KUALA LUMPUR: Telecommunications provider Maxis has rolled out a
television campaign in a loose alliance with its four main rivals to
promote the lifting of barriers which allow digital mobile phone
subscribers to use short message services on each other's networks.
The BBDO-developed TVC, titled "Laps", is part of a broader campaign
aimed at giving the Maxis brand a more human feel to it.
The spot features five swimmers racing against each other in a
competition before the lane floaters are removed and the contestants
come together to perform a synchronised swimming movement. The other
telecom operators which joined Maxis to remove the barriers were TM
Touch, TimeCel, Celcom and Digi.
BBDO Malaysia chief executive officer Jennifer Chan said: "The ad
highlights the fact that before Maxis customers could only use the Maxis
network for SMS. Now they can use the networks of all five
providers."
Maxis has also launched another TVC, called "Surprise" to convey the
message that it can enhance people's lives through the integration of
its range of services and technologies.
This spot, which has a more frequent run than Laps, shows how family
members can communicate with each other and conveniently look up
information via mobile phone, with voice to text features, and tablet
PC, which has phone to PC, video call and MP3 technologies built into
it.
Chan said visuals of a family were used to drive home the message that
high-tech communications products and services could enhance everyone's
lives, not just business people.
"Technology on its own is cold. The campaign departs from the
conventional method of just showing the technology.
"We show how the technology fits into people's lives and how they can
benefit from it and we have accomplished this within the environment of
the family."
Hence the TVC's tagline: "Life will change because of technology. But at
Maxis, we don't think technology is all that special. Life is."
BBDO won the Maxis account a year ago in a five-way pitch. Maxis also
recently gave the agency the Hotlink pre-paid telephone card business,
which Chan describes as a vote of confidence from the client.
Competition in the telecommunications industry is intensifying; in the
first seven months of this year, Digi led marketing communications spend
with US$5.7 million, compared with more than $8 million
for the whole of last year.
TM Touch wasnext at $4.8 million from about $5 million in
2000, and Maxis was at $4.7 million, compared with $8
million last year.
However, the cooperation in the SMS segment among the top telecom
providers is seen as an attempt to offer the best service to each of the
players' customer base.
