Vodafone promotes $400,000 charity initiative
Beleaguered telco brand Vodafone has launched a heartstring-tugging promotion to fund five Australians to work for the charity of their choice as it seeks to move on from a PR pummeling over mobile network problems and privacy breaches.
The Vodafone World Of Difference campaign is now in its eighth year. 2011 will see it fund up to five $60,000 salaries along with $20,000 of expenses.
Consumers who put themselves forward to work for their favourite charity will be put up for a public vote, with a winner selected in April.
Vodafone’s ad agency is Sydney-based Host.
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This is a finalist at the Ironic advertising awards in Miami at the moment.
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fix your network first Vodafone
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All Telco’s need to put more time and energy into their service instead of their advertising. Agencies put so much effort into doing all sorts of amazing campaigns for them yet they can’t deliver to the consumer. Stupid.
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Agreed – please consider making a ‘world of difference’ to your network and services before even thinking about putting your brand back on TV.
Oh, and occasional communication with your customers would be useful.
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Great idea, but hardly going to turn around the brands image, let’s hope none of the winners end up working for a charity in Sydney’s Walsh Bay where Vodafone coverage seems non existent
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I’m guessing the $20,000 worth of expenses is to cover Telstra fees so that they have working mobiles.
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Is there a charity called “People who can get Vodafone reception in one room of their house but not others”? If so, I’m in !
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Should’ve made it 4 people at $100K. $60K isn’t that great, bit too thin.
Really nice idea though…but maybe spend that $400K refunding unhappy customers for last month?
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As a Vodafone customer who has been struggling to get service on the 2G network and nothing on the 3G network for over 2 months, this pisses me off. Really pisses me off. How about you spend some money fixing your friggin network and not on unnecessary PR tricks.
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As a recent Vodafone customer, all I have to say is that Vodafone are dicks, and someone should shoot Lara, the computer generated customer service representative. (unintelligent comment – I know).
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Wouldnt they be better off investing this money into thier own company and employing people in a call centre who can actually ANSWER the phone and deal with customer issues rather than having over 40min wait times for calls to 1555?
This is just another example of vodaFAIL sticking their heads in the sand and refusing to address the real issues of their company.
Nigel Dews has to be going down as the most incompetant CEO in Australia at the moment.
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In fairness to them, they have done this globally for years, it’s a good initiative and works well with their ‘power to you’ tagline at the moment.
The only thing is that personally I don’t think this quite explains as much as it should – and it seems to intimate that only office workers are worthy of applying, which actually isn’t the case.
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Imagine winning and then trying to work with the charity
“sorry little Johnny, i’m trying to sort out your chemoterapy but Vodafone won’t answer the customer service line – hang on, the line dropped out again 🙁
Terrible
“Tim, from accounts? He did what?! How many children died?!”
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The basic tenet of any brand is to be able to deliver on its product and service promises to its customers.
Vodafone have failed epically.
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complete failure. it just annoys me… is this meant to make me forget the crappy network performance ? Am I meant to think Vodafone is a ‘good corporate citizen’ because of this?
I like the overall idea and more corporates could do this but their timing is terrible. It just LOOKS like an attempt to make people think what a great company they are.
Very poor marketing effort. Given the performance of the network, perhaps this is a trend indicator that Vodafone needs to hire some smarter, more effective people/
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The best thing about Vodafone – finally getting through to customer service after 40 mins on hold and promptly being disconnected because the network dropped out. Made for a nice segue when I eventually got through again.
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Like the idea or not, their timing demonstrates an appalling lack of commonsense.
They’ll only spend all this money to make people hate them more.
Beggars belief really.
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Yes….proving VODAFONE are completely out of touch with their customer base, who are merely after a decent network, customer service and honesty.
Three things that seem beyond VF ATM.
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Voda are between a rock and a hard place with this one. They don’t run it and potentially 6 charities lose out. Just because a company is having operational issues shouldn’t give it an excuse to withdraw from its commitments to be a social responsible corporate citizen.
However it could use the near wall to wall advertising they’ve continued to do throughout the crisis and make a ‘were sorry but were working on it’ ad?
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I walked out of gym last night to no reception on my phone at all. 2 k’s form the Melbourne CBD.
And now they’re creating p** weak marketing campaign’s in an attempt to rebuild their image.
Tell your story walking VF. You’re an absolute disgrace. I feel embarresed to say that I’m a Vodafone as a customer. I wonder how Host feels to say their a Vodafone supplier?
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Could they redirect the expense spent on advertising to putting up more transmission towers? The number of blackspots I encounter of my Vodafone network seems to be increasing all the time….I am so close to leaving them completely and going (can’t believe I’m saying this) to Telstra, whose record of customer service is hardly outstanding.
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What a great example of what’s wrong with humankind. Your phone doesn’t work- fair enough, but to say money should not be invested in supporting charities- charities that will in your lifetime, provide much needed help to someone in your family a friend, or even yourself- is a scary revelation.
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SarahQ, I don’t think anyone is saying VF shouldn’t support charities – it is the extremely poor timing that has raised everyone’s hackles. I say to VF, fix your reception problems AND make the donation on top of that.
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Vodafone, you are costing me business and quality of life and you think this is the best way to spend some money? If you were on fire I wouldn’t let my dog piss on you at the moment. You might moderate this but I hope you don’t – this is how bad their service is – EVERY call over 3 minutes drops out at some stage, and I can’t make a call when I need to to save my life. 3G? I could carrier pigeon faster than email on their sticky tape network.
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Aside from all the network whinging, I think the ad works well.
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Yeah fix my coverage, these no good, johnny come lately charities can wait in line.
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Simon, totally agree with you. Lara definitely needs to go.
Vodafone is essentially a communications company and it just seems ironic that communicating the right message to their customer base (and potential customers) is their weakest attribute.
Unfortunately, despite this campaign having been run for some time now really does hit a nerve with their thousands of dissatisfied customers. In addition to bringing their network up to an acceptable standard as John Grono suggested maybe this $400k should be channeled to assist in the rebuilding of Queensland’s infrastructure (with measured and demonstrable success to prove to us that they’re actually doing something).
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SarahQ – I see your point, but while I think the charity idea is brilliant and should be supported, there are far less expensive ways of promoting a charity initiative than making an extremely expensive on-air commrecial.
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I tried to organise our charitable #QLDFloods fundraiser with dropouts, non-connections and zero coverage thanks to Vodafone, resorting at one point to stealing wireless access.
400K should at least buy a couple more towers, if not boosters for the existing bases.
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Clean up your network issues first! If you don’t, you won’t have any customers left and you won’t be able to run these promotions anymore!
As a recent Vodafone customer I am thrilled to have finally gotten out of my contract without penalty. Here’s how for anybody still suffering.
1. Call Customer Care (in Mumbai)
2. Tell them you’re calling to make a complaint about the coverage issues you are experiencing. If they want to go through a ‘troubleshooting exercise’ with you, tell them not to waste the time as where you are currently (at work, in a city), you have minimal issues. That get’s you out of going through their ineffective ‘troubleshooting exercise’.
3. Ask to speak to ‘Connections’. They seem to have all the power.
4. Tell them you have coverage issues. You get call drop outs, delayed sms’s and little/no internet coverage DESPITE PAYING FOR THE SERVICE. Ie: You are not getting what you pay for.
5. Tell them that the next call you will make will be to the Australian Telco Industry Ombudsman to lodge a formal complaint. The TIO will then issue a ruling to get you out of your contract without penalty. Tell Vodafone that you are giving them the opportunity to do the right thing before having to lodge a formal complaint.
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If you offer a great product and awesome customer service you will build a good brand…
I was with Telstra and moved to Vodafone purely based on price. A month later I went back to Telstra and cancelled my Vodafone contract. My network connections with Vodafone for phone and 3g were awful.
I do not particular like Telstra as a brand, however they are growing on me because my connections with them have been faultless.
Vodafone – you can throw all of your cash at big campaigns, however I would advise you to invest in your network, get it sorted, offer the same connections as Telstra, sort out your customer service and then watch your sales spike 🙂
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Hi – we appreciate everyone’s feedback and comments. Rest assured, improving our network is our highest priority, but at the same time we’re continuing our commitments as part of our community programs. World of Difference has been running for the past 8 years and provides an important way to support charities who need extra resource but don’t have the funding. Our support of these community programs is a totally separate funding initiative that sits outside our capital investment in the network.
Cheers,
Chris
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“Our support of these community programs is a totally separate funding initiative that sits outside our capital investment in the network.”
Since when do Vodafone invest in their network? Surely that’s a typo.
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@Chris.
That is very nice of you Chris and nobody can complain about this positive impact that Vodafone must create as a result of your charitable efforts.
Now, onto the network and shoddy customer service issues:
Do you have a date when you think your network will be working as well as Telstra’s?
Do you plan on being able to offer a decent level of customer service?
Once the two area’s are fixed I am sure that your revenues will ramp.
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The way Vodafone has dealt with their network problems is a disgrace. Their customer service people obviously have not been well briefed and they (or management) do not know what ‘service’ is. Everytime I see or hear the name Vodafone, I feel angry, so I am not interested in anything Vodafone does until it fixes its call dropouts and data problems. I hope all Vodafone customers take the trouble to put their complaints to Vodafone in writing and contact the ombudsman when they don’t get a satisfactory response.
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This thread shows that when it comes to offering communications in this technical smart phone day and age, it doesn’t matter how much money you throw at branding if you can’t offer the customer a decent level of service (product and customer.)
I have watched the cricket all summer and Vodafone has been plastered all over it and I will not move to Vodafone. (Admittedly their product is good in the UK.)
Why is it so poor in Oz? Telstra dirty tricks?
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http://www.vodafail.com/
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