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by Kim Penstone While rumours of consolidation in the mobile and telecoms sector continue to circulate, Cell C marketing director Dr Doug Mattheus is determined to sell Cell C to South Africans — not the competition.

Challenger brand

Cell C is the epitome of a challenger brand, courageously fighting mobile giants Vodacom and MTN for a slice of the lucrative local mobile pie. Between the two, Vodacom and MTN boast an 83% market share, leaving Cell C with a humble 17%.

Even Cell C CEO Alan Knott-Craig admitted, at the time of taking on the chief executive role, that it is virtually impossible for smaller players to compete on the current playing field, stating that the company needs between 20 and 25% marketshare in order to be competitive — and profitable.

It’s not impossible. Currently, Cell C has over 14 million customers, an increase from the 11.7 million that it announced in July last year, which itself is an increase from 9.4 million in 2012, and 8.2 million in 2011.  In marketshare terms, this represents an increase from 13.2% in 2011 to the current high of 17%.

To a large extent, this growth is the result of the price war that Cell C brought to the mobile market in 2012, when it slashed prepaid call rates to 99c per minute. But even Knott-Craig has famously stated that “price is not a strategy”, so where to from here?

Dr Doug Mattheus, executive head of marketing at Cell C, is the man charged with selling Cell C to South Africans. His view is simple: what you need to sell a cellular brand is CBD — coverage, brand and distribution.

Coverage

“One of the biggest challenges we face at Cell C is not coverage itself, but consumer perception of our coverage,” says Mattheus, who explains that South Africans tend to think that Cell C still piggybacks off the Vodacom network, as it did at launch.

That was a long time ago and the company now has its own network, with over 4000 cellular stations, offering coverage to 97% of the population.

“We have the coverage; our challenge is prove to consumers that what we offer is the same as that offered by Vodacom or MTN — no better, no worse,” he says.

This is a big brand challenge that requires the creation of big brand power and, as such, will be tackled with big brand visibility — the likes of the Sharks and Miss South Africa sponsorships. In typical Cell C style, however, these sponsorships will go much deeper than the traditional headline and logo, rather encouraging the personalities in each arena to use the Cell C network in their everyday lives to create the perception that “if it’s good enough for me, it’s good enough for you”.

Brand

Another challenge that the company faces is one of brand perception. Mattheus has a two-pronged approach to this challenge: external and internal.

Externally, the Cell C brand has nailed its colours to the mast of simplicity.

“You shouldn’t have to have a Masters degree to work out what you’re paying to make a call,” says Mattheus. “With Cell C, it’s simple: 99c per minute, all the time, any network, any time of day.  And all calls are charged per second, so you don’t pay for the seconds you don’t use.”

How much do people pay on the other networks?

“That’s the question we’re asking. Does the average mobile user know how much he or she pays per minute? Probably not,” says Mattheus, “It’s very difficult to work out the cost per call with the other service providers; there’s a lot of smoke and mirrors…”

This was the basis for the newsroom-style campaign that Cell C launched in early 2013, encouraging South Africans to find out how much they are paying per minute, and change to Cell C. Cell C intends to build upon this in 2014, focusing on educating South Africans about how much they are paying with their current mobile service provider versus how much they could be paying with Cell C.

Internally, Cell C is focused on selling Cell C to its staff.

“Ultimately, the people who sell Cell C are the people who work for Cell C. These people are our moment of truth,” says Mattheus.

‘It’s ironic that South Africans are beginning to believe in Cell C, but our own staff still view the brand as the third rung on the ladder,” he says, relaying one of Knott-Craig’s recent addresses to Cell C staff, where he listed all of the areas in which Cell C is first in order to encourage Cell C employees to raise their own opinion of the company.

In order to help foster a sense of pride from within, Mattheus and his marketing department initiated a series of activations as part of the brand’s ‘Believe’ campaign that saw Cell C employees perform thousands of ‘random acts of kindness’ across the country, such as paying for people’s parking at shopping malls, offering passengers on the Gautrain free tickets, and donating free airtime to paramedics.

“These small acts have a big impact on the recipients, and often a bigger impact on those who are enabled to give, instilling a sense of pride in employees and turning them into brand advocates,” says Mattheus.

Distribution

The third and final spoke in Mattheus’ marketing wheel is distribution. On this front, Cell C is placing increased emphasis on building and maintaining relationships with its retail partners.

“Sales through PEP account for 25% of sales in any given month,” says Mattheus. “We have to ensure that we have the best possible relationships with our retail partners, that we provide them with the best service, and the best sales tools, so that they are in the best position to sell Cell C to their customers.

This is one of the reasons Cell C recently brought Draftfcb into the fold, dropping longtime partner Ogilvy Johannesburg in favour of an agency that, according to Mattheus, “has more retail experience”.

Cell C has also just opened a massive walk-in customer service centre at its new premises in Buccleuch, Johannesburg. This centre ultimately gives the brand more control over the service that it offers, as it can ensure that the people working here are not only educated about Cell C offers but also competitor rates; the same cannot always be said of independent retail operators and their employees.

Together, these individual strategies all form part of the greater plan to position Cell C as the cellular company that is trying to make life a little better for all South Africans, whether that’s demonstrated by paying for someone’s parking or providing consumers with the best value for money on the market.

“What we’re trying to show South Africans is that we are all in this together. We know times are tight; as one of the smaller players in the market, we’re used to stretching our budget. We want to show consumers that it’s not about how much you have, but how you use it,” says Mattheus.

The timing couldn’t be better.

Kim Penstone is a freelance writer, specialising in the fields of marketing, media and advertising. She is also a contributing writer to MarkLives.

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