Promotions – Airtel

“Traditionally promotion is thought of as involving decisions related to

sales, advertising, sales promotions and publicity” - Services Marketing,
Valarie A Zeithamal. But It has become extremely difficult for the
marketers to promote their services; we are highlighting some of the
reasons for the same:

• Difficulty to break through the communications clutter in the

market place
• Reach the masses (the target audience) with interesting and
pervasive messages
• Ensuring that the investments in the campaign yield an acceptable
rate of return in some form or the other (e.g. increase in the brand
loyalty or number of consumers/users)

We have observed that the focus of the promotions of Bharti Airtel is to

engage the customer by using any form of relevant contact. Then the
efforts are made to achieve synergy and build relationships which will
finally affect the behaviour of the individual. There is a model by
Reinartz and Kumar which shows the relationship between customer
profitability and period of association to help us increase the Customer
Long-term (lifetime) Value.

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To put it in simple words, the aim of the company should be to:
➢ Attain new customers and increase the number of relationships
➢ Increase the profitability of these relationships
➢ Increase the duration of these relationships

Moreover the promotions are done keeping in mind the target

customers which are elite, up market professionals, entrepreneur with
business plans, low income business categories and youth with youth
clubs.
Airtel started off with the campaign of “Power to Keep in Touch”
(1995) to convey the message of instant communication. At that time,
Airtel wanted to project an image of Aspirational and lifestyle brand and
was positioned to target premium category of elite class customers. They
decided that the brand would always connote leadership – be it in
network, innovations, offerings or services. To be in synch with their
strategy, they sponsored various golf tournaments.
When the telecom sector was becoming more and more competitive with
the entry of new players, Airtel came up with “Touch Tomorrow”
(1999) thus urging it to talk to a bigger audience. They started capturing
the mass markets and the new brand logo indicated the core values of
the brand i.e. leadership, performance and dynamism. Then in 2002, the
new advertisements with the tagline “Live Every Moment” and brand

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ambassadors Sachin Tendulkar, Shahrukh Khan and Kareena Kapoor
changed the whole look of Airtel. The brand Airtel in the minds of
customers was full of emotions and reaction, which one will experience in
a lifetime. In 2003 came another successful campaign “Express
Yourself”

The various tools that Airtel uses for its Integrated Marketing
Communications are:
• Advertisements
• Sales promotions
• Direct Marketing
• Public Relations
• Publicity
• Events

If we observe the advertisements that Airtel has come up with over the
years, they are basically using two appeals to connect with their target
audiences:
1. Emotional Appeal
2. Humorous Appeal

Promotion campaigns
➢ Airtel Jai Hind AD Campaign
The focus was to cash in on the Independence Day fever. The USP was
very clear, feel proud of your country and by extension, Brand Airtel.

Some of the other highly acclaimed campaigns:

➢ Leadership campaign
➢ Quality time campaign
➢ Magic Dalo
➢ Say Hello Launch campaign
➢ Magic Hai to Mumkin Hai campaign

Internet Advertising

Airtel has used internet quite effectively to advertise and has been doing
massive advertisements through:
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 ➢ Google Ads
➢ Bidvertisers –in which they have to offer site-targeted pay-per-click
(PPC) text ads and image ads
➢ Sponsors online games at Zapak.com

Sales promotions

Keeping in mind the target audience, Airtel came up with very effective
sales promotions and was able to increase the number of users. Some of
the sales promotions that performed really well are:
• “Friendz” pre-paid plan
• “Ladies Special” plan
• Introduced the ‘Family Celebrations offer’ – Call at 60paisa per
minute from Airtel telephone service to Airtel mobile service

Promotions through Health Campaigns

Airtel and Wockhardt hospitals together launched a “Good Health”

campaign to mark World Health Day on April 7, comprising two health
check-ups at discount of 75%. Post-paid subscribers of Airtel could avail
the Wockhardt master health check up at Rs 799 against a original cost of
Rs 3200. Also available as part of the campaign was the Wockhardt Heart
Check at Rs 499, aginst Rs 2400.

Grameen Mobile Puratchi

Bharti Airtel unveiled the “Grameen Mobile Puratchi” campaign for rural
markets

• This scheme was for more than 45 lakh society members of IKSCL
(IFFCO Kisan Sanchar Coopreative ltd)
• Farmers had five free Value Added Services under this scheme. The
farmers had five free voice messages on mandi prices, farming
techniques, weather forecasts, dairy farming, animal husbandry,
rural health initiatives on a daily basis
• The pack for farmers ranged between Rs 1299 and Rs 4000 along
with the mobile phone.

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CSR initiatives being promoted

Airtel took the initiative of opening “Airtel Ashiana” for underprivileged

children at the Mohali office of Airtel. Airtel also tied up with an NGO to
distribute daily surplus food to needy children. Then they Airtel also came
up with ‘Airtel Experience Centre by Access MO” for the benefit of
visually impaired people as well as people from deprived section of
society. In Jammu & Kashmir, they donated free medicines, stationary,
clothes and other utility at the “Missionary of Charity Home for Destitute”.
Airtel Kerala visited an old age home and shared a day full of fun with the
members of the home. A tree plantation drive was carried out by Access-
NCR, Access-North and Access-UP West Circles, where in free tree
samplings were planted.

Bharti foundation, the philanthropic arm of Bharti Enterprises was

established in 2000 with a vision to help underprivileged children and
young people of our country realise their potential. They are in the
process of setting up a 1000 “Satya Bharti Schools” to deliver high
quality education to underprivileged children in the deepest rural pockets.

Publicity and Events

To reach their target audiences, Airtel has sponsored various TV

programmes like

• Big Boss
• KBC
• Indian Sangeet awards
• Bol Baby Bol

Along with that Airtel has sponsored various events like

• Delhi Half Marathon

• Border-Gavaskar
• Indian Fantasy League
• Delhi Golf tournament
• Organised Painting Competition in states of Karnataka and M.P. for
the students

Such kind of events helps the brand to capture the attention of the target
audience and involve them. Airtel as a brand has used mix of traditional
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and non-traditional media to promote their brand and now they are also
using the social media for promoting their brand. They have tried to
associate with social causes to attach the target audience emotionally.

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