BayanTel DSL’s ‘Lola Techie’: Great start for online marketing in the Philippines

Watching TV here in the Philippines, I can’t help but notice a new marketing campaign set out by BayanTel for their DSL service. What’s so interesting about it is that they used an old lady to market their service by showing how she interacts on Facebook and plays Counter-Strike. I remember a similar advertisement that was featured a few months back in the UK, where an (104 year old) old lady was said to be using Twitter which was covered by The Telegraph. What I find interesting about this…

… is that the way it was shown to viewers on how easy it is to use the internet. What’s even more interesting is the clever use of the online marketing. They’ve registered ‘LolaTechie.com’ (Lola meaning Grandmother in Tagalog), and used it as the landing page.

Finally a company here in the Philippines have finally seen what a domain name can do for them. They get great SEO, as the landing page is linked to the main website of Bayantel. There’s just one thing that bugs me, which is why they didn’t use the .PH version of the domain name since their service is only available in the Philippines. The cost maybe higher but given that they’re competing with other telecoms, I’m so sure that they won’t just stand there and let BayanTel take all the action, they sure will launch their own campaigns which they might be beaten in SEO.

What I also found interesting is the clever use of Social Media to enhance their campaign further. By uploading their commercials in YouTube and getting 7800 views already. What I found more interesting is that they used Plurk (Similar to Twitter but with a timeline), Twitter, Facebook and Multiply, which are the popular social media to interact with visitors (under the profile Lolatechie). Upon checking their Twitter account, I found LolaTechie to be actively interacting with her 868 followers which not all companies do here.

I’m impressed with BayanTel’s Marketing Campaign and found it very funny. This is exactly what we need right now, a great advert finally showing the simplicity of the internet. I’ve been a Bayantel subscriber for a while now and I’ll continue to be. Congratulations to BayanTel for a great marketing campaign, I hope that you’ll be able to continue this all the way.

Here’s the video of Lolatechie playing counter-strike, I found it so hilarious: