The Belgian operator Telenet just finished a big teaser campaign. They announced in all broadcast media that “Telenet will push the button” at midnight.
Soon, speculation started in the blogosphere. What will happen when Telenet pushes the button? So far so good, the idea of a teaser campaign is to trigger curiosity. But what happened next had an adverse effect: Some people claimed they had access to inside information and started to spread the news that Telenet would eliminate the limits on traffic volumes. Users reacted very positive to this “news” since Telenet’s 10GB monthly download limit really isn’t much in this Youtube and online gaming age.
So big was the disappointment amongst bloggers when Telenet revealed the real subject of their teaser: They announced that for the cheapest subscriptions, the speed would be quadrupled. Although this is great news for low end customers, the high end customers that suffer from download limits felt neglected. And it happens to be those high end customers that are most influential in the blogosphere.
What could Telenet have done to prevent this campaign from being hijacked? The answer is: nothing. The campaign was perfect. What wasn’t perfect is the subject of the campaign. Telenet’s offering wasn’t so fantastic after all, since users are still bound to the same download limit. In pre-internet times, the campaign would have stimulated a need in the customers mind (“Telenet internet becomes 4 times faster,hmm, then my Belgacom subscription must be slow”). But thanks to the internet customers are informed better and faster and the scoop of the campaign was hijacked.
Luckily for Telenet (and for traditional broadcast media), the percentage of customers that live in a Web 2.0 world versus the customers that still live in a Web 1.0 world is relatively small.
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