The company has test-marketed the concept for about six months and during that period alone bagged some blue chip advertisers like Duracell, Star TV, Philips, Videocon, TVS, Dabur, Coca Cola, Titan, Cadbury, Reebok, and Sony. So far, Mobilink claims to have generated revenue worth Rs 4 lakh. The company is expecting to earn more than Rs 1 crore in the year 1999-2000 from the MCC: LG and Samsung, for instance, have already booked ads to be released during the forthcoming World Cup.

``We have discovered its potential as a revenue generator and so we are going ahead with it in full steam,'' says PravinKumar, managing director, DSS Mobile Communications Ltd., which provides the Mobilink service.However, more than the revenue, according to Kumar, the aim is to increase the utility of pagers in the mindset of the subscriber. For, according to the findings of the research conducted by Mode for the company, about 20-25 per cent of its subscribers were going out of the network.

Reason: subscribers were not finding it very useful and on an average, a subscriber was getting just one message a day.But now says Pravin Kumar: ``The channel is maturing. Paging is very well understood today. We have now got a minimum base to position our product.''The channel is being postioned as a novel and captive medium which offers focused reach, predominantly to a male audience in the age group of 25 years to 45 years, and belonging to Sec A2, B1, B2. MCC is being pitched for its various USPs like: 100 per cent reach as there is no clutter or spill over; no production costs involved and immediate response; cost effective ascompared to other advertising mediums; faster executions and modifications of messages.

To sell the channel, Mobilink will be targeting corporate/brand managers and advertising agencies heads who in turn, can recommend it to their clients. It is also going to initiate a direct marketing campaign addressed at the same target audience and to its subscribers about the MCC. ``We want to induce the subscriber to look at the pager more often,'' says Dilip Pall, director, sales and marketing, DSS Mobile Communications.

The company is going to increase Mobilink's visibility in the year 1999 in general and advertise about the channel, in particular. The ad-budget outlay has been increased from Rs 2 crore (1997-98) to Rs 6 crore (1999-2000). The communication strategy will focus on value addition in paging and will be segment specific.

The first ads, to be created by Enterprise Nexus, will appear around April/May as by then the company hopes to have ironed out the industry issues such as tariff rationalisation;revenue sharing and license fee.The company has worked out various packages bundled with beeps. Prime time slots --12 to 2 pm in this case --have been introduced which costs 20 per cent extra on 1 beep and 5 maildrops. Lunch time, according to the research, subscribers are more likely to see their pagers. The ad messages reach subscribers within 15 seconds. The duration between each mail drop is 15 minutes, i.e., the message of the advertiser stays on the subscriber's pager for a period of 15 minutes before the next mail drop is aired.

The packages have been broadly categorised as MCC Display; MCC Classified; MCC Cricket ODI's (one-day international) and MCC Customised. Any advertising message cannot exceed 120 characters. q MCC Display is available six days a week - from Monday to Saturday at 8am to 9am and 7 pm to 8 pm with two options. Option 1 offers one beep and five mail drops and costs Rs 5,500 in Delhi and Mumbai. Option 2 offers four beeps and 20 mail drops and costs Rs 16,500 in Delhi andMumbai. In these options, the numeric subscriber base is reached through Mobilink's dedicated pre-recorded helpline. In Option 1, the messages are aired within a week and in Option 2, the messages are aired over a three week period. q MCC Classified on Sundays -- deals with anything from matrimonials, motor vehicles, property, to-let, situations vacant and wanted advertisements. Aired between 9 am and 5 pm, it offers only one maildrop and costs Rs 200 in all cities.

q For event based advertising, like a cricket match, MCC has a package such as MCC Cricket ODI's which offers special options such as: a message followed by the score, there will usually be about 88 flashes during an ODI; scores can be followed by the name of the sponsor or the sponsor's message can be followed by the score; approximately 36 flashes during a test match. The rates for the cricket ads range from Rs 21,945 in Delhi and Mumbai and Rs 10,640 in Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai.

There's an MCC customised package too -- which ismade to order according to the advertiser's needs.