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Thursday, May 17, 2007

Dial 786 and say Bismillah for Warid

Warid Telecom's helpline number from landphone is 016 78600786 and from mobile is 786. Does it ring any bell? 786 is the numeric equivalent (I don't know why and how) of 'bismillah' in Arabic. They have a banner on their homepage depicting Javed Omar batting for Bangladesh, a mosque and a small boy wearing a white cap. What does this mean? After being hugely successfully in a country like Pakistan, I hope Warid is not trying to play the 'religious sentiment' card to grab the lion's share of the Bangladesh mobile market. What goes well in Pakistan (cricket, mullahs and mosques) might not go as planned in Bangladesh. But who knows, given the religious sensitivity of Bangladeshi mass uers, Warid might just win the heart of fellow Muslim brethern, thus gaining market share in spiritual means! What a thought!

1 comment:

Olpo.Kotha said...

I find opinion posted by "Red & Green" about 'Warid and 786' has strong appeal.

In addition to Warid's market segmentation based on spirituality and Islam....I want to say two things:

1. First of all: Warid's latest campaigns display: "Now 24 Hours - 25 Paisa". The font size of "25 Paisa" is too big to be misguided to overlook "Per 15 seconds". This is a kind of unethical marketing practice. Because most people would read this as "25 paisa / min". Moreover, this is an used method. Citycell used this type of communication 2 years (approx) ago.

2. Another thing has come to my observation. Warid is spreading too many slogans at a time. like: "be heard...be young...be ...." Probably I myself found more than 05 slogans. If a brand is positioned with multiple slogans within same segment with same products, you know, marketing people outside Warid would naturally be doubtful about marketing people inside. Either they are not competent, or they are not allowed freedom to work!