The Hindu Business Line : Mobile services ads: Fairness farfetched?

The larger question is: How closely do claims of robustness of network made in ad campaigns for mobile phone services correspond to reality? Not a great deal.

The faithful dog metaphor!

D. Sampathkumar

Of the many different ways by which a mobile operator seeks your custom nothing has been as enduring as the promise that its network follows you no matter where you happen to be. The story of a dog occupying a barber’s chair right next to its young master who was having his hair cut or the one where it follows him to the nearest bush as he relieves himself is the theme that one company adopted to sell the idea that its network never deserts you no matter where you g o.

Another company chose to say it differently but no less evocatively. It had three young girls camping for the night among snow clad hills and mountain springs in the back of beyond. As they settle in for the night a quarrel erupts with one of them wanting to listen to some music on the mobile phone while the other would prefer to watch some popular movie clips. Their quarrel is rudely interrupted by the ringing of the cell phone and the third girl tells the other two to take it easy and steps out of the tent to take the call. The visual fades with the girl crooning ‘Hi Papa’ and the voice over intones, ‘city or village go wherever your heart takes you’.

Perhaps there is a reason that mobile phone service providers have exploited the ‘faithful dog’ metaphor in so many creative ways in their advertising campaigns to emphasise a hassle free communication experience.

It is safe to say that these service providers think connectivity as the most critical value proposition in a customer’s choice of a particular network. Certainly the growth in subscriber base does nothing to suggest that this perception is wrong.

The ad agencies involved in the creative process too have gained. These campaigns have helped them win critical acclaim and professional recognition for their efforts.

No connectivity

But a larger question remains. How closely do claims of robustness of network made in ad campaigns for mobile phone services correspond to reality? Not a great deal as this writer found out recently, as he ventured out from Chennai, to a hill resort a couple of hundred kilometres away to the West. As it happened, the network ‘dog’ seemed to have been gripped by runner’s fatigue no sooner had I got out of the city limits as the connectivity snapped completely and stayed that way for the duration of the stay.

Have I been taken for ride by tall claims of connectivity being available everywhere and at all times into opting for a particular service provider?

Not really. Long years of a career in the media have inured me to the belief that nothing is quite as it is made out to be on the surface. But I wonder if there aren’t some among the vast universe of mobile subscribers who have been misled into taking these claims at face value.

That brings us, of course, to a larger issue of the core purpose of advertising. A charitable view would be to regard all advertising claims, such as the one about extensive network connectivity, as just so much hot air not meant to be taken seriously.

The proponents of the advertising industry’s point of view argue that the purpose of advertising is to trigger, in the consumer’s mind, some kind of emotional connect with the product that would prompt him to make the first purchase. Thereafter it is left to the product to sell itself to the consumer that result in repeat purchases.

Viewed thus, the kind of message that is projected in a campaign is part of the artistic licence that any creative activity must necessarily enjoy.

The question of any advertising claim misleading the consumer, so far as the initial purchase goes, does not arise as the argument goes. The situation is somewhat analogous to the artistic licence that creators of motion picture films enjoy to communicate their ideas.

Indian feature films have traditionally employed the technique of the hero and the heroine running around trees singing a duet to communicate the romantic motive.

Now, no movie goer seriously believes that enticing your girl friend to run around with you in this manner is the best way to cement your place in her heart. Indeed, given that not only is green space at a premium in most cities, such an invitation in these progressive emancipated times, carries the additional risk of the girl friend branding him as rather ‘yucky’.

In the context of cell phone ads, getting a dog to follow a young boy wherever he goes or a girl camping in the wilderness telling her father that she is quite safe to imply the extensiveness of the service provider’s network should not be taken literally but is part of the ‘artistic licence’ that creative people always enjoyed.

But this argument suffers from two serious defects. One, cell phone connections are not cheap. The initial purchase that the advertising may have triggered can not be dismissed as of any consequence if the consumer has been persuaded to make the purchase on the strength of some claim made in the product advertisement.

Secondly, there are strong exit barriers for a customer to opt out because he is dissatisfied with the service provided by any operator. He would have to notify individually, his community of contacts, of any change which is not always an easy thing to do.

This might not be a problem if number portability existed which allows a subscriber to take the number originally allotted by a service provider to any new service provider that he may sign up with. But this is yet to be operationalised.

Balance consumer interests

An advertising claim such as robust connectivity does matter when viewed from the perspective of consumer protection. The challenge then is to balance consumer interests with artistic freedom for professionals engaged in producing commercial communication. This is not so difficult as it may seem at first sight. The Federal Trade Commission in the US had in the past; pulled up telecom companies for misleading advertisements regarding such claims as roaming charges, free handsets and so on. Some norms have been set.

It is only a question of extending it to suit the requirements of the present situation. The Competition Commission and the Telecom Regulatory Authority should be able to lay down what is on and what is not in the matter of commercial communication without in any way infringing on the freedom of expression implicit in any advertising.

There are many examples in product advertising where the ad seeks to connect with the consumers on a product’s attributes not by making any direct claim in that regard but on a subtler plane. A case in point is the recent commercial aired on television for a chocolate bar. It had two youngsters sitting on tree stumps generally looking dull and disinterested and wishing that they had the energy to do something interesting.

Up comes the third who suggests eating a chocolate and offers one to those two before starting to chew a bar of chocolate himself. As he bites into it the commercial has him taking off from his seat like a rocket. Anyone who views the commercial would not see that that particular brand of chocolate bar as promising gravity defying flight from chewing it. They would rightly see it as promising consumers that eating their brand of chocolate would merely energise them.

But a mobile phone service commercial that promises you a level of connectivity even as you go about exploring in the deep jungles of the North East or the Thar Desert in the West, must necessarily be placed on a different footing. It must at the very least be able to provide signals that can penetrate the flimsy walls of your home so that you are not forced to come on to the balcony to carry on a conversation to the delight of your inquisitive neighbours.

If elaborate standards of connectivity cannot be established then TRAI must at least force mobile service operators to post on its Web site, the postal areas spelt out pin code wise where their service will not be available at all.

Such a disclosure has the potential to put consumers on notice as to what they can expect even if considerations of artistic licence demand that they are not to be made accountable for what their commercials say.

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Mobile services ads: Fairness farfetched?

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