Five months ago, Cell C launch a campaign whereby their subscribers could call for free from Cell C to Cell C on weekends. The marketing for this promotion was intense and many people went out to buy Cell C sim cards and start talking for ‘free’ on the weekends. But is the hype behind this campaign starting to wear thin?

People went out to buy Cell C sim cards but most were not aware of the fine print. One had to recharge their sim card during the week so they could have free calls to Cell C during the weekend. That was fair enough, obviously that way Cell C could make revenue from their subscribers recharging during the week. So one would go ahead, recharge with the smallest Cell C recharge domination of only R5. Cell C then caught on and decided to force subscribers to recharge with a minimum of R10 inorder for them to have free calls on the weekend.

What Cell C did not highlight in the marketing campaign but they disclosed it in the fine print, which people hardly read is that the free calls during the weekend were only for a maximum of 2 hours. With the way they had marketed this campaign one would have thought that you could talk for free unlimitedly during the weekend but subscribers were soon to find their free calls being cut after 2 hours of talking and receiving an SMS saying “You have reached your call limit for the weekend”.

One must commend Cell C for launching such a campaign and it seems to have worked as ever since their free calls on a weekend launch, they have acquired 1 million new subscribers. Now the challenge for Cell C is to retain these subscribers which is going to be a tough task as most of them only joined Cell C to benefit from the free 2 hour calls. And now Cell C have announced that they are now cutting the free Cell C to Cell C calls on the weekend from 2 hours to 1 hour. This is surely not going to go down well with the subscribers. Cell C has reported that ever since the launch of their campaign in June, Cell C to Cell C calls on weekends have totaled 16 million minutes.

It surprising that the likes of Vodacom and MTN have not launched a similar campaign to try and boost their subscriber base, or is it just a matter of time before they follow suite?

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