Manmeet Sabharwal's Blog

I was working on my laptop and talking to my dad about something,suddenly on TV i heard an ad that made me stop everything and watch it.I watched the ad as if the model in the ad was telling my story.

Let us watch the ad.

I have lived in many cities across india and where ever i went this problem was always there.Before every damn EPL match i had to call my cable guy to switch to ESPN or Star Sports.

This was one of the biggest reasons that my parents had switched to a DTH.Whenever i came home during my vacations,i used to struggle with my cable guy explaining him what EPL was.Incidentally we have bought Reliance BIG TV.

My parents always had problem of bad picture and sound quality etc with the current connection,now they dont face those issues.

Why a person would switch to DTH from a normal cable connection ?

In India people have stuck to a single cable guy for many years.There is a system of divided territories in India.Major cable players  divide a city into areas where they keep their monopoly and don’t allow others to step in .So people have no choice but to stick with the same cable connection.People have lots of problems with their cable connections but they can’t switch.Now when DTH entered india,people had an excellent option.

Initially Dish and TATA Sky fought a price and a features war.Their ads were mainly based on pricing or extra channel packs.But more or less they both were equal to or costlier than the cable if all channels were included.

Then TATA moved to TATA Sky Plus and advertised about its recording ability and Dish still is concentrating on SRK and its pricing.

Meanwhile SUN Direct and Airtel entered the DTH market with their ads.SUN again concentrated on its prices and AIRTEL obsessed with its swarm of brand ambassadors and digital MPEG-4 technology(which all others too have).

No one basically presented their DTH as a perfect and a better replacement(subsitute) for their present cable connection.But the current Reliance BIG TV ads are just perfect.The models used in the ad are perfect as per the Targeted Audience and potential buyers can identify with them and with the problems expressed by them.

BIG TV has two more ads on air right now.One which deals with the picture quality and other one deals with the performance on a LCD.All 3 ads deal with some relevant and realistic problems.

SPIDERMAN AD

LCD TV AD

Initially BIG TV came up with ads concentrating on their paid movie service,but current ads can really help them position as a better DTH service.

If i would not have bought DTH by now,seeing the Football ad i would have definitely bought a DTH and preferably Reliance BIG TV.Many of us have faced this issue when one or the other channel WE wanted to watch was not available.It was there yesterday but today just before you wanted to watch it,its gone.

None of the DTH ever told the customers that buy our DTH because its better than your current cable connection.They told customers about their interactive services(ACTIVE),their competitive pricing,their paid movie service,their recording facilities,their VAS but didn’t give ‘the reason’ to the customer which just makes him buy a DTH box over his current cable connection.

Even If we talk about the pricing,incidentally BIG TV is one of the cheapest options available in the market.

The companies should always think that whom are they selling their product and WHY ?
This is a big question which needs to be answered and integrated in all the messages and communications delivered to the customer.

What Say ?