The Vodafone ad


I am not sure how many of you remember the front page of yesterday’s ‘Times of India’. It contained a full page Vodafone advertisement. Infact, it occupied both the 1st and the 2nd page, pushing the headlines to what would normally be the 3rd page.

The 1st page had the message “Everybody’s welcome to the network that you can depend on”. The 2nd page gave 10 smiling reasons to join Vodafone and had the famous Vodafone pug in different poses showcasing different aspects of their offerings including games, sports updates, stock updates and many more.

Now, on a normal day I would simply ignore this ad wondering how they had the power to spend some 10 – 15 lakhs on an ad like this and continue on. However, yesterday for some reason I stopped and asked myself – Why today? It was a Friday…not a bank holiday or anything of that sort. Why did they choose to put out this ad on the 3rd of February?

One possible reason would be because the rates are probably cheaper on a weekday, but I wasn’t fully convinced by this reason. I was about to forget the whole episode when the real reason suddenly struck me. The main headline of the day which found itself on the the 3rd page of the paper, adjacent to the Vodafone ad, read – “SC cancels License to Loot – Scraps all 121 2G permits given out by A Raja.” Somewhere in another small column I read that the number of subscribers that could be affected by this is ~862 lakhs!!

Imagine you are one of those 862 lakhs subscribers who doesn’t like to watch the news on TV but would wake up in the morning to be greeted by Vodafone first, before getting the shock of your life that your network will cease to exists in 4 months time. Chances are very likely that you would pick up your phone and dial that number mentioned on the ad on the adjacent page and begin the portability process, thus providing a great boon for Vodafone sales and fully justifying the 15 lakhs spent on getting this ad out.

Call them ‘oppurtunist’ if you like, but I guess it is very important for people in advertising to keep an eye on current affairs and put forth their message at the right time so as to play on the consumers’ psyche. I don’t know which agency handles the Marketing of Vodafone, but whoever it is has been doing a great job for them here in India.

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