I blogged about the Celcom-Air Asia co-branded starter pack early Jan last year on another site. Back then, I couldn't be less amused about the partnership as it really looked like a forced or desprate decision to gain some profile for celcom. I tried by best to rationalize from a strategic perspective and came up with some responses. However, it was only about 2 weeks ago that it struck me that Tony Fernandes is really serious and commited to position his business to manage the total no-frills travelling/holiday experience with his investments in long haul flights and Tune Hotels (no-frill hotels). Now I can't help but wonder if Celcom could wrangle it's way into the picture again to get a piece of the action, particularly with their 3G services:
Imagine Air Asia and Celcom will package a 3G / mobile phone offer to incoming travelers so that they can query about information / locations-directions, blog, email or IM with their friends and family back home. As a fellow traveller, I have a need to constantly look for an internet cafe and check my email, so I know this will be something really fantastic. And especially now when I am committed to blogging, I would be able to do so all through the mobile phone (Yipee!).
The question then becomes, would someone with existing an 3G service plan on their home phone be interested to take up the offer. I think there would be a good segment who would, especially IF 3G rates could be cheaper here than in their home country and a free or rented 3G phone could be packaged together. Furthermore, most of the younger travellers / backpackers who come to this region don't really have or carry their mobile phones with them.
Of course there are other things that needs to be considered and one of them could very well be if Air Asia want to brand the service them through Celcom's backend support. It's not difficult to see that Tony is trying to emulate Richard Branson's way of doing business when he's trying to set up Tune Money, a no frills financial service provider through partnership with a local bank.
Here's the old blog post:
Celcom launched their "co-branded" pre-paid starter pack with AirAsia. Hey, since you're going to be priced as the cheapest pre-paid starter pack in the market, why not partner with AirAsia who offers the cheapest airfare? Birds of the same feather flock together. Position yourself with brands who are leaders in their catagory, and its values could be passed on to you.
Competition in the pre-paid market is getting tougher all the time. All 3 brands' start kits are below RM10 and the difference in price between them is about RM1, which is a very negligible sum, but tentamous in terms of perceived leadership. Locking out competitors on AirAsia flights is an interesting proposition but the real advantage of the tie-up to secure distribution rights in flight. How important this channel is still needs to be evaluated.
Strategically, Celcom, seeks to tap into the incoming tourist market which was previously overlooked. The acquisition of new customers can be split into 2 basic catagories; locals travelling on AirAsia and incoming foreign tourists. I am unsure how big the virgin non-mobile users segment is in the first segment, or if inflight situations can covert users of competitor brands to Celcom. The second group is more interesting because they are not likely to be subscribed to a local service provider but they could be using their existing service provider's roaming services, sure it's more expensive but unless you're expecting to be in touch by your friends back home and/or have lots of Malaysian friends to call, perhaps it make sense to get a starter pack. It also makes sense to get a local line if it costs less to call home with a Malaysian line. Like what Shazalli says, it's a campaign to gauge these things. It takes a brave leader to try these things, and for that it's worth applauding.
Here's something fun:
How typical and corny can marketing/PR/corp comm people be coming up with a quote like this: "This is a prepaid mobile offer that allows everyone to start using a mobile phone. The introduction of this starter pack is also in line with AirAsia's strategy of enabling more people to fly. Now everyone can fly and chat!"
