Wednesday, May 27. 2009Second Of The 2009/2010 Sea ChangesJohn Linton (the first 'sea change' was starting to hire a sales force to sell Ethernet and SHDSL connections to medium/large businesses which is now in it's third month with a long way to go - we are interviewing to hire another four trainees later this week.). Since we started offering broad band services in January 2004 to residential users we have never spent one cent on advertising or any other sort of promotion. This 'policy' has not impeded our month on month growth every month for the past 65 months and has allowed us to invest whatever amount of money other start up communications companies may set aside for 'promotion' into switches, routers and bandwidth and other infrastructures. It has been a sensible, albeit very conservative, policy for the whole of that time. It is now something we are going to change. Why are we going to change? I could write that it is a carefully thought out long term considered strategy. But, that would be untrue. The short answer is that I, as the person responsible for developing our sales revenues (and profits), I haven't got a clue as to how to use our current methodologies to more rapidly make Exetel's name and the Exetel versions of the Optus HSPA service widely enough known in the areas we want to sell HSPA to end users (or any other area for that matter) to meet the ambitious targets we believe could be achievable. So, as Conan Doyle once, almost, said, "once you've removed all other options, advertising no matter how much you dislike and distrust it, becomes your only method of approach". And so it came to pass - something I never expected to do at Exetel. We accepted a proposal yesterday from the fourth 'agency' we had asked to advise us on promoting HSPA services in rural and regional country areas of Australia and have accepted their recommendation to use television advertising in selected areas from some time in early July 2009 until some time in early December 2009. I'm not a fan of hyperbole or any of the other extravagances of the 'media world' but I had some reasonable empathy with the structure and content of the plan presented to us. I have no idea whether the proposal will actually work but then I had no idea whether Exetel would 'really work' when we went in to the communications business in 2004. While I abhor any type of waste we can 'afford' to 'lose' our planned expenditure on advertising without in any way damaging our business as it will be paid for out of the current financial year's profits which would other wise only be wasted on dividends for the shareholders less payments to the ATO - in itself not a sensible use of hard earned and still small profits. We had hoped to begin an 'advertising campaign' for HSPA in December 2008 but continual slippages of almost every aspect of getting the service available and then understanding its limitations (and how to overcome some of them) plus the endless delays in getting properly priced Yagis and HSPA modems (let alone the hoped for 'magic box') have all 'conspired' to make any date we picked impossible to meet - and that may well still continue to be the case. With the Yagi's "almost on the proverbial boat" and the lower cost modems "almost there" we have decided, very regretfully, to remove the 'magic box' from the initial offers and fly with what we have....which is still quite a bit better than what I see of the other 'me too' HSPA offers in today's market. My concerns about the whole project remain the same - does the Optus coverage provide a decent performance or have they over sold and under provisioned their HSPA network as they seem to make a habit of over the past 20 years of deploying new technologies? The other major concern is will some of Optus other wholesale customers make a dog's breakfast of country markets just as they have city markets with their "free!" "free!" "free!" stupidities (a la Dodo) and the strange/poor performance of their own retail and Virgin offerings (which whenever I do a benchmark of an Optus Retail/Virgin HSPA service side by side with an Exetel/Optus HSPA service the Exetel/Optus service is ALWAYS almost twice as fast. However, I am always optimistic about these things although we will carefully select the coverage areas. There will still remain the concerns about the on time receipt of the antennae and the low cost modems and the finalisation of the plan prices for the country promotion but the first two we can do nothing about and the third is only a matter of being 'brave' enough. There is the small matter of developing the new web site for "Exetel Country" - I guess most people are too young to confuse that new web site name with "Marlborough Country" - though perhaps we could add similar 'Western' music to the front page? It will be interesting to see what sort of job we can do of that in some new and very different ways. So, using advertising for the first time in over fifteen years is going to be a real challenge for me as I have no knowledge of the logistics that are needed to make such a 'campaign' effective. While I liked the theoretical impact of the ad we were shown (via 'story board'), I was surprised at how completely the selling message was put over, and understood the logic of how the 'contacts' would work I am still unsure of how to implement the detail. Then again that describes most of my life to date so I'm vaguely looking forward to getting the detail right in the limited time that's available rather than being overwhelmed at the thought of cramming another major project (on top of the Sri Lankan ongoing development, building the corporate sales force, the premises move as well as the total re-vamp of our ADSL service offerings and promotion methods) into the next four weeks. Perhaps I'm being too 'dramatic' and these projects and other tasks are just symptomatic of a slightly busier period which is normal at the end/start of each financial year. Maybe it's just old age? Trackbacks
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Any chance us "city-slickers" can get a look-see at your adverts once finalised? Have you thought of producing several and asking on the forums or creating questionairre on which we think are the best?
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Once the ad is 'viewable' we will make it available on the web site/forum.
We won't ask for comments/changes to that ad because by the time it is 'viewable' we will not be able to change it. I made the comment to the agency that I had a view that changing one word in what a 'professional' has written is not a sensible way of conducting business - but I think I'm alone in that view. We could, as is our long term 'custom' ask for ideas for future ads should that be what happens. Comments (4)
"Exetel Country""though perhaps we could add similar 'Western' music to the front page?"
Slim Dusty maybe, "a pub with no beer" or "I love to play WoW with Duncan" Seriously though many rural folk are not so media/sensory overloaded as our city cousins, less jaded? So I think advertising will pay dividends, I look forward to seeing the concept. Comment (1)
I'm certainly looking forward to it whether it works or not
Even if it didn't work for some reason; I wouldn't fret too much over the money spent because it will still be going to various Australian businesses and people who were involved in the whole process of producing and airing it. (You could do far worse things with your disposable income - such as giving it to Telstra.) The yagi challenge is the only bit I'm worried about of course, since it's what holds me back from doing rural connections at the moment. In the absolute worst case, you might be able to get a volume discount from RFShop, WES Components or Laceys if you had to meed a sudden shortfall. Optus shops also sell a small omni antenna for $35 retail that will do well in instances where there's coverage outside / at the window but not where the desktop is. (Mind you, so will a 5M USB cable but the antenna is more 'weatherproof') Perhaps you can get a better deal from "Force" (the brand of said antenna) and have these as an optional extra. Problems with the Optus HSPA network appear to be more apparent in the 2100MHz areas out here but most of the target area is on 900MHz. The 2100MHz still works, but is not particularly stable for VoIP IMO. I like the structure of the ad as per the PDF you made available to agents - refreshingly simple explanation of how it all works. Cheers, Mike. Comment (1)
I too was more than pleasantly surprised that the draft ad was so complete in conveying the key benefits and so 'appealing'.
Comments (4)
Since I took up Exetel I never looked back. After years of less than sub standard service from the big service providers to no frill one... I joined the apatheic disgruntled customers who just weren't going to get anything worth our money. You guys at Exetel actually listen to the customers.
No doubt advert is a huge outlay with often very little transparency on ROI. I race cars myself and I'm in the process of contacting companies like you - to offer "free sponsorship" it may be just a sticker on my car but it's just a thank you. Happy customers will spread the words and don't forget we like to see you guys go the distance too.. win win I reckon! Comment (1)
I would think rural and country users would place a higher priority on service as opposed to cost which would play to Exetel's existing strengths and growth model.
It seems a strange choice to start advertising now but I do believe Exetel would have to start advertising sometime to grow another level. Comment (1)
Because my peculiar personal make up is very attracted to doing thins differently and 'counter-cyclical appeals to me.
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