Episode 149 - Vi Human Network Testing Network Ad Reviewed by CreativeX and Volt
☎️ For telecoms companies, the strength of their network is a key selling point. So, what do you do when your network coverage needs a bit of work? Make an ad about it, as we see on this week’s episode with Vi’s Human Network Testing Network.
The ad created by Ogilvy for Vi in India and chosen for us by Contagious combines a human touch with tech info. But does using dabbawalas in Mumbai work to send an effective marketing message? Is it a B2B ad or a campaign for day-to-day consumers?
What did our guests Rebecca Dykema (SVP Partnerships & Creative Transformation at CreativeX) and Duarte Garrido (VP Growth Marketing at Volt) think of the clip and how could it have been made better? Watch this episode and find out!
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Episode 149 - Vi Human Network Testing Network Ad Reviewed by CreativeX and Volt
Transcript is automatically generated, so not perfect, but you get the idea!
Tom Ollerton 00:00
Hello and welcome to Advertisers Watching Ads. This is a weekly show where brands watch other brands' ads. Hi, I'm Tom Ollerton. I'm the founder of Automated Creative. We are the creative effectiveness ad tech platform. But this week, we're going to look at some ads, so let's meet this week's guests.
Rebecca Dykema 00:47
Rebecca Dykema, I'm SVP of Partnerships and Creative Transformation at a company called CreativeX, and it's great to be here.
Duarte Garrido 00:55
Duarte Garrido, VP Growth Marketing at a company called Volt.
Tom Ollerton 01:00
What a panel! And what an ad! This is quite a unusual bit of work from Vi Network in India, in Mumbai. Inventive, creative, let's take a look. So I'm gonna ask you to give a vote out of five? One, two, three... Wow, we don't get a one very often on this show, Duarte. Rebecca, interesting video... But what is actually going on here?
Rebecca Dykema 02:53
So I did not know Vi before watching this ad, so did a little bit of research. It's quite a new brand, just launched in 2018. It's been suffering some pretty, like as a company, it's been suffering a pretty tough couple of years since it launched, its like, top 3 apparently in India but has quite a lot of debt that it's trying to overcome. And so as a result, hasn't had the opportunity to invest into its network, which as you can imagine, as a telecoms company, is a pretty big challenge. So it makes sense, I suppose, that they would launch a campaign that's all about, sort of the strength of their network. The creative, personally, I kind of loved, and maybe I'm a sucker for cheesy, cheesy adverts, but I kind of, especially in the telecom space, liked the idea of getting back to... back to people. And like, the people that sort of really make your, you know, your life what it is and your environment what it is. And I felt like this was an interesting combination of sort of bridging the gap between like high tech technology and saying, "Actually, we're going to use people. The beautiful dabbawala landscape in Mumbai to kind of improve our tech. So I thought it was an interesting combination of things.
Duarte Garrido 03:55
I, similarly, had never heard of Vi before. I also had no idea what a dabbawala was, and that's my own ignorance. But my first question on this ad is, who is it for and what is it trying to accomplish? I mean, I kind of got the sense that it was a B2B ad because they talk about Six Sigma, which is kind of something that only really professionals would understand. So it's not for everyone. I didn't get what the ad was trying to tell me, strictly from a marketing perspective and not talking about the creative. I get that there's a human element to it, but it doesn't really come across in the creative very well, in my opinion. Mumbai is a very colorful, rich, interesting city. I just don't think it comes across in the ad like that, although it talks about the dabbawalas as this network of people, it doesn't really feature people. There's no humanity in the ad. If you strip it from everything else, it's a very standard kind of telecoms ad. It's dull. It doesn't really move the needle from a consumer perspective, and from a B2B, I'm very confused as to who it's for and what is it trying to accomplish.
Tom Ollerton 05:02
One thing that I found. I don't know if this for me was like, the fifth or sixth thing in the search that I did... which is really odd. It's an odd thing to, to come up in a Google search quite so well.
Rebecca Dykema 05:14
Huh, look at that.
Duarte Garrido 05:17
There you go, the "six sigma rated network." I mean, who is this for?
Rebecca Dykema 05:21
The dabbawalas are super famous. They're like a very famous concept, you know... This idea of like, very famous, sort of institution of sorts. I think, is this idea that it's like hyper efficient and effective, that they're known for being really top quality as a result of their, sort of professional alliance.
Duarte Garrido 05:40
I know what Six Sigma is. I did not know what the dabbawalas were. You say they're very famous. I assume that that's true in India. I don't know if that's actually true in the rest of the world. And my question is, is Vi a network provider just for India? Is this a global campaign? It comes back to the question, who is this for and what is it trying to accomplish? And in my perspective, that is not clear. And most importantly, I don't think they, they squeezed what they could out... If they did do a campaign like this, a kind of grassroots, people on the streets, like they should have made the ad less corporate-y. They should have made it more human-led.
Rebecca Dykema 06:18
Interestingly, because I also felt that it was very much like a kind of there was a degree of sort of stale 30-second ad slot in it. And I sort of come from more of a digital landscape. It's not optimized for mobile, like it's, you know, it's a very sort of standard TV ad. It's quite intense in terms of timeline. They do outtakes, though, so if you go out to YouTube, their YouTube shorts where they take, they aren't outtakes per se, but they follow these characters sort of around town where they, you know, they show the dabbawalas interacting with other people who are like having trouble with their wifi. And it's pretty funny. Yeah. I mean, it looks to me like they have... This is clearly sort of the corporate version, and they have done sort of more, more digital activations as well.
Duarte Garrido 06:57
We shouldn't have to do any digging to kind of get the essence of the campaign, right? So who do you think this sort of long form corporate video is for?
Rebecca Dykema 07:05
Yeah, I mean, I think that this is, this is B2C, and I think that they have a bad history of strength of mobile network, and they're trying to figure out how to address like a bad reputation. I think it's quite an ingenious way of doing it. You could say that it's, you know, sort of a stale attempt, but I think that they've partnered with a, an institution in the dabbawalas, which are really well known, well known for their efficiency. Well known for their coverage of a city. So I spent time at Comcast in the early 2000s, and they really struggled with reputation. And it's hard. It's hard to overcome, like a bad rep in an environment where you've got so much infrastructure to, you know, to manage and the investment required to fix that type of problem is significant. And I think this is a pretty smart way of using, you know, narrative and storytelling and alignment with like, you know, a local concept to, I guess sort of drive a sense of comfort.
Tom Ollerton 08:03
So what would make this better?
Duarte Garrido 08:04
On a pure creative level, if we're not talking strategy or targeting or positioning, which I think we should, but purely creative, I think if this ad, if this spot is about the people in Mumbai, and the people carrying the network with them, then it should be focused on the people. It should be less polished, it should be less corporate, it should be shorter, it should be more digitally led and digitally focused. Maybe have, piece to cameras from people actually on the streets, on their phones, some of the dabbawalas. So that kind of approach that would make the target audience feel like Vi is part of the people and it is led by humans. This doesn't give me that at all. If anything, it detaches the network from the reality of Mumbai as far as I'm concerned.
Tom Ollerton 08:56
So would you sign this off in its current guise, thumbs up or down? One, two, three...
Rebecca Dykema 09:02
I liked it.
Tom Ollerton 09:03
There you have it. We'll see you all next week.
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