“We have fallen off the saddle. We’ll climb back and ride on
it but it will take a while. This year will be tough.” These were the
frustrating words that our beloved chair Manny V. Pangilinan reluctantly
uttered during the 2nd quarter report to the media.
The post-Charles A. Lim era created a positive perception
within the organization that the newly appointed head of the wireless consumer
business, Ariel Fermin, would lead us to recovery. We all knew that the task at
hand is not a walk in the park.
This blog was silent for a while because we wanted to give
our new boss the benefit of the doubt.
We needed to support him like how we embraced Noel Lorenzana and Charles
Lim when they first took over.
But a few months after the announcement of the much
anticipated leadership revamp, it seems that, still, nothing has changed in the
wireless business. We have become very aggressive in terms of marketing
visibility. However, there are no game-changing and innovative marketing
programs in sight that would catapult us back to leadership or back to that
“saddle”. Aggressive marketing campaigns won’t get us the much needed numbers,
as seen in the 1st half of the year.
We strongly believe that we will never recover due to the
following reasons:
1) Bad Eggs. The
company continues to undergo organizational change. Many have been offered
their lucrative walking papers but many of the bad eggs are still very much in
charge. If MVP wants change, he needs a massive change of leadership team.
There are rumors that Poly is about to retire but it’s not just him or the
people that they kicked out. The existing leadership team members who are
traditional telco professionals are the ones pulling us down because of their
old school strategic mindset disguised as innovation. These people will always
implement old school approaches.
2) Old Dogs Can
Never Learn New Tricks. MVP said that the company is preparing to adapt to
evolving telco landscape. How can this become a reality if the two prong
strategy of the new leadership is basically “Bash the competitor with a
different brand (Sun) while the flagship brand (Smart) is copying what the
competitor is doing.”
Let me give you an example. When Joel Lumanlan launched the
brand refresh for Sun Cellular, many were hopeful that this would be the game
changer to jumpstart the momentum in the postpaid segment. Apparently, the
brand refresh was nothing more than changing the brand tagline and offering the
same value proposition that Charles Lim started in 2006. The competitor has
been selling a lifestyle and no longer postpaid plans. But wait there is more.
The advertising materials bashed Globe (probably because the tagline Choose
Better is designed to show that competitor is inferior). We already did that
attack-the-competitor-strategy when we launched “Live More” during the time of
Noel.
We even spend advertising monies to do this bashing thing.
Check this out
http://rodmagaru.com/2015/08/18/madonna-rebel-hear-manila-concert-brand-defamation-responsible-journalism/
Then while we are wasting A&P budget to bashing the
competitor, we are copying them with our Smart Life brand repositioning
offering basically what they have right now such as Free Instagram, Iflix,
BigBytes, among others. There is nothing wrong here but if we want to be on top
again, we need to change the game and not play the game of our competitor.
3) Revenue vs.
Subscriber Base. I was one of those laughing when Globe announced that they are
number 1 based on revenue early this year. But after hearing MVP say that we
have fallen off the saddle and have declined company performance, I am now
having second thoughts on the measurement of leadership. We still have the
higher the subscriber base against Globe but they have the higher revenue. It’s only a couple of months before 2015
ends, I just hope the number of subscribers we have now can give us the amount
bonus we used to have when we were still on top.
We have indeed fallen of the saddle.
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