Whatever you do, don’t tell John Beletic he’s running a paging network.
“We spend $580 million building a two-way messaging network and $90 million on the one-way paging network and people are still calling us a paging carrier,” said the chairman and chief executive officer of WebLink Wireless Inc. “It’s like calling American Airlines a commuter airline because it has an American Eagle shuttle service. We’re long past flying these small propeller planes. We’re flying big, intercontinental, kick-ass jets!”
His frustration echoes that of an entire industry desperately trying to change its image. After years of offering one-way numeric and, later, alphanumeric paging services, industry leaders like WebLink and Paging Network Inc. have converted their networks to two-way messaging systems.
This technology opens the doors to a huge growth market of services that hardly resemble the “cheap beep” model of old. To these carriers, the tag “paging” signifies the declining traditional paging market.
But what else are we supposed to call these new carriers with their new devices and services? Essentially, there’s a whole new industry out there searching for an identity, like a generation looking for a media-friendly name. Advanced paging doesn’t do it because the “P” word remains. Wireless data services? Maybe. Most carriers like interactive messaging, but good luck marketing something called a personal interactive communicator. Sexy!
To be thought of as something other than paging carriers, these companies have to start offering services that don’t resemble the old standard, a process that is just beginning to ramp up. Analysts suggest positioning their services and devices as wireless e-mail devices or corporate remote access tools that just happen to have messaging functionality, not the messaging component.
“It should not be compared to paging, but to something else,” said Steve McKee, president of McKee Wallwork Henderson, an expert on brand positioning and awareness and author of “Six Common Marketing Mistakes Growth Companies Make.” “Consider Palm computers. They were not positioned as handheld PCs … That was tried and failed (with) Apple’s Newton.”
Instead, Palm positioned the Pilot product as a convenient new calendar and contact list device that just happened to link with a desktop PC, he said.
“The funny thing is, they’re becoming more and more like PCs, but had to go around the block to get next door.”
This is exactly the position taken by the likes of BellSouth Wireless Data L.P., Motient Corp. and Research In Motion Ltd. Each offers what essentially is two-way paging services but are stressing the wireless e-mail functionality to customers-Motient with its eLink service, BSWD renaming the Inter@ctive Pager service the eBiz solution and perhaps most successfully RIM with the BlackBerry service, positioned strictly as a wireless e-mail device. Most users don’t call their devices pagers, but BlackBerry devices.
This is what the former paging carriers are trying to do with their new services-have the service associated with the brand. But RIM and the packet carriers are new to the space and therefore have the freedom to introduce themselves to consumers in whatever fashion they wish. Paging firms have the challenge of targeting an audience that has long associated them with a different application.
“It is very hard to redefine a brand or category once it is fixed in people’s minds,” McKee said. “All of the years of repeated messages, not to mention consumer experiences, have added up to one very strong perception.”
Carriers are getting around this in different ways. One is by targeting the new services at non-paging users, those who never used pagers before and who will not have the image of paging in their minds. The key is to brand the product as far away from paging as possible.
“Smart companies will want to consider branding their individual product offerings with unique names and descriptors,” McKee said. “So, for instance, the brand `Contact Paging’ would still refer to the basic paging service while an entirely new name is developed for the wireless data and interactive messaging service. Ultimately, the parent company’s name may drop the `paging’ part and become something like Contact Communications or Contact Wireless.”
This sounds a lot like what WebLink did when it dropped the PageMart Wireless moniker. WebLink clearly conveys an Internet connectivity image, whereas PageMart exuded “cheap paging.” The company also backed this up with huge capital investment in a new network, completely based on Internet Protocol. It also instituted its Enterprise Solutions Provider Program to promote the two-way network to business solution firms.
The idea is to offer service through a third party more associated with the desired image. Metrocall did this as well, albeit somewhat differently. Rather than forming several partnerships, Metrocall offered a few key players a stake in the company.
“We transitioned from a paging carrier back in February,” said Mike Scanlon, senior vice president of sales and marketing. “We sold half our company, changed our board, changed our focus and more is yet to come.”
Metrocall is now owned by an Internet service provider (PSINet), a wireless application service provider (Aether Systems Inc.) and an investment firm (Hicks Muse Tate and Furst).
“We think a lot of companies have talked their way through a change. We sold ours,” Scanlon said. “We got $51 million of investments based on our plan. I think that’s a solid example that some very sophisticated people are behind us.”
Metrocall also is selling wireless phones and services in its retail stores nationwide, positioning itself as a total wireless solution provider and bundling several solutions into one bill.
“We stopped being a paging carrier when we started selling PCS phones,” Scanlon said. “We’re out of the cocoon and are now a butterfly.”
Arch Communications Group Inc., which will be the largest paging carrier in the country after its merger with PageNet is complete, has embarked upon a similar path through an agreement with America Online Inc. The two will offer AOL-branded pagers from Motorola Inc. that will have AOL’s Instant Messenger software embedded, allowing AOL subscribers to extend their instant messaging buddy lists and e-mail contacts on a mobile basis.
AOL will market this product and service to its 21 million members, with Arch’s network carrying all the traffic. An Arch executive said a requirement of the deal was that AOL would not position it in any way as a pager.
“They’re going to call it whatever we brand it,” he said.
But the hard part is just beginning. Regardless of what name the industry decides upon, carriers still must market a revolutionary new service to a customer base largely unaware of what’s available, a challenge these former paging carriers are itching to meet.
“It’s like selling television for the first time to radio audiences,” said Metrocall’s Scanlon, adding the effort will be easier once more services are available on the devices. “Right now we’re only offering Lucy and Milton Berle, but it’s really a platform for the future.”
