in advertising term, ATL means Above the line. Which means advertisement that involves mass advertising campaign via Radio ads,TV ads and print ads.
you see. Advertisement is the very crucial weapon to turn the product investment into revenue. It will break or make success of the product sales. Great product, with advertisement failure will fail to communicate and persuade the customer to purchase the product thus bringing loss to the company.On the contrary, not so great product, but, back up with impactful advertisement campaign will generate revenue to the company.
you see, telecommunication company is one of industries’ major and active advertisers. In Malaysia, even the average customer understand the war exist between the telco provider.
Right now the telco industry leader for prepaid are Digi, hotlink and xpax.you can see this companies fights to retain their existing customer and at the same time attracting new ones by offering and counter offering numerous sub product and rates.
So far, i see digi and maxis somehow manage to collaborate with their advertising agency to comeout with campaign that is effective. you see, those ads were ideas pinched by the advertising agency. However its up to the company to decide to approve or not their ideas. Thus its very crucial for the companies’s Marketing & Brand executive to decide what is the very best campaign for their communication goals.Some probably for sales, some other probably to inject brand awarness. However,in reality not all creative idea manage to pass through the companies many layers of approval process. So its not a suprised when the agency pinch the similar campaign concept to another company and get their seal of approval due to a company difference in advertisement policy/direction or simply just fail to understand the concept.
Thus, you can see huge creative difference and advertisement execution between maxis, digi and celcom. If you close your eyes,think and watch the ads closely, you can almost see the how the company executive who has approved the campaign looklike, what they are wearing, their way of thinking,their race,gender and so on and so forth. 
In Celcom case. Eventhough they have the product strenght probably offering even much better products then their competitors. Personally when it comes to product advertisement campaign Celcom is still trying their best to climb to the standard of digi and maxis on the contrary probably they are paying and spending MORE money on their A&P than their competitors if we look at those celebrities endorsement that involves Celcom.
Let us walk through several ads campaign done by Celcom.
“Who Says”
Is a campaign probably launched to shut their competitors up in the rates and product features for their prepaid business. I think probably its the best and practical campaign to defeat so many ads by their competitors. Celcom may save some money in creating this campaign to tackle various campaign by their competitors to weakens their prepaid business. The execution, concept, are almost hip and able to communicate to the targetted prepaid user-both exisiting and potential customers.
On “More” Campaing and celebrities endorsement.
One thing that i dont understand with celcom is their persistence in appointing spokespersons to promote their products. Which a move that digi and maxis has stop doing. Personally to me, celebrity Endorsement work for certain products but may not for for some other. When our customers product awareness and knowledge has increase then the company shall minimise using celebrity endorsement because the customer already know about the product nature. Thus if they dont like your product, they wont buy eventough you pay millions ringgit to their favourite celebrity.
And when it comes to endorsement, there are many rules for the company to choose their brand ambasador. Usually the celebrity match with their target customer psychographic and demographic.
Thus when celcom appointed UK soccer player, UK based Stephan Rahman, Taiwanese singer Lee Hom Wang, and Indonesia band Peterpan to promote their product by trying to convince us that they are a very happy Celcom customers . I was scratching my head off thinking with many whys! do you really feel the power?
1. Why are they paying the foreign celebrity to promote local product to local customers?
2.why do they appoint the celebrity? do they know about celebrity album sales in malaysia? how many fans thus the celebrity have in malaysia? are they still hot?.and what are the background of fans?. how many are them are internet savvy and how many of them use notebook?
You see, i was laughing my ass off when lee hom,peterpan, stephen rahman, those UK soccer players promoting celcom products. I wonder if Celcom is also a service provider in UK, Taiwan and Indonesia?
I mean, common, peterpan selling broadband wireless/internet applications of email and what not?. like yeah. their drummer, vocalist can really convince me to purchace their product?. I fear how many ppl has decided to NOT to subscribe or purchase their product when they see celcom peterpan ads!
And stephan rahman and lee hom, really use celcom ALL the time in UK and taiwan. oh common, for god sake, get real. At least they picked Maya Karin. But then, To me, celebrity product endorsement is a thing in the past. If a company think that theres no other way to speak to their target customers and fidgetly has to use any celebrities to endorse their product. it must go through detail impact study/research to ensure the endorsement deal is both party utilises the deal in a win-win deal to avoid loss hence, tagging a product into a celebrity require alot of consideration when it involves to brand and product image of both party.
Yes,there was a time when Siti nurhaliza was utilised to promote TMnet prepaid, a wise decision by then TMnet to cultivate product awareness to the malay demo and physcographic.
If they appoint another celebrity to promote tmnet prepaid will it work? i can promise you it wont. Because the product is already an established product.
We, the customer are not that stupid anymore.
You see, a company should UTILISED the celebrity to generate revenue via the endorsement. not the other way around. i can go on and on on many things related to Celcom advertising strategy.I could be wrong, but the fact that i always see various loopholes in ads campaign involving only Celcom amazed me with questions that does the executives in Celcom understand and know what they are doing or not?
Celcom (Malaysia) Bhd, SVP Marketing, Zalman Aefendy Zainal Abidin at the Celcom introduces new Power Icon and Celcom (Malaysia) Bhd, CEO, Dato’ Sri Shazalli Ramly in Kuala Lumpur.
for more celcom ads.
http://www.mcsaatchi.co.nz/work_detail.php?workid=345
http://www.samfrench.com/celcom/?p=watch
so no wonder the room come with 2 free breakfast.
