Batelco Batelco Infinity

Case Study

Outline

•  Bahrain country profile •  Market Overview •  Batelco •  Competition •  Batelco New Identity •  Batelco Infinity: !  The TVC !  The Idea !  The timeline !  Production/costs !  Channels !  Response/Feedback !  Notes !  References

Bahrain Country Profile

Full name: Kingdom of Bahrain Population: 1.3 millions (including expats) Capital: Manama Area: 717 sq km (277 sq miles) Major language: Arabic Telecom Operators: Batelco, Zain, Viva (March 2010) Penetration Rate: 131%

Market Overview

Market share: 45 %

Market share: 35 %

Market share: 20 %

Batelco was established in 1981 as a Bahraini shareholding company and has an authorized share capital of BD100 million (US$265 million). It was the first mobile service provider in Bahrain until Zain ventured the market in 2003.

Zain started operations in the Bahrain in Dec. 2003 as MTC-Vodafone. Since its historic introduction of 3.5G, WIMAX and ‘One Network’, Zain has tapped into a rich seam of telecommunication records & acquiring almost half of the market.

In March 2009, STC Group attained the 3rd Mobile Operation license in the Kingdom of Bahrain. This led to the launch of VIVA, the new telecom company in Bahrain, on March 3rd, 2010. The company is approaching the market with new a wide range of products and services including new product launches.

Batelco New Identity

The threat from an aggressive rival (Zain) and the entrance of a third operator (VIVA) -which is backed-up by one of the biggest telecom groups in the Middle East (STC )- put Batelco under immense pressure to revamp itself. A new way of thinking had to be introduced along with a new brand identity.

In their annual report for 2009, Batelco states the following:

Batelco’s stunning new logo celebrates Batelco as a Bahraini icon, linking Batelco in colour and with the letter B, to the Kingdom of Bahrain. The powerful, bilingual B transcends all cultures and will stand as a symbol that everyone can identify with and recognise easily. The logo also resembles an infinity sign, further communicating Batelco’s omnipresence in Bahrain.2

Batelco Infinity

In accordance with their new identity and revamped image, Batelco came up with a major advertising campaign based on a TVC that runs for 3 minutes 20 seconds. The TVC or short video will showcase in Cinema’s, on TV stations but most importantly via social media channels (Facebook & YouTube)3

Batelco claims that it is the biggest innovative ad film ever in the Middle East with a multi-million dollars budget!

Batelco Infinity - TVC

The film promises to take viewers on "a journey through people's ideas", signifying the potential of their ideas and how they come to life. 4 The whole TVC rotates around the infinity of ideas. Ideas that seem to be impossible but can be realized one day. It’s about imagination and dreams. (dreams that could be realized when your limits are infinite)

Batelco Infinity – The Idea

Batelco Infinity - The Timeline 4

The work starts around Oct-

Nov 2009

2009 2010

First activity on Facebook. Status says the full movie will be released in October

Sept 3rd

Sept 8th

First trailer to be released on 15th September

Sept 15th

No release of trailer one yet

Sept 16th

Release of trailer one

Sept 21st

Release of trailer two is set for October 7th

September October

Batelco Infinity - The Timeline

No release yet of trailer 2

2010

Actual release of trailer 2.

Oct 9th

Oct

More updates saying that the movie will be released end of October

Oct 31st

No release of the full movie/TVC yet

Nov 1st

Release of the entire 3:20 movie

October

Oct 7th

November

You can check the timeline of Facebook status on their main page ‘Batelco Infinity’

The timeline to produce the TVC was around 1 year as per Batelco. As for the cost, they only say it is in millions of $. No exact cost was given.

Production 5: Director: Alex & Steffen DP: Simon Coull Line Producer: Peter Oad Advertising Agency: FP7/BAH, Bahrain Creative Director: Fadi Yaish Art Directors: Gautam Wadher, Fadi Yaish Copywriter: Aunindo Anoop Senior Acccount Director: Mohammed Sabra Production House: Spy Films & City Films Executive Producers: Carlo Trulli, Luc Frappier, Mark Hadif, Joyce Hadif

Batelco Infinity – Production/Costs

Production (cont.): Postproduction: Unexpected GmbH, Stuttgart VFX Supervisor: Alex & Steffen Lead 3D Artists: Sebastian Badea, Jörg Häberle, Harun Celebi, Alexander Kiesl, Marcel Kühn, Stefan Kleindienst, Johannes Wünsch Lead 2D Artists: Claus Rudolph, Steffen Hacker Music by: AOC Paris

Abdulla Abu Idrees Batelco Executive Marketing Manager

Mohammed Dashti Batelco Marketing Campaign Manager

Batelco Infinity – Production/Costs

Basically, Batelco depended on TV spots, Cinema spots, a micro site: www.batelco.com/infinity and a dedicated facebook page www.facebook.com/infinity . Also Batelco was betting that this TVC could go viral and move from one user to the second and one site to the other (sort of worked)

Batelco Infinity – Channels

Main Site

In the main site you will find icons to click that will enable you to comment and interact with the site. It will give you behind the scenes shots along with info about infinity and Batelco

Facebook Page

Photo albums of the shooting sessions along with videos of the making were shared on Facebook so that people get more immersed in the idea.

Response/Feedback

Since the initial release of the first trailer, thousands and thousands of people worldwide are watching the TVC on YouTube, Facebook, regional advertising sites, telecom sites, global advertising sites… and the comments are mostly positive and asking for more (the coming slides will showcase some of the sites, likes and comments found online)

Facebook

Some of the comments on the first trailer

Facebook

Some of the comments on the second trailer & full movie

Youtube

The TVC was viewed 385,917 times so far with 1,685 likes. Almost 97.2 % likes and 2.8% dislikes

Youtube (Statistics)

It is important to mentioning that a big number of the viewers is in Canada, USA, Brazil, Germany, France, Spain & Peru.

Main Site

Likes on the main site reached 134,000 so far hundreds of posts that can appear on facebook as well

Main Site

Though some didn’t get the concept or don’t know what Batelco is, still they love it!

Gizmodo

High Definite

Coloribus

Adsoftheworld

It’s worth mentioning that the TVC took 7.7 out of 10 on ADS OF THE WORLD

Best Ads on TV

World News

Zawya

Campaign Middle East

Blogs

A sample of a Kuwaiti blog embedding the link of the TVC in the main page

"  Though Batelco created a dedicated Facebook page for this campaign, they missed out on creating a YouTube channel, FLICKR account… all of which are social media sites that could have helped spreading it more

"  Batelco probably needed more time to launch the movie since they seemed to have missed out 3 release dates (Trailer 1, trailer 2 and the full version)

"  Batelco created a dedicated account on SoundCloud (a music sharing site) and have several ringtones and tracks available to download for free. I like the progressive house one (my favorite music genre). Simply brilliant!

Notes

"  Having some of the production done in Canada and Germany, gave the TVC a strong initial boost in these countries. I think it is how Gizmodo and other sites knew about it (maybe doing our TVCs with global production companies could help spread our TVCs among the advertising world since the sites of such companies are always visited by graphic designers, art students and ad people)

"  Before the infinity campaign, Batelco had 5,428 fans who like their facebook page. When they created a different page just for the Infinity Campaign, their fan base surged into 133,077!!!

References: •  1 : http://bit.ly/hdWh6H (good ereader) •  2 : Batelco Annual Report 2009

•  3 : http://bit.ly/chb0Ke (campaignme) •  4 : www.facebook.com/infinity •  5 : http://bit.ly/fqEple (coloribus)

Sites: •  http://gizmodo.com/5698567/the-city-where-everything-awesome-

happens-all-the-time •  http://www.thehighdefinite.com/2010/11/batelco-infinity/ •  http://www.coloribus.com/adsarchive/ambient/batelco-the-official-infinity-

film-experience-14053805/ •  http://adsoftheworld.com/media/online/

batelco_infinity_the_official_infinity_film_experience •  http://www.bestadsontv.com/ad/31393/Batelco-INFINITY---Trailer-I •  http://wn.com/Infinity_%28film%29 •  http://www.zawya.com/story.cfm/sidZAWYA20100830045345/Batelco%20To

%20Release%20Multi-Million%20Dollar%20Film •  http://campaignme.com/2010/08/29/1840/batelco-to-launch-multi-million-

dollar-film/

Thank You.