Claro goes for Digicel’s jugular:Their attack ad campaigns goes up another notch

Jamaica’s not used to this style of advertising-Confrontational, use of a competitor’s colours and clear references. It’s more, well, American. In Jamaica we’ve grown used to the British, conservative, safe and frankly rather polite and boring way of advertising things. The market has now gotten a shake up as Claro the well heeled, mobile service provider newbie is doing things very differently.

Yes Digicel boasted that they had over 20,000 Facebook Fans in less than 2 months by doing what one of the things they do well, engaging their loyal consumers with credit giveaways and promotions. Claro’s presence on Facebook on the other hand, has been, well negligible. Somewhat expected I think, as Digicel is still number one in the marketplace, they still enjoy great affinity and Claro is still third in many people’s minds even as they announced they were now number 2. BUT and a big but here, is that Claro is positioning themselves as new and of greater value for money in an environment where many Jamaicans are counting their coins and being selective about where to spend them.

So Claro decides to grab their attention and enter the social media space differently.

They ran a full page ad in the Sunday papers with only a question and a website address that led you to an in your face 27sec YouTube video. They also launched a Claro Jamaica Break Free Facebook Group The goal: attack, tell their truth behind Digicel’s cellphone rates and sell their rate to the consumer who’s itching or thinking of switching.  Claro is deliberately acting like a digital termite, eating away at the roots of Digicel. Remember their goal is to over take Digicel in 2010. Good thing, is that we all have ring side seats to this battle. Digicel over to you. We’re waiting!

But will it work ?

Wearing my internet marketer’s hat, I would not have gone the big newspaper ad to point to a youtube 30 sec ad route. Looks like a meatball sundae to me. Who was the target audience? What was the real goal here? To say that Claro is now using Social Media ? Sure they got 400 views in 2 days…so ? Are they just using short attention span kind of ads to further hammer home the message ” One low rate $9.99″ ?

All that happened was that Sunday newspaper readers (which have fallen drastically in the past 2 years) were pointed to a 30 sec ad and while direct and all, was not witty or memorable. Just once again hammering home, pick me, pick me, I’m cheaper- a value for money message that the fickle and price sensitive consumer, of which there are many, may listen to and switch. Will those consumers give up their Digicel or LIME phones who knows? Will it be a strategy that will helps Claro to over take Digicel…I doubt it. Is it worth waiting to see what happens next, hell yeah? But a word to Claro- your customer service still sucks and until you change that, well I dunno.

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