Aug 30, 2006 10:50 PM
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Many of you must have seen the television commercials for Rediffmail that ran quite extensively in recent months. In the TVC, two competitors were shown downloading mail... one was Rediffmail while the other was a thinly disguised Yahoo. The commercial was accompanied by a typical sports commentator's spiel as a voiceover.
My problem with the commercial was one of credibility. While Rediffmail is so-so and I have no specific complaints against it, to compare itself with Yahoo and have pretensions of being faster... really! No one will buy that. Under normal circumstances, I would blame the ad agency, but in this case please remember that Redif is already an ad agency... it's Internet business came much later.
Strategically, it must have made a lot of sense for the top honchos at Rediffmail to target Yahoo since the latter has a sizeable (and growing) user base in India. However, the claim is what makes the spot a total failure in its ability to convince. I too have a Yahoo account, along with a Rediffmail one and a Hotmail one. Let me tell you, if it's speed of download we are talking about, Yahoo beats both the others hands down. If Rediffmail had taken on Hotmail instead, the message could possibly have been more credible.
