Hutch Tata ya Bharti : Kaun hai baat ka saathi

Hutch has now set new parameters for lovers on a budget .

The 10 Rs ka I love you to be used at the end of the month.

The Rs. 50 wala propose.

What the ad doesnt say is that yeh sab karneka baad you could still burn a bigger hole depending on your girlfriends appetite for talking which unlike oil reserves is not a scarce commodity . Hence if your I love you works you might become a post-paid customer. The thoda Hutch key ad does everything right strategically speaking. The prepaid customer was always fleeced during recharges where the talk time was only 70% of the price paid for the recharge. So giving a full recharge instead of a 'cutting' recharge is total paisa vasool. And Hutch for its prepaid customers makes a significant departure from its upmarket positioning usually associated with it. Instead of the animated boy and girl or the Hutch kutta, you have heartland hero Irfan Khan. Although the ad appear laborious at times, it makes the necessary impact.

Contrast that with the new Tata Indicom ad. Following this ad and finding a Tata Indicom outlet are equal in terms of difficulty level. After the decent 'insaan phone leta hai baat karne ke liye' ad , the brand has committed harakiri by changing the tag line to 'insaan phone leta hai tarakki karne ke liye'. And tarakki means receiving Japaneses guests apparently, and Kajol dons a kimono for the entire ad. But you feel tarakki means becoming chinki since their growth rates are higher( note the 50 chinki extras dancing behind Kajol).Plus there is this long lost brother of Devgan who is unable to receive calls since he doesnt recharge on time ( Tata Indicom offers 2 yrs of incoming without recharge). The whole ad looks like a Bollywood script gone awry, like Tulsi Ramsay trying to make a Manmohan Desai lost and found story with Chinni Prakash as the choreographer. When will Tata Indicom succeed?

Airtel has gone back to its Express yourself campaign. The ad has great Hindi " Dil ki baat batakar to dekho, apni bahe failakar to dekho' but its not evocative as the original that I had mentioned some weeks back. But Airtel continues to maintain a clear lead over Hutch in new subscriber adds.

Surprisingly Reliance the market leader has hardly added a decibel to its marketing ads but is sitting pretty with 14 mn subs. Would be interesting to see what they come up with.