With so many wireless carriers competing for potential customers, marketing techniques have become an important tool to attract clients.
One of the more recent marketing trends seems to be the phenomenon of corporate sponsorships-companies donating money and products to community organizations-all in an attempt to differentiate their message from the rest of the pack.
“From a marketing standpoint, involving yourself in a particular issue or cause can differentiate your company,” said Kristie Madara, a spokeswoman for BellSouth Mobility DCS, which recently launched a program focused on educational issues. “I think the various wireless providers have similar services, features and pricing, and it’s just another way to further differentiate your company.
“I think today, corporate involvement in various issues that affect communities is not just a nice thing anymore, but I think it’s expected from our customers,” she said. “And it’s certainly something we want to be involved in.”
The company launched a special initiative, called “Call for Learning,” in North Carolina, South Carolina and eastern Tennessee. The company pledged to donate one cent for every minute of airtime customers use over their packaged minutes, up to a maximum of $10,000 per region. Through the program, BellSouth also donates phones, airtime and voice-mail boxes in a project aimed at fighting crime in schools.
Other companies are jumping on the corporate-sponsorship bandwagon, too.
Bakersfield Cellular, a BellSouth Corp. company, this fall began a year-long community relations program to educate students, customers and companies on the advantages of safe cellular use.
Los Angeles Cellular Telephone Co. provided wireless phones to 21 neighborhood watch groups in Long Beach, Calif., as part of the Communities on Phone Patrol program created in 1996 by the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association.
Cellular One used October, which is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, to promote its Community Action Life Link program, which provides cellular phones and voice-mail boxes to victims of domestic abuse.
But companies also use programs like these to make sales. BellSouth, for instance, offers $25 to a school’s parent-teacher association for every phone activated by a school employee or parent.
“There’s two aspects to doing something like that: There’s that warm, fuzzy feeling you have because you did something good,” said Mike Clough, chief executive officer of Eden Prairie, Minn.-based Quantum Communications Group Inc. “But from a strictly business standpoint, I think that in general it’s probably a good idea.”
Quantum, a wireless consulting and management firm, has been incubating wireless telephone companies since 1988. The company helps build out, operate and market networks for licensees that don’t have the expertise or the time to build out a rural license.
Clough said corporate sponsorships serve a purpose in rural areas by making large national companies appear to be part of a small community.
“You take a large brand-an AT&T (Corp.) or a Sprint (Corp.)-that comes into a community, and oftentimes they’re looked on as outsiders,” he said. Residents of small communities feel like, “they come in and they take our money and it goes back to their corporate office. They’re really not part of the community.”
Aside from donating resources to charities, Clough said he has found that sponsoring local softball teams, go-cart races and activities of that nature provide plenty of publicity mileage.
“Things like that are more important than advertising to us because it makes us part of the community,” he said. “If you’ve got the proper publicity, it gives the prospective subscriber the warm fuzzies that you’re this type of company.”
Another way carriers get publicity is by donating resources during disasters, such as during the flooding last spring in Grand Forks, N.D.
“Quite frankly if that had been me, I would have done it whether we got any publicity out of it or not, because that’s a disaster,” said Clough. “But I still would have tried to get all the publicity I could.”
That sentiment reflects the apparent goal behind corporate sponsorships. Donating airtime, for instance, costs the carrier very little, said Clough. But, “if we can get a lot of publicity for a little expense, it’d be a shame to pass that up.”
Perhaps more importantly, companies hope their charitable work will serve an image-building function.
“Part of the Call For Learning program is that BellSouth Mobility DCS is associated in the minds of customers with education,” said Madara.
“It may not be one particular project they remember-because there are a lot of projects under this Call For Learning umbrella-but they remember our involvement in helping education. It’s that association that we want them to make.”
Beyond image building, some analysts say corporate sponsorship programs serve more of an image repairing function.
“It probably depends on how many tower/zoning fights they’re into, how many lawsuits are pending between agents, how much bad will they’ve managed to generate in the last 13 years,” said Steven Kellogg, of Steven Kellogg Wireless Marketing. “A lot of cellular carriers are in a recovery mode right now. They’ve had it where it was mostly just an inflow of orders. They haven’t had to do a whole lot of outflow.
“Now that there’s competition, they’re having to go get the order instead of just answering the phone,” he said.
Corporate sponsorships create a win-win situation of sorts, because for whatever reason companies are putting their money into community programs, the fact remains that communities are getting something out of it.
“When you can have profits and those warm fuzzies at the same time, then that’s really a good situation,” said Clough.
