case study | etisalat uae brand campaign #etisalatchallenge fiasco on social media
TRANSCRIPT
#EtisalatChaLLenge Case Study
May 2015Digital BOOm adigitalbOOm.com
Dubai - UAE
A chaLLenge Etisalat was not up to
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#EtisalatChallenge
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Etisalat UAE launched a new campaign chaLLenging its customers to find a mobile tariFF in the UAE that Etisalat
can’t match or beat.
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overview
The campaign resulted in a crisis online, also refeRRed to as a #Fail campaign
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overview
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- What’s the challenge? - Fans cheering for their celebrities - Criticism of Etisalat
- Revealer fueled the heat - du posts
Blog posts about the campaign fail spread on twitter
TVC Release
Censorship scandal
TVC provoked customers to negatively re-engage
BUZZ +15Koverall - buzz trend
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teaser
revealer
in the news
conclusion6
Teaser campaignMay 2 to 5
Etisalat released an integrated teaser campaign supported heavily by large media spend. The campaign featured six international celebrities.
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digital, social media, outdoor, print, radio
Social media Influencers joined the campaign by posting branded photos & videos promoting the “chaLLenge”
#EtisalatChaLLenge
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over 30 influencers
remember this
UAE Influencers
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What aDDed to the negativity is the authenticity of the influencers, taking into consideration that many of them were du* influencers.
*: du being the second and only telecom operator in the UAE, i.e. the only competitor of Etisalat.
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Influencers worked with du months ago
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remember this
Influencers worked with du months ago
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Influencers worked with du months ago
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- Wondering what’s the challenge about - Fans cheering for their celebrities - Criticism of Etisalat
Negative buzzNegative buzz
teaser buzz trend
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The teaser campaign started off as being positive as people assumed the “challenge” was of a different kind. It didn’t take long though for people to turn that positivity into utter negativity.
5%10%
85%
Negative Neutral Positive
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sentiment analysis
The negative fEEdback comprised of:• Criticism of Etisalat for paying huge sums of money for
celebrities instead of fixing and improving their services • Angry customers challenged Etisalat to come up with better
products, mainly data plans (they find it to be among the most expensive and unreliable in the region)
• Customers challenged Etisalat to fix the unstable ADSL service, train the call center agents, improve the billing system, etc
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detailed sentiment analysis
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Etisalat chose to completely disregard customers’ feedback and launched its revealer campaign.
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Teasing customers for 3 days with international celebrities and online influencers, which has set high expectations for customers including the angry ones.
Obviously the campaign has nothing to do with high expectations, it says nothing about customers.
It’s all about how Etisalat is rich and great. 25
the revealer - may 5
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tv, radio, outdoor, print, social media and digital
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- Revealer fueled the heat - du posts
Blog posts about the campaign fail on twitter Etisalat
released TVC
Censorship scandal
TVC provoked customers to negatively re-engage
revealer buzz trend
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Etisalat revealed the campaign challenge, which fueled negativity on twitter. Online publishers reported the backfire, but next day they pulled out their articles, which triggered people’s anger again. Few days later, Etisalat released their TVC!
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Negative Neutral Positive
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revealer sentiment analysis
• The campaign revealer was disappointing, which fueled more negativity • Angry customers challenged Etisalat to fix the network, billing system,
offer reliable services, and revisit their super expensive prices. • Alleged censorship: negative articles about Etisalat campaign
disappeared from different online portals
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revealer sentiment analysis
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du’s reply
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du’s reply
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in the news
Three top UAE publishers wrote about the campaign’s failure. The negative articles were pulled from their websites in few hours.
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censorship scandal
full article: http://bit.ly/1Au63Te
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the national’s article has been copied to reddit
https://twitter.com/thenationaluae/status/597379695865364480
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the national’s tweet still online [to-date]
Link: http://bit.ly/1cjiHsg
Link: http://bit.ly/1KAbTFH
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feedback
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Post link: http://bit.ly/1KzmwIV 54
an open letter to etisalat by khalid al ameri
•FREE PUBLICITY: I am a long term customer of Etisalat but this advertisement prompted me to look at an alternate service provider offering. So du got free PUBLICITY.
•TRY OUT: Just to test out services I purchased a plan from du – a lost sale to Etisalat. •COMPETITIVE BRAND RECALL: Effectively loyal customers were reminded that there is an option available
in the market. •MONEY NOT WELL SPENT: : I did not see extra credibility with Etisalat advertisement plan after looking at
celebrity endorsement. But snap decision while driving was a state of confusion. • NO TIME: People are being bombarded with so much information – then where is the time to compare tariffs? •CONFUSION: The caption “For the first time in UAE” – is confusing – does this refer to Mobile tariffs or
celebrity endorsement? •WEB TRAFFIC: Etisalat web traffic may have increased but so do du traffic too. •CLUTTERED WEB SITE: When I logged onto Etisalat CHALLENGE web site the subsequent maneuvering
was quite confusing. Etisalat should have focused on few key plans and demographics.
Full post: http://linkd.in/1J5UJh3 56
8 key points by vinod mehra
Etisalat Challenge campaign is a strong lesson to Etisalat’s Marketing, PR, Social Media and even the executive team, hence, we would like to highlight some key points:
• The campaign generated 15K negative comments – Your
customers are angry, what are you doing next to satisfy them? • Etisalat lost face after people won the challenge, as Etisalat
didn’t reply any of their challenges. Again what’s next v. soon?
Conclusion
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• Social media team had to reply every single tweet/comment on the hashtag, to take control (Re-consider your social media tactics to win)
• Neutral comments asking for the campaign purpose and still don’t get it
Conclusion
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•Paying social media influencers didn’t help the campaign, they’re not your brand ambassadors, they’re people who have popularity and high number of followers, nothing more
•Lack of preparations, as Etisalat doesn’t have the best tariffs in the market
Conclusion
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• Marketing team had to review customers’ negative feedback before launching the campaign, it was obvious that it will backfire as the campaign has nothing to do with customers’ expectations
• PR team involvement was completely wrong, they caused a brand damage for Etisalat and the online newspapers
Conclusion
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