Corporates spot branding opportunity in caller tunes

At a time when the use of caller tunes is increasing by the day, corporates have spotted opportunity for internal branding via this facility.

Under this system, the caller tune of all the employees of the company is set as the advertisement jingle of the company, such as 'oye bubbly' for Pepsi. Whenever somebody calls up on cell phones of Pepsi employees, the company's ad jingle is played as the caller tune.

Corporates that do not have any such ad jingle can request the service provider to prepare one for them. Hutch has more than 12 corporate clients that have opted for this service in the state.

Sunil Sood, chief executive officer, Hutch Gujarat, said over phone from Mumbai, "We have 12 corporate clients, including Pepsi, for which Hutch provides the respective company's advertisement jingle as caller tunes. Apart from this, there are automobile companies and car dealers whom Hutch provides corporate caller tunes and company advertisement jingles."

Atul Joshi, chief executive officer, Airtel Gujarat, said, "Airtel is talking with a few domestic and multinational companies which are keen on using the facility. We expect to soon finalise the deals."

However, Joshi did not reveal the names of the companies but said a religious trust with over one lakh national and international members would be provided a religious caller tune.

As far as code division multiple access (CDMA) phones are concerned, at present they do not support caller tunes system.

Airtel's Hello Tunes service is planning to expand by including songs from languages other than English, Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Punjabi and Kannada. Through the web-based content module of this service, users can also deposit, preview and edit songs as per their choice.

Airtel is the first service provider in the country to offer the IN-based ring back tone service. However, last month BPL Mobile was the first service provider to introduce the concept of caller ring back tone facility in the country.

In the game segment, an average of 120,000 mobile games were downloaded every month by Hutch users. This is a phenomenal 50-fold increase from an average of 2,200 games downloads last year. The growth is expected to increase further with increasing penetration of GPRS handsets and applications, claimed Hutch officials.