Fly away with Du Telecom

How Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company (EITC), commercially branded as du Telecom, sucessfully grew their customer base by incentivising the take up of post-paid mobile phone plans with free flights. A case study by sales promotion specialists Inspire.

Client Profile

Du Telecom is one of the two telecom operators in the United Arab Emirates (the other one being Etisalat) and offers fixed line, mobile telephony, internet and digital television services.
Du’s official name is Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company (EITC). It was commercially branded as du in February 2007.
The company launched mobile telecommunication services in February 2007 across the UAE and it reported its 2008 full year results in February, revealing it had added 1.88 million mobile customers over the 12 months. Revenue of $1.08bn was 157% up on the previous year.

Objective

Increasing the take-up rate of du’s post-paid smart plans.

Strategy

We created a Free Flight campaign tailored to du Telecom’s specific needs: customers sign up for a post-paid smart plan in one of du’s branches or online and receive a free flight voucher that can be redeemed through the campaign website: from either Abu-Dhabi, Dubai or Sharjah customers can fly to up 23 destinations across Europe and the Middle East.

Destinations

Departures

Communication

“Subscribe to a smartplan and get a free flight.”

Campaign Mechanics and Incentive Redemption

Marketing Collateral

Du Telecom created a variety of marketing collateral to promote the campaign online and offline. But du did not stop at banners and POS print promotion. Du Telecom orchestrated an impressive flash mob including 150 dancers at the Mall of the Emirates – one of the top five shopping malls in Dubai (as recognised by Forbes). The brand illustrated how to effectively utilise the element of surprise paired with the power of viral video.