With the focus in the long-distance telephone market having shifted dramatically in recent months from image to price, Bell Canada is looking towards a product bundling strategy to create additional value for its customers and to distinguish itself from its competitors.
This new marketing approach is at the heart of Bell Ontario’s decision, announced late last month, to hold an agency review and consolidate its estimated $60 million ad account with one shop.
According to Josee Goulet, Bell Canada’s group vice-president consumer markets and sales Ontario, the winning agency will assume advertising responsibility for the company’s full range of service offerings, except Bell Mobility cellular, pcs and paging services, which is a separate account.
Bell’s product lineup includes Bell brand residential and business services for local and long-distance calls; Bell Mobility cellular, pcs and paging services; Sympatico Internet access for residential consumers; Bell Advantage Internet access for businesses; and Bell retail outlets.
The account will also include ExpressVu, the direct-to-home satellite tv company that, like Bell, is owned by bce.
It is estimated ExpressVu spent $10 million on advertising in the past year.
Incumbent agencies on all the business divisions involved have been invited to take part in the review.
These include BBDO Canada, which handles business advertising, and Leo Burnett, which has the consumer account (although they occasionally stray onto one another’s turf).
As well, Cossette Communication-Marketing handles Bell Mobility and Bell’s retail outlets, while Vickers & Benson has the ExpressVu account.
Goulet says the bundling strategy will create marketing synergies by pairing complementary Bell services. For instance, as the local-market competition heats up, the opportunity will emerge for Bell to pair local and long-distance services to make simplified billing packages for consumers.
Other Bell services, including those offered by Bell Mobility, ExpressVu and Bell’s Internet access companies, could also be added to the packages.
Bell’s philosophy in consolidating its business with one agency is that a single agency will be more likely than would a roster of agencies to identify cross marketing and product bundling opportunities, since it would live and breathe with all the brands every day.
Meanwhile, the telecommunications giant may be contemplating a shift in advertising focus, away from brand image and onto product benefits and attributes.
Bell needs to reassess its competitive position in light of the ongoing, frantic competition in the long-distance marketplace and the expected upswing in competition in the local market, says Goulet.
To date, local market competition has been limited to the business sector.
Goulet, who took over her new responsibilities in February, says, ‘I couldn’t comment in exact terms if there will be a very different direction or if it will be an evolution of the direction we’re already on.
‘We’re working on it now, reviewing some of the options and monitoring closely the intensity of the competition and whether [local residential competition] will happen sooner than anticipated.
The decision will rest, in part, on a comparative analysis of Bell’s current corporate image campaign, Promise to be Competitive, with its current product-based campaign for long distance, First Rate.
First Rate touts Bells 10-cents-a-minute flat-rate pricing scheme, which Goulet describes as extremely successful.
‘A lot of momentum has been gained in the marketplace, and as we’ve indicated with the publication of our first-quarter results, the trend right now is we’re gaining in terms of competitiveness.
‘First Rate has really made a big difference for us.’
