BT To Spend £1m A Day Promoting Broadband
BT is launching a £10 million TV advertising campaign over a 10-day period in a bid to double the weekly take-up of its broadband internet service.
The campaign, called ‘Possibilities’, will run across terrestrial, cable and satellite channels from next Sunday as key part of BT’s drive to achieve 1 million ADSL broadband connections by summer 2003. The promotion, which is BT’s most intensive yet, will also include a specially created online game, expected to involve six million people over a three-day period.
Commenting on the initiative, BT Retail’s CEO, Pier Danon, said: “Our intensive TV campaign is further evidence that broadband is clearly at the top of our agenda. The sheer scale of what we are doing should leave no one in doubt of the seriousness of our intent to be the flag-bearer of the Government’s drive to make broadband Britain a reality.”
The ‘Possibilities’ campaign precedes a separate £23 million push to promote BT’s new high-speed BT Broadband service, which will formally launch at the beginning of October. The telecoms company has secured Carphone Warehouse as the first high-street partner to sell the product, a deal which is intended to help BT reach its target of half a million BT broadband connections by next summer.
Angus Porter, managing director of BT Retail’s consumer division, said: “We haven’t done a scrap of advertising for BT Broadband, but the number of customers already signing up gives us solid confidence that we will reach the target we have set for next year.”
BT, which has vowed to put broadband at the heart of its business, has launched a number of initiatives to promote up-take. In March BT Openworld launched a multimillion pound integrated marketing campaign on the back of its Plug & Go broadband product (see BT Openworld To Promote Broadband Uptake) and more recently it began trials of a new satellite delivery service for high-speed internet access (see BT To Trial Internet By Satellite).
Internet service provider Freeserve recently accused BT of pursuing an “orchestrated campaign of anti-competitive behaviour” in an attempt to dominate the market for high-speed internet access and called for Oftel to launch an “urgent” investigation into the company (see Freeserve Calls On Oftel To Investigate BT).
BT: 0207 469 2337 www.bt.com
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