Cell C's 4Gs ASA appeal confirmed

Saw this in Newtown on the evening of the 3rd (though the photo was taken earlier that afternoon).

4Gs_ad.jpg


Anyone in/around Newtown that can confirm whether this is still up? Just across from the The Forum on Ntemi Pilliso street.

Also: http://cellc.co.za/internet/4Gs
 
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MTN and Vodacom can eat my shhh......
 
I wish Cell C would put as much energy into rolling out Gauteng (and replying to my Speedstick pre-order) as they spend on this pointless exercise! (IMHO of course)
 
Grim147 said:
who cares what its called
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As someone else pointed out here somewhere - 4G is a technical term describing a network infrastructure that Cell C do not posess. It would be like other ISP's offering 386kbps internet and calling it broadba - oh, forget that :o
 
I love Cell C's tactics. Brilliant. Here is the chain of events

- Cell C changes its logo to the copyright symbol: everybody gets talking about it
- Cell C reveals Trevor to the world, as the new CEO
- Cell C launches its new 4Gs network
- Vodacom and MTN complain to the ASA about 4g claims
- Cell C calls them corporate bullies, and vows to fight back
- Cell C then says that they will comply
- Cell C asks for an extension, and gets it
- Cell C then appeals the ruling

The amount of media attention and debate by ordinary citizens that all this has generated, is worth way more than Cell C's entire advertising budget for the year. Whoever is running their marketing department (in close co-ordination with the legal departement) know exactly what they are doing. Brilliant.

MTN, Vodacom: Boohoohooo to you. Kiss my ass. Go suck a rotten egg. As soon as all my contracts expire, I'm switching over to Cell C. Now I have every reason to support them.

First Cell C throws mud in your face, then MWEB kicks you in the nuts. Exciting times! Just love it!
 
Lol, Cell C needs to give it up. They should not be allowed to use 4G terms because their service is NOT 4G! It's really that simple.

I like them and all but this is getting annoying...they are literally fighting to lie to us, like LITERALLY.
 
evilstebunny said:
But they're not advertising 4G anymore - it's 4Gs .. ?
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Yeah, that what I don't get.
What if they ended up callibg ForGs?

What then? The fact remain that 4Gs does not equal 4G, would 4Gabc also not be allowed?
It's like saying a 8800GT and 8800GTS is exactly the same card.
 
The trick is to know when to fold. CellC hasn't learned that one yet apparently.
 
HideInLight said:
It's like saying a 8800GT and 8800GTS is exactly the same card.
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Except in Cell C's case, they made a 8800GTS card but called it a 9800GT as they believe it's better than other card makers' 8800's.
 
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I can only shake my head in astonishment, it almost sounds like CellC has fallen in love with its "4GS" and cannot let go.

@Lars, at MBB's conference your presentation and delivery were great, so I'm not trying to insult you or CellC with this suggestion, which is to add a little bit of whitespace, if you really cannot let go of "4GS", then just make it "4 G S", or even "4 gr8 S" - the important thing is the separation of the G from the 4.

Just don't advertise "4 gr8 S" in the classifieds section of newspapers.
 
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I think the whole thing here is CellC getting itself painted as the innovative good company who is both law abiding and prepared to fight the bullies.

CellC spent a lot of money in building a "next generation" wireless data service and decided to brand this as 4Gs. The name of the brand is less relevant to its success than its overall value in terms of speed and price. There competitors take issue with the name - but not with the actual product: neither VC nor MTN have actually critically responded to CellC's new offerings - using big bad corporate clout to go to the ASA to challenge CellC's new awesome products name. CellC paints (rightly so) this move as being driven by the competitors jealousy and uncompetitiveness. Unsurprisingly the ASA finds against CellC and CellC is able to rightly paint their competitors as bullies. It starts the appeal process and vows to challeng corporate bullies, but because CellC is a good corporate citizen it obeys the ASA ruling and rolls out its already prepared adverts without the offending 4Gs name. Of course it isn't able to comply with the billboard requirement and with great respect and deference to the ASA seeks an extension on the timeframe giving their competitors a chance to portray themselves as petty corporate bullies. After finishing complying with the ASA ruling CellC moves ahead with its appeal where they can gain maximum coverage and publicity as a good citizen fighting corporate bullies. If CellC succeeds in the appeal it can launch its next advert campaign and its competitors are in a conundrum: if they approach the courts they can easily be painted as corporate bullies; if they leave CellC with success then their petty little corporate egos are so bruised it will take a couple of months before they think straight. CellC loosing at the ASA however doesn't harm them to approach the courts because they are still the good guys fighting corporate bullies; or they can fold having gained tons of exposure.
 
Oh, come on CellC, just drop this issue and move on. Come up with something else...
This is seriously getting boring now.
 
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