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Airtel 4G Launch Campaign

Background

Airtel Nigeria has a history with 4G, In 2016, the brand responded to not having 4G by launching an integrated campaign that leveraged a human insight about needing reliable data services irrespective of the technology powering it.

Now with Nigeria’s largest 4G network, Airtel was faced with a new challenge, 4G adoption within the category since its inception has been low. We needed to show our subscribers that we were now on 4G and initiate adoption, without making our existing 3G infrastructure look bad. The question was how?

Challenge and objectives

Of all the mobile Networks in Nigeria, Airtel had a “mass base”, with most of its subscribers in the middle and bottom of the pyramid. According to client data, 61% of its subscribers are still on 2G,

The main challenge therefore was for Airtel to create a campaign that positions 4G LTE as better than its 3G network, without de-marketing its 3G network. This challenge was even made more difficult because of the brand’s aggressive investment in 4G infrastructure, which made the brand the largest 4G network in Nigeria. .

Problem Statement and Strategic Thinking

4G technology was not new to the category and as a matter of fact, competition had spent a lot in marketing the infrastructure from a functional point of view (speed, coverage etc), However, category penetration for 4G remained weak.

The question for us therefore was, how do you move from not having 4G, and exploiting it to tell better stories than competitors to a stage where you are now the largest 4G operator in the country? This was the challenge the team identified from a brand point of view.

From the consumer point of view, we could not de-market 3G. The reason for this was that only 2% of Airtel subscribers had switched to 4G as at December 2018. The remaining 98% were on 2G and 3G. (Source: Client Data). What this meant was that we could not afford to paint 3G as the enemy because it could mean a potential loss of a huge subscriber base to competition, who were only talking about their shiny new 4G

The Campaign Objectives

Communications: Get the consumers to see the incremental benefits that 4G offers, without discrediting 3G

Business: Drive adoption from a paltry 2% to at least 5% of total subscriber base by the end of Q4 FY for Airtel ( March 2018)

Consumer Insights and Key findings

Of Airtel’s 44 million subscribers in Nigeria, only 9% of subscribers had 4G enabled handsets., and of that number, only a paltry 2% had both 4G enabled devices and SIM cards. This meant that subscribers who had 4G enabled smartphones were the immediate targets for the 4G campaign, as switching costs to 4G for them was significantly low, All they had to do was to effect a SIM swap at an authorised shop.

We decided to focus on them, and we learnt the following through a mix of consumer observations and in depth interviews with them

  1. For those on 4G, downgrading them back to 3G will be utterly devastating for them, and is a situation they will never like to see happen.
  2. There is little doubt about the quality of 4G, but a compelling reason is needed to get people to make the switch.
  3. Making comparisons between things in their immediate lives was a sure way to trigger a move from complacency in them
  4. Value to current users, far outweighs the costs that non users complain about

With all these insights, we needed a simple creative vehicle that could help us communicate how good 4G is compared to 3G, without making 3G look bad.

Summarizing the Strategy

Our strategy was to

  • Get subscribers from Airtel and competing networks
  • Who believed 4G was too expensive and 3G still did the job
  • To switch to Airtel’s wide and reliable 4G LTE network
  • By showing its incremental benefit without de-marketing 3G.

Creative Idea: 3G is Great, 4G is Better

For our creative approach, we chose the third key learning about our consumers. We questioned their logic with simple comparatives, and created a campaign for 4G LTE without actually showing a smartphone.

We created a series of videos for social media and television, which basically compared earlier “technologies” to newer ways of doing things. Our creative technique used metaphors to tell people to evolve just like everything around them does. As a strategic intent, we made the campaign appeal to the critical mass that formed the Airtel subscriber base. We did not use any complex technology jargon, or and did not even show a mobile device.

The campaign was video led, and utilized social media, and television as the main channels

Results

The three videos garnered hit reviews and views on various digital platforms. Gele, has 1.3m views on Facebook, and 900k views on YouTube. Blender, the second spot had 2.3m views on Youtube and 2.7m on Facebook., while the third spot, Portmanteau had 1m views on Youtube and 2.1m views on Facebook.

Online sentiment analysis of the comments and interactions showed a 83% positive interactions all across the posts and videos.

On the business side, Airtel was able to record a 13.7% increase in 4G upgrades (surpassing its 5% target) on its network, which was significantly higher than the industry average of 4% over the same period,

On a broader scale in terms of active mobile data subscriptions, Airtel added 1.1 million new data subscribers, and held firm its spot as the number two mobile operator in terms of active data subscriptions. 

This growth accounts for a 3.8% growth in data subscribers, higher than the industry average for growth during the same period, was 2.8%, and 4G subscriptions accounting for a major factor in this increase.