Eircell gears up for dog fight with `charm'

There is a dog fight around the corner and we're gearing up for that, says Mr Paul Keeley of Eircell's new £2 million (€2.5 million) brand building campaign, which starts on television tonight.

Eircell and Esat slug it out for market share with competing promotions backed by expensive advertising campaigns.

Eircell alone has an annual marketing budget of £10 million and that excludes Emerge and Ready-To-Go campaigns.

Indeed, the telecoms industry, at £23 million a year, now spends more than the financial services sector, which has traditionally been the biggest advertiser across all media.

Mobile phone users are notoriously fickle, crossing from one supplier to the other depending on special offers or handset styles. The temptation to change may increase once the third mobile phone operator, Meteor, enters the market at the end of the year with its own heavily promoted package of offers. Eircell's new campaign is its first brand campaign in three years, aimed at reinforcing its brand with more than one million subscribers.

Until now, both network operators have focused on recruitment, says Mr Keeley, who is head of brand and retail marketing at Eircell.

So there's a lot of telecom noise out there. With a significant section of the mobile phone market already signed up, the company believed it was time to "build charm, personality and charisma" into the brand.

The cinematic-looking 70-second television advertisement was created by Carol Lambert and Des Kavanagh at Euro RSCG and was filmed in Dublin, Rome and New York.

The advertisements will run initially for six weeks and return again in the autumn for a further run, supported by press and outdoor advertising. The aim is to convey what is possible with mobile technology and the strapline has been changed from the one-dimensional "everybody talking" to the rhetorical question "what boundaries".

Telecom advertising tends to be technology driven, telling people what they can do, says Mr Keeley, but there is a big "so what" factor unless people can see a reason for using a particular service.

While Meteor's entry into the market was delayed until the end of this year, it could be to its advantage in relation to recruitment. By the autumn all new mobile phones will be WAP-enabled and the two existing networks have allocated considerable funds for explaining to a mystified audience what wireless technology is. However, by the time Meteor enters the market the majority of Esat and Eircell's existing customers will still be using old handsets, but they may be keen to try the new technology. Therefore, the new operator's likely promotion of cut-price WAP phones could be a strong incentive for changing networks.

Mr Keeley hopes that the new campaign will help to build a stronger relationship between Eircell and its customers so that they will feel more inclined to be "brand loyal" no matter what offers appear elsewhere. The rational route of tariff and handset-based promotions will still be a major part of Eircell's marketing strategy.