Reliance Communications, the telecommunications business of the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG,) staged a marketing coup this year when it signed a $100 million deal with International Cricket Council for the right to be the global partner for all cricketing events till 2015. The eight-year deal, starting 2009 with the 20:20 World Cup that was played in South Africa, enabled it to promote its brands extensively. Sanjay Behl, group head, branding and marketing, Reliance Communications said, ?The association has given us an opportunity to offer our customers special access to ICC World T20 led cricket content through our R-World VAS deck. We initiated various consumer-friendly promotions for our customers based on the tournament.?
The company launched many cricket-centric exclusive value-added services (VAS) for its customers such as live streaming of matches and live commentary. The company also launched the Cricket Dhan Dhana Dhan pack that gave match information through SMS. It also organised interactive contests on R-World as part of this tournament. Moreover, Reliance Mobile went live with all ICC Champions Trophy, South Africa 2009 matches through its R-World value-added services platform. It also provided subscribers an option to have match scores and expert commentary on the matches as their caller-tune.
It was around the same time the company caught a lot of attention for signing up Bollywood actor Hrithik Roshan as its brand ambassador. The company inked a three-year deal with the actor which sources say is anywhere close to Rs 10 crore annually. This deal is a part of Rs 150 crore media campaign that it will launch in phases for its newly launched GSM operations and DTH operations. Following this it rolled out a 360-degree campaign to mark its entry into the GSM space. As a part of this campaign various television commercials which showed Roshan making calls to his childhood friends, school teacher, and others and bringing joy to their lives. Each ad closed with a shot of Reliance Communications? colour bars and a voiceover that said, ?Don?t wait, go for it.?
However, the Roshan ad that was launched towards the second half of year where the actor played the Pied-Piper caught maximum attention. This television commercial talked about a world without boundaries and conditions and with it, Reliance introduced 1 paisa and 50 paise offers on local as well as long distance calls. With long curly locks, face covered behind a beard, a flute on his lips, Roshan danced to the tune of ace dancer Prabhudeva. The flute music track was composed by Sameer Uddin, who tweaked the Reliance signature tune to make it more playful, in sync with the theme.
At the same time, the company launched an online advertising initiative for its flagship brand, Reliance Mobile. The online campaign was launched on various websites such as Rediff.com, Yahoo.co.in, Indiatimes.com, NDTV.com and IBNLive.com and enabled users to make a one-minute call to a friend between 9.00 am and 9.00 pm for free, by entering his friend?s name and mobile number, apart from his own details inside the banner and pressing ?call now?. In the back-end, a click on ?call now? was routed to a server, which connected the two mobile numbers. Reliance Mobile also developed a special microsite, Goforit.co.in, where it is offering a facility to send video messages.
The brand building experiential campaign enabled it to extend the TV campaign, which urged consumers to use their mobile phones to connect with their friends, to the online medium and bring alive the proposition of staying connected.