The document summarizes a marketing campaign by Etisalat in the UAE called the #EtisalatChallenge that backfired and resulted in significant negative customer feedback online. The campaign began with teasers featuring celebrities but provided no information about what the challenge entailed. When Etisalat revealed that the challenge was to find a better mobile tariff, customers criticized Etisalat for not addressing service issues. Negative articles about the campaign were reportedly removed from news sites, fueling more criticism. The document analyzes customer sentiment and provides verbatim comments reflecting their disappointment.
7. Teaser campaign
May 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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12. 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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16. 200
400
600
800
1/5 2/5 3/5 4/5
- Wondering whatās the challenge about
- Fans cheering for their celebrities
- Criticism of Etisalat
Negative buzz
Negative buzz
teaser buzz trend
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17. The teaser campaign started oļ¬ as
being positive as people assumed the
āchallengeā was of a diļ¬erent kind.
It didnāt take long though for people to
turn that positivity into utter negativity.
5%
10%
85%
Negative Neutral Positive
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sentiment analysis
18. The negative fEEdback comprised of:
ā¢ Criticism of Etisalat for paying huge sums of money for
celebrities instead of ļ¬xing and improving their services
ā¢ Angry customers challenged Etisalat to come up with better
products, mainly data plans (they ļ¬nd it to be among the most
expensive and unreliable in the region)
ā¢ Customers challenged Etisalat to ļ¬x the unstable ADSL service,
train the call center agents, improve the billing system, etc
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detailed sentiment analysis
24. Etisalat chose to completely disregard customersā
feedback and launched its revealer campaign.
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25. Teasing customers for 3 days
with international celebrities and
online inļ¬uencers, 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.
Itās all about how Etisalat is rich
and great. 25
the revealer - may 5
28. 750
1500
2250
3000
4/5 5/5 6/5 7/5 8/5 9/5 10/5 11/5 12/5 13/5 14/5 15/5 16/5 17/5 18/5 19/5
- 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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29. Etisalat revealed the campaign challenge,
which fueled negativity on twitter. Online
publishers reported the backļ¬re, but next
day they pulled out their articles, which
triggered peopleās anger again.
Few days later, Etisalat released their TVC!
5%
95%
Negative Neutral Positive
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revealer sentiment analysis
30. ā¢ The campaign revealer was disappointing, which fueled more negativity
ā¢ Angry customers challenged Etisalat to ļ¬x the network, billing system,
oļ¬er reliable services, and revisit their super expensive prices.
ā¢ Alleged censorship: negative articles about Etisalat campaign
disappeared from diļ¬erent online portals
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revealer sentiment analysis
49. Three top UAE publishers wrote about the
campaignās failure. The negative articles were
pulled from their websites in few hours.
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censorship scandal
56. ā¢ 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.
ā¢ TRY OUT: Just to test out services I purchased a plan from du ā a lost sale to Etisalat.
ā¢ COMPETITIVE BRAND RECALL: Effectively loyal customers were reminded that there is an option available
in the market.
ā¢ MONEY NOT WELL SPENT:Ā : I did not see extra credibility with Etisalat advertisement plan after looking at
celebrity endorsement.Ā But snap decision while driving was a state of confusion.
ā¢ NO TIME: People are being bombarded with so much information ā then where is the time to compare tariffs?
ā¢ CONFUSION: The caption āFor the ļ¬rst time in UAEā ā is confusing ā does this refer to Mobile tariffs or
celebrity endorsement?
ā¢ WEB TRAFFIC: Etisalat web trafļ¬c may have increased but so do du trafļ¬c too.
ā¢CLUTTERED WEB SITE: When I logged onto Etisalat CHALLENGE web site the subsequent maneuvering
was quite confusing.Ā Etisalat should have focused on few keyĀ plans and demographics.
Full post: http://linkd.in/1J5UJh3
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8 key points by vinod mehra
57. Etisalat Challenge campaign is a strong lesson to Etisalatās Marketing, PR,
Social Media and even the executive team, hence, we would like to highlight
some key points:
ā¢ The campaign generated 15K negative comments ā Your
customers are angry, what are you doing next to satisfy them?
ā¢ Etisalat lost face after people won the challenge, as Etisalat
didnāt reply any of their challenges. Again whatās next v. soon?
Conclusion
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58. ā¢ Social media team had to reply every single tweet/
comment on the hashtag, to take control (Re-consider
your social media tactics to win)
ā¢ Neutral comments asking for the campaign purpose
and still donāt get it
Conclusion
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59. ā¢Paying social media inļ¬uencers didnāt help the
campaign, theyāre not your brand ambassadors, theyāre
people who have popularity and high number of
followers, nothing more
ā¢Lack of preparations, as Etisalat doesnāt have the best
tariļ¬s in the market
Conclusion
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60. ā¢ Marketing team had to review customersā negative
feedback before launching the campaign, it was obvious
that it will backļ¬re as the campaign has nothing to do with
customersā expectations
ā¢ PR team involvement was completely wrong, they caused
a brand damage for Etisalat and the online newspapers
Conclusion
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