The document summarizes a marketing campaign by Etisalat in the UAE called the #EtisalatChallenge that backfired and resulted in significant negative customer feedback online. The campaign began with teasers featuring celebrities but provided no information about what the challenge entailed. When Etisalat revealed that the challenge was to find a better mobile tariff, customers criticized Etisalat for not addressing service issues. Negative articles about the campaign were reportedly removed from news sites, fueling more criticism. The document analyzes customer sentiment and provides verbatim comments reflecting their disappointment.

1. #EtisalatChaLLenge Case Study
May 2015Digital BOOm adigitalbOOm.com
Dubai - UAE
A chaLLenge Etisalat was not up to
1

2. #EtisalatChallenge
2

3. Etisalat UAE launched a new campaign chaLLenging its
customers to find a mobile tariFF in the UAE that Etisalat
can’t match or beat.
3
overview

4. The campaign resulted in a crisis online,
also refeRRed to as a #Fail campaign
4
overview

5. 750
1500
2250
3000
1/5 2/5 3/5 4/5 4/5 5/5 6/5 7/5 8/5 9/5 10/5 11/5 12/5 13/5 14/5 15/5 16/5 17/5 18/5 19/5
- What’s the challenge?
- Fans cheering for their
celebrities
- Criticism of Etisalat
- Revealer fueled the heat
- du posts
Blog posts about
the campaign fail
spread on twitter
TVC
Release
Censorship
scandal
TVC provoked
customers to
negatively
re-engage
BUZZ
+15K
overall - buzz trend
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6. teaser
revealer
in the news
conclusion
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7. Teaser campaign
May 2 to 5
Etisalat released an integrated teaser campaign
supported heavily by large media spend.
The campaign featured six international celebrities.
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8. 8
digital, social media, outdoor, print, radio

9. Social media Influencers joined the campaign by
posting branded photos & videos promoting the
“chaLLenge”
#EtisalatChaLLenge
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10. 10
over 30 influencers

11. remember this
UAE Influencers
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12. What aDDed to the negativity is the
authenticity of the influencers, taking into
consideration that many of them were du*
influencers.
*: du being the second and only telecom operator in the UAE, i.e. the only competitor of Etisalat.
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13. Influencers worked with du months ago
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14. remember this
Influencers worked with du months ago
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15. Influencers worked with du months ago
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16. 200
400
600
800
1/5 2/5 3/5 4/5
- Wondering what’s the challenge about
- Fans cheering for their celebrities
- Criticism of Etisalat
Negative buzz
Negative buzz
teaser buzz trend
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17. The teaser campaign started off as
being positive as people assumed the
“challenge” was of a different kind.
It didn’t take long though for people to
turn that positivity into utter negativity.
5%
10%
85%
Negative Neutral Positive
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sentiment analysis

18. The negative fEEdback comprised of:
• Criticism of Etisalat for paying huge sums of money for
celebrities instead of fixing and improving their services
• Angry customers challenged Etisalat to come up with better
products, mainly data plans (they find it to be among the most
expensive and unreliable in the region)
• Customers challenged Etisalat to fix the unstable ADSL service,
train the call center agents, improve the billing system, etc
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detailed sentiment analysis

19. Verbatim
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20. Verbatim
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21. Verbatim
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22. Verbatim
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23. Verbatim
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24. Etisalat chose to completely disregard customers’
feedback and launched its revealer campaign.
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25. Teasing customers for 3 days
with international celebrities and
online influencers, which has set
high expectations for customers
including the angry ones.
Obviously the campaign has
nothing to do with high
expectations, it says nothing
about customers.
It’s all about how Etisalat is rich
and great. 25
the revealer - may 5

26. 26
tv, radio, outdoor, print, social media and digital

27. TVC
click to play
27

28. 750
1500
2250
3000
4/5 5/5 6/5 7/5 8/5 9/5 10/5 11/5 12/5 13/5 14/5 15/5 16/5 17/5 18/5 19/5
- Revealer fueled the heat
- du posts
Blog posts about
the campaign fail
on twitter
Etisalat
released
TVC
Censorship
scandal
TVC provoked
customers to
negatively
re-engage
revealer buzz trend
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29. Etisalat revealed the campaign challenge,
which fueled negativity on twitter. Online
publishers reported the backfire, but next
day they pulled out their articles, which
triggered people’s anger again.
Few days later, Etisalat released their TVC!
5%
95%
Negative Neutral Positive
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revealer sentiment analysis

30. • The campaign revealer was disappointing, which fueled more negativity
• Angry customers challenged Etisalat to fix the network, billing system,
offer reliable services, and revisit their super expensive prices.
• Alleged censorship: negative articles about Etisalat campaign
disappeared from different online portals
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revealer sentiment analysis

31. Verbatim
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32. du’s reply
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33. du’s reply
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34. Verbatim
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35. Verbatim
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36. Verbatim
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37. Verbatim
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38. Verbatim
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39. Verbatim
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40. Verbatim
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41. Verbatim
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42. Verbatim
42

43. Verbatim
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44. Verbatim
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45. Verbatim
45

46. Verbatim
46

47. Verbatim
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48. 48
in the news

49. Three top UAE publishers wrote about the
campaign’s failure. The negative articles were
pulled from their websites in few hours.
49
censorship scandal

50. full article:
http://bit.ly/1Au63Te
50
the national’s article has been copied to reddit

51. https://twitter.com/thenationaluae/status/597379695865364480
51
the national’s tweet still online [to-date]

52. Link: http://bit.ly/1cjiHsg
Link: http://bit.ly/1KAbTFH
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feedback

53. verbatim
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54. Post link: http://bit.ly/1KzmwIV
54
an open letter to etisalat by
khalid al ameri

55. link: http://bit.ly/1FV0Nbm
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alex of arabia blog post

56. • FREE PUBLICITY: I am a long term customer of Etisalat but this advertisement prompted me to look at an
alternate service provider offering. So du got free PUBLICITY.
• TRY OUT: Just to test out services I purchased a plan from du – a lost sale to Etisalat.
• COMPETITIVE BRAND RECALL: Effectively loyal customers were reminded that there is an option available
in the market.
• MONEY NOT WELL SPENT: : I did not see extra credibility with Etisalat advertisement plan after looking at
celebrity endorsement. But snap decision while driving was a state of confusion.
• NO TIME: People are being bombarded with so much information – then where is the time to compare tariffs?
• CONFUSION: The caption “For the first time in UAE” – is confusing – does this refer to Mobile tariffs or
celebrity endorsement?
• WEB TRAFFIC: Etisalat web traffic may have increased but so do du traffic too.
•CLUTTERED WEB SITE: When I logged onto Etisalat CHALLENGE web site the subsequent maneuvering
was quite confusing. Etisalat should have focused on few key plans and demographics.
Full post: http://linkd.in/1J5UJh3
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8 key points by vinod mehra

57. Etisalat Challenge campaign is a strong lesson to Etisalat’s Marketing, PR,
Social Media and even the executive team, hence, we would like to highlight
some key points:
• The campaign generated 15K negative comments – Your
customers are angry, what are you doing next to satisfy them?
• Etisalat lost face after people won the challenge, as Etisalat
didn’t reply any of their challenges. Again what’s next v. soon?
Conclusion
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58. • Social media team had to reply every single tweet/
comment on the hashtag, to take control (Re-consider
your social media tactics to win)
• Neutral comments asking for the campaign purpose
and still don’t get it
Conclusion
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59. •Paying social media influencers didn’t help the
campaign, they’re not your brand ambassadors, they’re
people who have popularity and high number of
followers, nothing more
•Lack of preparations, as Etisalat doesn’t have the best
tariffs in the market
Conclusion
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60. • Marketing team had to review customers’ negative
feedback before launching the campaign, it was obvious
that it will backfire as the campaign has nothing to do with
customers’ expectations
• PR team involvement was completely wrong, they caused
a brand damage for Etisalat and the online newspapers
Conclusion
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61. digital boom
adigitalboom.com
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