Chapter 5 is all about making a complete and exhaustive Marketing Plan, of which is a sub-section that discusses how to control the marketing program. One spectacular example of planning is provided by Jazz’s Super 4G. Jazz had allowed its competitor to take the lead in 4G but Jazz regrouped, positioned itself in the 4G market and developed a complete marketing plan, beginning with ‘focus’, then positioning itself as ‘Super 4G’, developing a plan for tactical marketing (4Ps) by offering data-based products, and communicating it through TVCs and also using customized communication. It partnered with StarzPlay by Cinepax, with Coke Fest, with JazzCash and with Eva the vlogger to access a wider range of consumers. Further, it took great care to continually measure key indicators in its marketing plan. The results speak for themselves (Dr. Aamir Khan, Case Advisor).
It was a cold, sunny day in December 2020. Aamir Ibrahim, CEO Jazz, was sitting in his office talking to his marketing team in a celebratory mood. In roughly 1.5 years, Jazz had beaten its closest competitor in the hottest area of mobile telecom competition: the 4G arena. This was also cemented by the data published by Pakistan Telecommunications Authority. This had happened even when its competition had taken the lead 4 years back, when Jazz was busy with a merger. Jazz had regrouped, positioned itself smartly in the 4G playing field, and crafted a strategy that it had implemented in record time.
As Aamir lauded his team’s efforts, he thought it was also time to add a few warning lines. We must not rest on our laurels. We have crossed a very big milestone, but the journey is unending. We need now to focus on expanding our Super 4G franchise to new subscribers. We also need to move our advertising style from purely functional to more emotional messaging. But above all, we need to maintain the spirit that we have shown over the past two years. The team listened to him, and thought of the challenges that 2021 would bring for them.
An Industry on fire
Ever since 2003 when the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority deregulated the telecommunications market in the country, the telecom sector has been on fire. According to official figures, the telecom sector withstood the impact of Covid-19 to generate revenues of PKR 537 billion in FY 2020 compared to PKR 449 billion in FY 2018. The sector’s contribution to the national exchequer also increased by 129% (PKR 278.4 billion) in FY 2020. In October 2020 there were 174 million subscribers compared to 142 million in 2016-17. Jazz led the subscriber numbers in 2019-20, with 63 million, followed by Telenor at 45 million and Zong at 36 million.
Jazz enters the Race for 4G
The race for 4G started in 2014, a year before Jazz proclaimed its merger with Warid. By 2018, Jazz was ready to compete. Jazz had always been the largest telecommunication brand in the country and had beaten its competitors in almost all other fields but had allowed Zong to take the lead in 4G.
It was time to focus like a laser, coalesce around taking the lead in 4G as well, strategize, and then implement its strategy in a full 360-degree circle, not leaving any aspect of marketing untouched.
“For our vision of a digitally progressive and inclusive Pakistan, the success of our 4G deployment and its uptake was vital. We have cemented our position as Pakistan’s number one 4G operator and leading digital service provider. We continue to drive this agenda by improving digital infrastructure, bridging the digital divide, increasing financial inclusion and enabling societies by investing in entrepreneurship, digital skills and literacy. We are committed to becoming the digital lifestyle partner for our fellow citizens. We want to ensure that people are not bound by the limitations of geography, gender, or socioeconomic background, in harnessing the power of the internet. These ambitions are reflected in everything we do at Jazz, including our marketing communications.”
Aamir Ibrahim - CEO Jazz
The CEO gathered his team and set his first two tasks: focus and positioning. By focus, he meant setting a vision of beating competition in 4G and even establishing new standards, and at the same time making the entire company realize that this vision will need the full support of the entire organization. An occasional advertisement at that time slipped through into the market, offering both 3G and 4G. “This would not do”, said the CEO, “From now onwards, it would only be 4G”. It was the classical “burning platform” syndrome: The entire organization shifted its focus to 4G.
Positioning
The CEO knew that positioning came before the 4Ps of marketing and would set the tone for the entire effort. Jazz did not want to follow its competitors who had tagged “4G” to their products. It was decided that Jazz’s 4G brand will be named Super 4G and the tagline would be “Super Nahi Toh 4G Nahi” (If it is not “Super”, then it is not 4G). At the same time, Jazz moved on from the voice-centric emphasis of many competitors to a data-centric emphasis.
It was a risky venture. Consumers in Pakistan in the telecom sector are price sensitive and can switch brands if they feel disappointed for whatever reason. Jazz was emphasizing that its data-centric offer was “Super”, a word associated in Pakistan with quality, speed, and excellence. Would Jazz be able to fulfil the promise it was making?
Jazz had solid reasons to position its 4G data offer as “Super 4G”. It had the necessary technology behind it, and it had the speed required to convince the consumer. The consumer could not see its technology but could see its “speed”, an outcome of its technology. Its claim to speed gained traction when Ookla—a third party web service that tested the speed and performance of internet connections—recognized, several times, that Jazz’s 4G was the leader in speed.
“The success of Jazz's 4G brand is powered by a state-of-the-art nationwide network that is the backbone connecting our customers to the rest of the world. From deploying Pakistan’s first GSM network to offering high-speed mobile broadband, throughout our journey, we have been committed to providing the masses connectivity solutions and digital services.
Our technological excellence has helped us emerge as the largest and fastest growing 4G family in Pakistan.”
Khalid Shehzad - Chief Technology Officer
The focus on the 4Ps started from the product. Competition emphasized price as a motivator for mobile data while Jazz positioned its data-centric bundles around speed and experience, even allowing customers to make their own “bundles” by varying megabytes, minutes, and off-net and on-net requirements. Some customers watched a lot of YouTube. Others were using WhatsApp most of the time. Some worked in the day, others through the night. Jazz wanted to make its data-centric offer very relevant to the customer. Of course, the promise of “Super” meant that Jazz had to provide a full back up to its 4G offering. This meant an efficient and a successful roll out of the network, modifying the capacity of its towers. Within a couple of years Jazz overtook Zong in 4G subscribers with lesser number of 4G towers.
TVCs and Customized Marketing
Once positioning was decided, the next task became: How to communicate this positioning, to which audience, and when. Jazz decided to resort to TVCs to generate broad awareness and build a brand image of functionality. With this view in mind, it launched many TVCs with the tagline “Super nahi toh 4G nahi”. These ads focused on speed and connectivity. Very soon, research showed that recall of the tagline “Super nahi toh 4G nahi” was reaching recall levels of Jazz’s major tagline “Dunya ko bata do” (Tell the world). It also seemed that the early converters were Jazz’s own subscribers.
At the same time, its advertising became very narrowly focused on the individual level (“target of one”). For example, if somebody was watching a movie online, the ads shown to them would discuss how to watch movies without buffering by using Super 4G. If someone was watching cooking videos, they would be informed how to get instant recipes without a lag. In line with user usage habits, specialized bundles were offered to YouTube and WhatsApp users. Jazz partnered with StarzPlay by Cinepax, a streaming platform for movies and TV programs, offering 10,000 MB of internet with one-week free access to StarzPlay. Jazz Super 4G also partnered with multiple consumer relevant brands like McDonalds, Coke and Cornetto to offer added value to customers.
“Combining Jazz’s state-of-the-art network capabilities, we created a 4G brand that upheld our promise of delivering a superior, consistent, and differentiated customer experience. Our marketing approach was targeted towards the youth with relevant messaging and strong 4G use-cases. Our partnerships for brand positioning, endorsements by Ookla with respect to speed/quality along with other key initiatives also helped create top-of-mind recall and strengthened the 4G brand’s image. Today, Jazz Super 4G has grown to 69 million Pakistanis including 29 million 4G users, cementing Jazz’s position as the country’s number one 4G operator and leading digital services provider.”
Asif Aziz – Chief Commercial Officer
These partnerships were not only to put the logo of Jazz on events. Coke Fest is a good example of such focused value-added contextualized marketing. The idea was that instead of only seeing Jazz’s logo, the consumers should be able to “experience” the Super 4G. Jazz became the internet enablers for Coke Fest. With JazzCash the brand enabled the audience to make cash free transactions and avail lots of discounts all over Pakistan. As the event was powered by Jazz, one could connect with Coke Fest through Super 4G. There were dedicated zones at the Fest where visitors could do VR gaming, ‘experiencing connectivity’. A digitally enabled lifestyle was offered: you entered the event, scanned with your phone, and paid, avoiding long queues as all retailers and vendors were enabled with QR codes. And there was a 40% cash-back offer which meant consumers would save 40% of their money and then buy more!
Jazz also partnered with Eva, a world-famous travel vlogger, with a huge national and international following. As Eva travelled to distant areas of Pakistan, Super 4G gained credibility because the ‘connectivity’ promise of Jazz was realized by Eva’s visits, which were powered by Super 4G.
Jazz’s offerings were seamless and mutually supportive. Jazz Cash, the extended digital financial service of Jazz, allowed one’s phone to transform into one’s mobile wallet, extending from just data to many other avenues, making life easy for people: you could pay bills, transfer money, send mobile load, and in Covid times, use Jazz Cash to avoid being infected by the virus.
Jazz also took great care of its channel management. Some retail points, always in major cities, were Jazz’s dedicated stores, and one could buy the whole range of Jazz’s products. In addition, there were many franchisees’ retail shops. Jazz trained these franchisees’ sales forces on important aspects of 4G. They were educated on how to answer questions such as “Why should we switch to 4G”, “Will it be expensive” and so on. Retailers were incentivized to replace older sims with new 4G sims. In-store visibility of the new Super 4G positioning was also ensured.
Measurement
Both the CEO and the CCO emphasized the importance of measurement. Data collection and analysis showed that from 2019 to 2021, overall awareness of 4G among the overall population had increased from 79.5% to 87.9%. When asked which brand came first to mind when talking about 4G, Jazz was the only brand that showed exponential growth from 19.8% in 2019 to 26.5% in 2021. When asked which company was the best 4G provider, Jazz jumped from 18.3% in 2019 to 24.3% in 2021. Brand usage in 4G for Jazz rose from 4% in 2018 to 13% in 2021.
Jazz had beaten the odds and regained for itself within 4G what it already had within the general telecom sector: the top position. But Aamir remembered his IMD professors who kept saying: Just when you think you are on top; your next best competitor is breathing down your neck. The history of business organizations is replete with such examples. Will my team sustain its focus? Should we focus more on emotional advertising now that we have established the functional superiority of our brand? Should we expand at the same breakneck pace or pause and consolidate so that our quality does not suffer?
Questions to stimulate conversation on the case
- What, in your view, explains Jazz’s stunning success in taking the lead in the 4G domain?
- Find examples of successful positioning strategies from other product categories, and highlight the importance of positioning in marketing.
- What should Jazz do now to sustain its lead in 4G?
Links and media
Website: https://jazz.com.pk/