Vodafone breaks new advertising ground

When Vodafone wrapped an entire Prague metro train in company logos in September, it not only broke ground on high-profile advertising in the metro system, it also symbolized a problem peculiar to the highly competitive Czech mobile phone market—too much advertising money, and too few places to spend it.

While Western European and North American companies have long been able to advertise their products in a wide array of advertising venues—everything from municipal bus fleets to special-occasion blimps—advertising opportunities are still somewhat limited in Central and Eastern Europe. Even though Prague residents have become accustomed to marketing campaigns that were unthinkable 20 years ago, such as building-size banners, Czech businesses still have plenty of advertising ground to conquer. Nowhere is that more obvious than in the telecom industry, in which three major carriers are battling for a bigger market share

This year and last, Czech telecom companies put their money in TV, radio and cinema spots, print media and, increasingly, in out-of-home advertising such as billboards or—as in the case of Vodafone Czech Republic, the third-place mobile provider in terms of client numbers—mass transit. According to industry experts, as companies compete for a share of the increasingly competitive Czech mobile phone market they will continue to find new ways to get their message to potential clients.

In the case of Vodafone’s metro campaign, the company wanted to reach out to a broad range of potential customers and do it in an entertaining way. “We have always aimed for alternative advertising, even back when we were still [operating under the brand name] Oskar,” said Jakub Hrabovský, spokesman for Vodafone. “We have taken on the same goal—making advertising entertaining, smart, witty and appealing to Czech audiences.”

Vodafone’s train campaign was handled by outdoor advertisement company Rencar Praha, which has produced hundreds of fully decorated trams and buses, in addition to advertisements displayed at bus stops in 13 cities in the Czech Republic. The company was established in 1990 with the goal of working to coordinate advertising on properties of Prague public transit company Dopravní podnik hl.m. Prahy (DPP). Rencar was unable to respond to questions by press time.

While print advertisements, television commercials and other traditional formats remain the backbone of the company’s marketing efforts, advertising advisers suggested it was time to shake things up from a marketing perspective, he said.

“With the sheer number of mobile phone ads, it was important for the company to reach out to customers in a nontraditional way,” Hrabovský said. “If you look at the market, you see a lot of boring advertising taken over from the mother company. [They] do not take into account the local culture. We always try to recognize what Czechs want and what will entertain them.”

Hrabovský would not say how much the company spent on the train campaign, but experts in the advertising industry estimated that it cost the company “a couple of million crowns” to splash the logo across a train’s exterior. Currently, the advertisement is limited to one train on the metro C line, colloquially known as the red line. It was chosen to complement the company’s red quotation mark logo.

When designing the train, Vodafone found that “the biggest challenge was that no one did it before [us],” according to Vodafone public relations manager Filip Hrubý, who said that the company pursued the train campaign because of its novelty. One issue that the company encountered was finding a supplier to create custom logo-branded upholstery used in the trains.
But the difficulties of the problems did not cool Vodafone to transportation. Vodafone is reportedly in negotiations with DPP for additional “marketing communications opportunities” within the system, Hrabovský said.

The train-branding campaign is a first for the Czech Republic, and a format that other Czech companies have unsuccessfully tried to utilize, said Tomáš Mrkvička, strategic planner for advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather. The company does not do any “above-the-line” TV or other major media advertising for mobile phone companies, but does handle direct-marketing activities for Telefónica O2 Czech Republic

The biggest problem for the mobile phone community is how to sensibly spend their huge budgets, Mrkvička said. “Their situation is different from other companies, [who tell advertising agencies], ‘If only we had more money.’ That is why you are going to see [more examples of] nontraditional advertising—to spend their money,” Mrkvička added.

Two years ago, his agency unsuccessfully tried to negotiate branding a metro train for an unspecified company, but without success. Part of the problem, Mrkvička said, was logistical. He encountered the same problem with locating a supplier to create specialized logo-branded upholstery, in addition to lots of red tape. “From my personal experience [in negotiations] … there was a huge barrier of bureaucracy and restrictions, and it was impossible,” he said, declining to go into further detail. “But we did not have as a big a budget as Vodafone.” But now that DPP and ad agencies see that it is logistically possible, Mrkvička said that others may join the train advertising trend.

Source: http://www.cbw.cz/phprs/2007100827.html