for a period of 6 months, and all you have to do is stay connected.

Slap D's shades are too cool — Slap D’s shades are too cool

Zamtel does not have such a promotion running rewarding new SIM buyers but if they do put one in place we will let you know.

It seems what one service provider does, the other follows suit with a tiny twist but to almost the same concept. Are they stuck when it comes to ideas on how to sell themselves?

Every business has to make itself look like it’s gaining less compared to what the consumer is getting out of it as have these 3 mobile service operators. Promotions, or demotions?

First, let’s look at the Airtel package and what it’s offering; 25MB for every K5 spent a week. What’s 25MB in modern Zambia? You would barely have opened your Instagram and even scrolled through one picture before you receive the dreaded ” You have used 90% of your bundle” message that gets everybody depressed lately.

We would also assume that a top up of K5 in an entire week was targeted at low budget users but there is a high chance they do not own a smartphone hence the free bundle would be a waste, unless made transferrable so they can share it with friends/family with smarter phones than theirs. Otherwise it will just expire without being utilized.

What if you get your bonus minutes and data at 23 hours? Too bad because then you’ll have to use it up before midnight an hour away when they expire. As for the free minutes you can only use them for on-net calls. No cross network calling. Not cool. The 25 minutes may be good for a day because looking at the free minutes that were given out in a previous promotion called Loyalty Programme, the free Rewardz minutes that one would redeem where not so accurate.

Even if you made a 5 second call, you would be charged a whole minute for that call and have one minute less from your free minutes. We hope this will not be the case with this programme and that it will time calls per second.

We think their idea of localising the same promotion but specifically to Copperbelt residents was smart because it gives customers a sense of ownership about the product in a way as it represents their way of life. “Kopala Swag” was a highly appropriate name because the entire Copperbelt is called Kopala in vernacular and has now been integrated as a slang word. It will sell for the sole reason that it is personalized, selling the idea that if you’re not on Airtel, you’re not a true Kopala! For the cons of the promotion, see the previous two paragraphs.

With the MTN package, it’s a better plan because you don’t have a threshold amount of airtime to buy to get the free 5 minutes. You get them even if you haven’t bought airtime the whole month.