Alright, so in my last post I hinted at something big that went down last week – which was quite amazing, since I hadn't seen something like it during my entire first year of living here. So, let me give you a little bit of background information. Since I arrived here, there has been only one major telephone company (SamoaTel) and one major cell phone provider (Telecom Samoa) – both primarily run and owned by Samoans. Well, a few months back Telecom Samoa was sold to a business in New Zealand known as Digicell. The main thing they are bringing to the island are GSM phones which supposedly can be used anywhere in the world and will allow great coverage across both islands (before now, if you tried to use a cell phone on Savaii you were SOL). Now, Digicell gets the contract to be the cell phone provider and – get this – in less than 3 months has cell phone towers up all over both islands, has opened 40 stores and already has a strong brand name amongst Samoans. The major thing that went down last week was Digicell officially went online and launched an advertising campaign the likes of which I have never seen (and I ask some Samoans, they had never seen anything like this as well). There were banners all over the place, cars and trucks with Digicell plastered on them driving around, crowds in front of the digicell stores, their was a big opening party at Robert Louis Stevenson's house, billboards, television commercials and radio ads – I mean this was SERIOUS advertisement. Like someone knew what they were doing! The biggest catch for consumers is that they are able to turn in their old cell phone and get a new Digicell cell phone for free (basically) and everyone is jumping on the offer.
It had been so long since I saw a real effort in advertising something (sorry all you NFL fans, but we don't get any Peyton Manning commercials down here) that it was a complete shock to the system. If I remember, I'll try to take photos of all the digicell stuff that's up around Apia right now. Now, what about Samoatel you might ask? They are coming out with a GSM phone network too (after talking it up for about 3 years) but it won't be out until January. So get this – a company that has a monopoly on the telephone industry in the country and has millions of tala in reserve are going to give an upstart company 3 months of lead time before they put out their phone, which can't possibly have the same coverage as Digicell because D-Cell has international backing (and as proven by their initial campaign, a real marketing department). One thing Samoatel did wrong – of the many things – was the fact that they (without notifying anyone through mail or radio or print) raised the price of calling a cell phone from about 39 sene to 69 sene a minute! Now since Digicell is the only cell phone company around until Samoatel releases their phone network in January, this looks like a way to keep people from switching to Digicell – when in fact all it will do is piss people off even more and make them go to Digicell faster. Why did Samotel raise the price? Well the reason is legit – when you call a D-Cell phone from a land line (which Samoatel owns ALL the landlines), D-Cell gets part of the money and Samoatel gets part of the money - I guess when Telecom Samoa was handling it they didn't ask for a big share. Now I learned this – not from an advertisement explaining this – but from a news paper article that started with the headline "Samoatel, Digicell Price War". Again, not very good advertisement on Samoatel's part.
Usually I would stay away from business issues in Samoa on my blog, but this was just so huge – and such a different approach to any kind of advertisement I've seen in this country – I just had to write about it. Real advertising? Man, almost makes me miss real commercials back home – almost.
BTW, I was watching the Sunday Night game between Indianapolis and New England (Yay Colts!) and there was something that I realized – I miss skyscrapers! While natural beauty is nice and all, I'm a city kid at heart and kind of miss the awe of looking up at huge buildings that reach for the sky. Ahhh…just one more year till I get to see some man made beauties again. L8r.
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