The Myth about the Mobile Internet

While mobile phone companies slug it out trying to outdo each other on their data plans- Jio having given competitors a rude shock -using your phone for your data needs couldn't be further from the truth as it is represented in advertising commercials.

Inspite of being on a pretty good plan as a post-paid subscriber it is not unusual for me to get a rude wake up call from my service provider right in the middle of my monthly billing cycle about how I have exhausted the data limit in my plan. The last time this happened was when I decided to use Internet Radio on my phone for an hour to stream my favourite radio station. And remember that I am a loyal subscriber who has stayed with my service provider for 18 years. So I do love my brand and think the world of it.

And this in spite of being extremely careful and constantly scrounging on my data. Typically I use data only when I have wi-fi either at home or in office or at Starbucks or some other place which offers free wi-fi. And if I think I am careful, I look around me and find that the general population is even more stingy than me. I have seen people lap up free wifi at airports, coffee shops, malls, and every place on this earth that offers free wi-fi. In fact people are so greedy for free wi-fi that they often walk into coffee shops and use their wi-fi without even having a coffee. Which is downright embarrassing. That is, if you happen to be one of their friends.

The new Vodafone commercial, which I thought was good advertising, was of course a little far away from the truth. Yes, Super-hour seems like a good property to develop - after all don't we rush to pubs during happy hours? The protagonist of the commercial who is at a street food joint fantasises and waxes eloquent about all the things she is going to do during Super-hour.

As a response to Reliance Jio’s Happy New Year offer, rival service providers Airtel and Vodafone, seem to have decided to add fuel to the tariff wars by announcing their own plans. Vodafone's new offer which started on January 9, has unlimited 4G/3G data for one hour, priced at Rs 16. The Jio advertising also takes a leap of faith when they even show toddlers entertaining themselves using phone data.

While I would give the benefit of doubt to the various telecom companies and their data plans, it unfortunately doesn't have the ring of reality around it. Because in reality mobile data plans are so expensive, that it makes people around the world, try and visit a coffee shop only to get free data. However remarks like this one which I found on Quora, do put a doubt into people's minds about the practicality of the new Vodafone offer. A after all you don't need to be a telecom expert to ask the following questions:

• what is the speed I will get?
• Is it below normal speed?
• Can I re-charge continuously?

Matching the brand signals with brand reality

The reality of a business or product is sometimes quite different from the ideal experience. Every brand has aspirations. Most brands want to get better or different place. But how can we re-concile these two states? Two leading Oxford University professors Michael Bacharach and Diego Gambetta have done much thinking about game theory and trust signalling. They say that the role of marketing is to ensure there is alignment between what the product actually does and the product claims and advertising. This determines if the signals received from the brand are trustworthy or not. It might work once to promise something attractive and not deliver, but it is not a sustainable strategy.

Rory Sutherland of Ogilvy Mather and Chairman of the IPA sums this up nicely when he says "Advertising is like a peacock's tail. The peacock has evolved this tail with its luxurious colours and size as an extravagant addition so that it can signal to the female that it is strong and healthy enough to survive whilst having such a wasteful appendage."

The problem is that marketers have to be constantly cautious about ensuring that the messaging and signalling doesn't turn into something beautiful and mesmerising which doesn't live up to the brand reality. Exaggeration works in advertising only when you use it as hyperbole, or in other words as a figure of speech, purely for effect and that too with the permission of the consumer.

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