Maxis in driver's seat for SMS ad campaign

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.

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