Who is Telenor Group?

Who is Telenor? Or more precisely: Who is Telenor Group?

Telenor is the Norwegian used-to-be PTT. It is comparable to Telia in Sweden, and  TDC in Denmark. And to Sonera in Finland, now part of the TeliaSonera group (Telia for short).

Telenor’s home market is, quite understandably, Norway. This means that Telenor is on foreign ground in Denmark, which has implications for their Danish strategy, and the way they communication to the market. More on this in later posts.

Telenor and Telia are the main challengers to TDC in Denmark, and the only ones that have a full portfolio of services: broadband, fixed telephony, mobile telephony, television, etcetera. In that respect they are comparable to TDC.

Both companies have domestic customers, AND business customers in the Nordic region. This is quite different from the position TDC holds on the Norwegian, the Swedish and the Finish markets. TDC operates ONLY business customers on these markets.

Even if Norway, by population, is smaller than Denmark, Telenor is a giant compared to TDC. In 2008 revenues were some 110 billion NOK compared to TDC’s approx. 36 billion DKR.  Telenor is, in terms of revenues, more than double the size of TDC.

Telenor has 40.000 staff worldwide. They are on 14 different markets in the Nordic countries, Eastern Europe and Asia. They have 170 million mobile phone subscribers, and seems to be growing steadily. They recently got a new “mobile phone footprint” in India,  giving Telenor access to a potential of some 600 million customers in Asia.

That is HUGE.

Very important: Telenor is on several emerging markets both in Europe, and in Asia.

Apart from Danish Telenor the group owns CBB, BiBoB and Canal Digital. The two first are low price mobile phone companies, the last has to do with television broadcast.

You probably know that Telenor, many years ago, bought both Sonofon and Cybercity to get a jump start on the Danish market.  That seems to have succeeded. They bought Tele2 (Danish branch) in 2007.

Read all about Telenor Group on their web page. Owner of the Danish companies are Telenor Denmark Holding. Visit Telenor’s Danish site for more information on the Danish agenda.

The 2009 annual report for Telenor is due in April 2010. Their CEO, Jon Fredrik Baksaas, is prolific and internationally well known. Well, you already saw that.

I think the commercial is from Russia. Found it on YouTube. Enjoy.

Please visit the basecamp for more posts on the telco communication project.

Baksaas on Davos Panel.

Davos 2010. The CEO of Telenor, Jon Fredrik Baksaas, is on the panel.

Why I have posted this on barebones? Because decisions made in Davos will influence the global, and even the Danish, telecom industry. Telenor is one of the leading providers of mobile telephony. Worldwide.

There is another reason as well. Being part of this panel is impressive and elegant Grey Zone Advertising. The term was introduced on barebones in a recent post. Read it here.

Well done Telenor. Well done Baksaas.

Please visit the basecamp for more posts on the telco communication project.

Who Is Reading Barebones?

Screen shot 2010-02-02 at 09.24.56

It has been a while since we had blog statistics. This time is as good as any.

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Who is reading barebones? The answer to that question is that I don’t know. But I have an idea of where they come from. Normally the US is in for 40plus percent of readership, but that changed overnight due to the last post in the TDC/Telia/Telenor Project. Even Norway and Sweden opted in with some readers. A few.

Americans, this morning, is down to 36,20 percent, the Danes (nudes included) up to 17,40 percent and the British try to hang in there as well with some 13 percent straight. Apart from the cold weather it is a good day.

Good to see that things work. They don’t always do.

By the way, I saw Telenor’s new commercial yesterday. I will comment on it soon. They give away mobile broadband access for free. Really, I should consider becoming a customer .

Both screenshots are from Statcounter.

TDC on Competition and Market Initiatives.

Annual reports are one of the best sources of information about the Danish telecommunication market. They are a good place to start if you look for briefs on strategies for handling competition and market communication, including advertising.

In the annual report from 2008 (the latest there is), TDC states:

“TDC faces significant competition from both established competition, such as Telenor and TeliaSonera, and newer competitors such as the utility companies, Fullrate, HI3G, mobile service providers and the DTT provider Boxer. TDC must match its competitors’ product offerings, services, acquisition costs, and prices, or it may loose market shares. If  TDC is forced to lower its price to match its competitors and if cost savings initiatives are not implemented with the required speed and effect, TDC may experience decreasing profit margin and EBITDA.”

On market initiatives:

“TDC future success will depend on TDC’s ability to stimulate and increase usage, e.g. by offering add-on services to continuously attract new customers, and especially retain existing customers, thereby maintaining a sufficiently large customer base to achieve profitable operations. TDC is therefore clearly focusing on market initiatives that increases customer loyalty, e.g. TDC Play and YouSee Play, which offer unlimited downloads of music to retail broadband and mobile postpaid customers at no additional charge, and bundled products.”

The annual report 2009 is due shortly, and we will bring an update on this strategic brief as soon as the report is available.

There will probably be no dramatic changes from what is said in the 2008 report, but a couple of competitors have disappeared from the list. TDC  acquired Fullrate in spring 2009, and  bought the telco arm of the largest Danish utility company, DONG, some 6 months later.

There is, however, a wild card on strategy since TDC majority shareholder, Nordic Telephone Company (NTC), recently informed TDC  that they have started reviewing strategic alternatives for TDC. The press release dates November 23, 2009. It says:

“There can be no assurances that any particular course of action will be pursued nor of what the timing or the terms of such alternatives will be.”

It will be exciting to see what this initiative brings, and what consequences it may have on market initiatives and advertising. If anything.

Similar briefs on the other two big players on the Danish market, Telenor and Telia, will follow.

While waiting, don’t forget to be entertained by TDC’s nudes Claus and Britta. Click the film above, or see all the films on TDC’s website.

Interested in this project? Maybe you should visit the telco basecamp?

Opening The Telco Basecamp.

Fredensborg Palace. Copyright 2010: Knut Skjærven.

You are probably aware that there is a special barebones project in progress. We are investigating and redefining advertising for the three major telecommunications companies on the Danish market; Telia(Sonera), Telenor and TDC. At the moment we are in the process of collecting information.

Related to this project, barebones have established a basecamp. The basecamp is a blog page. You get access to the page on the right hand side of the blog. In the top section.

The reasons for having this basecamp are two. First of all, you will always have access to the most important posts from the blog’s home page. Secondly, we will have a campsite for holding the variety of information that will go into the project.

The basecamp is presently in the making. You will find it here.

The photograph is of a Royal Danish “basecamp”, Fredensborg Palace.

Telia Trend Report 2010.

Amazing.

This is good news for the barebones telco project. A great jump for Telia doing efficient grey zone advertising here. Please see former post: barebones’ new grasp on advertising.

Stay tuned to the emerging barebones telco project covering Telia, Telenor and TDC on the Danish consumer market.  It is going to be very illuminating.

The telco project will use barebones’ resources in describing, analysing  and evaluating the three main telco’s advertising on the Danish market. The environment is highly competitive, and the Danish market might function as a model for similar international markets.

Read it on this very blog

Szarkowski: The Detail.

Lady in Red. Copyright 2007: Knut Skjærven.

“Once he left the studio, it was impossible for the photographer to copy the painters’ schemata. He could not stage-manage the battle, like Uccello or Velásquez, bringing together elements which had been separate in space and time, nor could he rearrange the parts of his picture to construct a design that pleased him better.

From the reality before him he could only choose that part that seemed relevant and consistent, and what would fill his plate. If he could not show the battle, explain its purpose and its strategy, or distinguish its heroes from its villains, he could show what was too ordinary to paint: the empty road  scattered with cannon balls, the mud encrusted on the caisson’s wheels, the anonymous faces, the single broken figure by the wall.

Intuitively, he sought and found the significant detail. His work, incapable of narrative, turned toward symbol.”

John Szarkowski: The Photographers Eye, The Museum of Modern Art, New York 2009, Introduction.

Library Thing.

This is a barebones pitstop post. For more pitstop posts, please go to pitstop puzzle.

Other posts on Szarkowski: Introduction, The Thing Itself, The Detail, The Frame, Time, Vantage Point.

Szarkowski: Time.

Oprah Winfrey in Copenhagen. Copyright 2010: Knut Skjærven.

“Photographs stand in special relation to time, for they describe only the present.

Exposures were long in early photography. If the subjects moved, its multiple image described also a space-time dimension. Perhaps it was such accidents that suggested the photographic study of the process of movement, and later, of the virtual forms produced by the continuity of movement in time.

Photographers found an inexhaustible subject in the isolation of a single segment of time. They photographed the horse in midstride, the fugitive expressions of the human face, the gestures of the hand and body, the bat meeting the ball, the milk drop splashing in the saucer of milk.

More subtle was the discovery of that segment of time that Cartier-Bresson called the decisive moment: decisive not because of the exterior event (the bat meeting the ball) but because in that moment the flux of changing forms and patterns was sensed to have achieved balance and clarity and order – because the image became, for an instant, a picture.”

John Szarkowski: The Photographers Eye, The Museum of Modern Art, New York 2009, Introduction.

Library Thing.

This is a barebones pitstop post. For more pitstop posts, please go to pitstop puzzle.

Other posts on Szarkowski: Introduction, The Thing Itself, The Detail, The Frame, Time, Vantage Point.

barebones’ new grasp on advertising

barebones advertising diagram. Copyright 2010: Knut Skjærven.

Please read this carefully. This is important information for grasping barebones’ ideas on advertising.

The three zones of adverting

What you see above is the newly conceived barebones advertising diagram. It is an illustration of how barebones sees, and defines, the main zones of advertising. How it sees advertising.

There is no part of advertising that falls outside the three zones. The definition is meant to be exhaustive. This means that there are three zones, and only three zones, of advertising, and that every gesture to advertise to a marked will fall in one or more of the three categories.

One thing is important: when you read the diagram you should read what you actually see:  1) There are no straight lines in the diagram, only curves. 2) The zones are all overlapping. Zones are fluent and they are all overlapping.

From here on we will talk about red zone advertising (above the line), blue zone advertising (below the line) and grey zone advertising (beyond the lines).

I am sure that you are already familiar with variations of the first two zones. And you probably already have an idea of the third zone, as well.

The parts of advertising

For barebones, however,  it is not just a questions of mapping advertising in three zones. There is a bit more to it than that. With the zones comes the question of interconnectedness and constitution.  Here is one thing you should remember: the zones of barebones advertising don’t stand together as pieces belonging to each other, they stand together as moments constituting each other.

This is an alternative way of dealing with advertising. Based on barebones resources we have simply dealt the cards anew.

The distinction between pieces and moments is a phenomenological theme. Roughly speaking pieces are parts that can be separated from each other, and in themselves constitute new independent parts. Like a branch that is cut from a tree and constitutes a new and separate unit (that again can be split into smaller parts). Pieces are independent parts.

Moments, however, you cannot take apart in the same way. Colour, for instance, is a moment and it can not be separated from that which it is colour of. The colour of the wall can not be separated from its extension. Every time there is colour there is extension. Colour can not be separated from its extension like a branch can be cut from a tree. Moments are nonindependent parts.

Important  implications

Here are the implications for advertising: The red zone, the blue zone and the grey zone of advertising are not related to each other as independent parts constituting the advertising message. Each zone does not potentially constitute pieces of the message. The zones constitutes potential moments of the message.

Following this line of thought the implication for advertising is severe. Both in the way you theoretically may want to look at advertising in the future, but most importantly for your understanding of message content (and form) in real advertising.

Messages are constituted by moments. That goes for advertising messages as well.

There will be much more about this in forthcoming posts. Let’s leave it here to take a quick look at what the red, the blue end the gray zones of advertising covers.

Red Zone Advertising/Above the Line

Red zone  advertising is mass communication. Commercials, print ads, posters, brochures. You know the lot. To  get attention for your mass communication, you need to break through the barrier of contextual noise.

The colour of attention is red.

Given the right position red zone advertising is for everyone to see, to explore and to react to. By the right positions is meant e.g. that you need to be in New York to be exposed to a New Your poster. You need to have the newspaper, the periodical, the television set tuned into the right channel, to be exposed to the ad, poster of commercial placed in that medium.

Blue Zone Advertising/ Below the Line

Blue zone advertising is not mass communication. It is selective and directed at you personally. Goes often by the name of  direct communication. Reaches you with the post, is  given over the phone, is displayed at your favorite web site. It is handed out to you by the sales person. Could come as a mail to you inbox as well. You know the lot.

This form of advertising is blue zone advertising because it is, or should be, so well controlled, or targeted, that is reached you and grabs your interest by the share being there. It is precise communication.

The colour of precision, is blue.

Grey  Zone Advertising/ Beyond the Lines

Grey zone advertising is traditionally not reckoned as adverting at all. On barebones communication it points to all other types of communication that reaches out from a person, a product or a company and thereby influences the chain of events that makes up the brand of a particular substance.

The reason why barebones stress and rephrase this type of communication (as advertising) is that, whatever you say, this zone of communication has an advertising effect. It pushes your attitudes towards a person, a company, a product or a service. It stimulates or it blocks business. And stimulation, in a broad sense, is what advertising is all about.

This however is not always recognized, but there seems to be an increasing awareness of this fact. At least the area is obscure as to what grey zone activity does in terms of image and of selling products and services.

The colour of obscurity is grey.

More to come

Let’s leave it here for the moment. What you need to remember from this post are the three zones of advertising, and that messages are constituted my moments.

Stay tuned.

Problems for Commercial Nudes: Claus and Britta.

It seems that Danish telco and advertising big spender, TDC,  has run into problems with their celebrated commercials featuring two middle age nudes, Claus and Britta. The two average Danes are played by Danish actors Kirsten Lehfeldt and Peter Frödin.

In a note posted at the fan site on Facebook , TDC ’s site administrator, Jesper Ammitzbøll, says that he is no longer allowed to post the commercials on YouTube. He has taken all commercials off Facebook as well, not risking that the fan site is closed down. Jesper Ammitzbøll is working hard to find another solution, he says in his Facebook note Friday. The Facebook fan club at that time reaching close to 25.000 campaign enthusiasts.

Luckily, the embedded commercials on barebones communication are still working. You can enjoy Claus and Britta here and here. Hopefully TDC will manage to fix the problems. If not, the films may go from barebones as well.

The question is still, however, if Claus and Britta are more than entertainment? Are they also good for business as the couple evidently now challenges the code of international conduct on both Facebook and YouTube? That issue will be interesting to monitor over the next months.

The TDC campaign is handled by People Group, Denmark, and executed by prestigious Wibroe, Duckert & Partners, Copenhagen, Denmark.