Future Group seeks creative partner for T24 mobile

The GSM mobile service has been launched jointly by the Future Group and Tata Docomo.

The Future Group is looking for a creative partner for its T24 mobile service. T24 is the GSM mobile service that was launched jointly by the Future Group and Tata Teleservices (now Tata Docomo) in 2010. The alliance is a unique marketing concept of a retailer-telecom partnership, which offers innovative value propositions to both Future Group customers and telecom customers in India with its 'Shop More, Talk More' and 'Talk More, Shop More' offering.

For the T24 brand, the company is already in talks with a few advertising agencies that it has worked with in the past. The approximate media spends for this financial year is expected to be around Rs 15 crore.

Confirming the news to afaqs!, Sandip Tarkas, chief executive officer, Future Media and CEO (chief executive officer), Future Telecom, says that the company saw a big opportunity as everyone today has a mobile phone. "This offering with a telecom service provider is like a seamless loyalty programme," he adds.

With this service, customers can recharge their T24 mobiles at Future Group outlets or any Tata Docomo recharge point.

The service also has additional benefits linked to shopping at Future Group stores, such as free talk time. On shopping at Future Group stores, a subscriber is entitled to a free slip at the bill counter. Depending on the value of the purchase, the value of free airtime will be printed on the promo slip. The customer needs to handover the promo slip to the T24 mobile executive at the 'recharge desk' placed just after the bill counter to load the free airtime on the respective SIM card.

Drawing a similarity with the miles programme offered by airlines, Tarkas says, "Instead of miles, with T24, you can acquire a particular amount of talk time, depending on the amount of purchase that you make."

Dhar & Hoon, which the Future Group acquired in 2009, was working on the creative for brand T24. The creative duties for the agency included in-store advertising and some radio advertising.

Now, the company wants to look beyond and probably explore print advertising as well.

Tarkas says that TV could be a possibility once a particular size of subscriber base is reached, possibly by this year. "Until now, we have attempted to convert our regular customers to use this service. For a brand like Big Bazaar, with many loyal customers, we simply needed to convert them to this service."