On April 1st 2015, we hosted Airtel Kenya at our offices at the Nailab for a theater style meet up between them and bloggers. The aim of the meet up was to give Airtel an audience to explain the thinking, development and marketing behind the recently launched Unliminet bundle plans which have undeniably shaken the telco industry by dropping communication charges almost by half.
Keenly listening to l @KristineKary from Airtel talk about Unliminet and the future of data at at the #airtelexp hosted by @BAKE_ke
— Kachwanya (@kachwanya) April 1, 2015
We had a total of 60 people in the audience, and four panelists from Airtel. The audience consisted mostly of bloggers, startups and social media influencers, while the panel had experts who took part in the development and marketing of the product. The panelists were:
• John Kiilu – Broadband and data manager Airtel
• Christine Mwaura – Head of consumer segment and brands – Airtel
• Farhan Mirza – Creative at Ogilvy
• Stephen Ndung’u – Product Development expert.
The journey of coming up with the @AIRTEL_KE #unliminet product took 7 months, more than 30 names and painstaking research. #AirtelExp
— Enchanted Landscapes (@enchantedlands) April 1, 2015
The meet-up started at 6pm and ended at 8.30 pm and the audience was able to learn some interesting tid bits about unliminet, as well as ask questions and have then answered by the experts who developed them. We got to learn for example, that it took seven months of creating, rejecting and tweaking ideas before coming up with the final product, and that Airtel worked hand in hand with Facebook engineers to come up with part of the final product that is unliminet.
A lot of thinking, panel beating and tweaking went into the final product that is unlimiNET, which simply means Unlimited Net. #AirtelExp
— BAKE (@BAKE_ke) April 1, 2015
A lot of research went into finding out the needs of their customers before development and eventual launch of the product. The aim was to get a product that is unique to them and will always be identified with them.
Airtel money does not charge to send money across networks #airtelexp
— Droid (@droid254) April 1, 2015
Airtel also got to talk in passing about other issues related to their other products. For example, did you know that Airtel Money does not charge to send money across networks? And that it has partnered with banks, supermarkets and post offices to bring Airtel Money closer to customers? There was this and so much info from Airtel and more on this conversation can be found on the twitter hashtag #AirtelExp