If Digicel Guyana’s Chief Executive Officer Tim Bahrani declines to be pushed into “talking up” a marketing war with GT&T, the “body language” of the Guyana’s newest cellular service provider is sending an altogether different signal. A frenzied marketing showdown between Digicel and GT&T is clearly underway and if the manoeuvres of the two companies are anything to go by this cell phone-crazy country should have the time of its life.
The arrival of Digicel here last November through the acquisition of the assets of U-Mobile had given rise to widespread public speculation that a marketing clash between itself and GT&T for control of the local cellular service turf was looming. GT&T Sales and Marketing Director Michael George had told Stabroek Business several weeks ago that the company had indeed readied itself for a strong challenge from its competitor. Evidence of GT&T’s preparation to defend its market share had come months earlier in the form of a vigorous promotion drive through its handset vendors to “convert” customers from the older TDMA service to its GSM network. It was a transparent marketing move by GT&T designed to leave as few of its TDMA subscribers as possible outside its own GSM fold for a subsequent Digicel “mop up.”
More recently, George had promised that the announcement of new “floor to ceiling” cellular service rates by the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) would usher in even more “special offers” from the company to its customers.
GT&T has good reason to pull out the marketing ‘stops” in the face of the arrival of Digicel. Bahrani’s prevailing posture of “corporate restraint” does little to conceal Digicel’s reputation for simply overwhelming the competition in the 21 Caribbean markets into which it has gone before arriving here. George knew that sooner or later the company would turn up the marketing “heat” and he had made it clear that GT&T would not be caught napping.
Last Tuesday Digicel shifted its marketing gears with a vengeance. What was billed as a press conference in the Essequibo Suite of the Le Meridien Pegasus earlier bore a closer resemblance to a carefully choreographed exercise in media seduction. Marketing and public relations “high fliers” had been flown in from elsewhere in the region to support the local Digicel team and the “media event” turned out to be more “event” than “media.” Inside the seductively lit Essequibo suite a sound system repeatedly played the “catchy” Digicel jingle. As part of its presentation to the assembled press the company offered “big screen” sneak previews of its racy local advertisements and when the formal proceedings were halted briefly to display its range of new handsets the instruments were paraded around the room by a bevy of costume-clad beauties from Digicel’s Firestorm Mash band, creating a compelling distraction that sustained itself for the remainder of the media briefing.
Nor had the regional helpers been brought along simply for ‘the ride.” When Bahrani declined to provide the kind of sound bite response that the media may have anticipated to a question about Digicel’s competition with GT&T, Jerry George, the company’s Eastern Caribbean Marketing Manager was quick to make the point that Digicel had “seen off” the opposition wherever it had ventured in the Caribbean, exactly the kind of less than veiled warning to GT&T that Bahrani had been resisting.
At the end of the “show” the media was sent on its way with a sumptuous Le Meridien Pegasus mid-morning brunch, hardly the usual fare at local press conferences, and an assortment of Digicel promotional gifts.
By the end of the day the Digicel bandwagon had simply crashed headlong into the capital. Digicel flags were flying from vehicles around Georgetown and word had gone out that the company’s Wednesday evening concert at the National Park would be preceded by the countrywide launch of 50 outlets. The GT&T response came late on Tuesday evening with word filtering through the city that the company would be offering handsets for a record low price of just under $1,000 from the following day.
On Wednesday, Digicel took its show to the streets as planned. The launch of its outlets appeared to work. The company’s marketing strategists had evidently “factored in” the local disposition for novelty and GT&T’s overnight offer could not keep the crowds away from Digicel’s St Valentine’s Day launch.
Stabroek Business eventually caught up with Bahrani late on Tuesday. He was still wary of ‘ambush’ questions about price wars. In the less austere environment of his High Street office, however, even the Digicel CEO could not conceal his enthusiasm for the start of what promises to be the biggest marketing “showdown” in the country’s commercial history.
When we asked Bahrani about the trendy style of the Tuesday press conference he responded that there was no reason why press conferences should be drab affairs. The event, he said, made a welcome change from convention.
With exactly one week left before Mashramani and a month before the start of Cricket World Cup Digicel, it seems, has timed its marketing “run” to coincide with the mood of festivity that should sustain itself at least until Easter. Its Wednesday evening National Park show, a prelude to its Mash bandwagon, appears to mark the start of a longer-term “hookup” with a young, urban, cell phone-crazy population.
Digicel, of course, will have to play catch up to its entrenched competitor whose GSM customers could be approaching 200,000. Bahrani says, however, that the company’s marketing intelligence suggests that only around 22 per cent of possible local demand has been satisfied. Bahrani believes that there are still ‘acres’ of room in the local cellular service market and Digicel is setting no limits on its own share of that market.
