Airtel launches social media competition for 2014 Digital Calendar
View(s):Sri Lanka’s Bharthi Airtel unit recently launched a social media competition for its 2014 Digital Calendar, whereby any Sri Lankan national can submit “photographs, memes, memorable status updates, instagrams and other graphics or text” via the celco’s local Facebook page. The top 25 entries will be shortlisted in terms of Facebook likes, with the final 12 calendar pages being selected by Airtel.
Further, according to a statement, the submission must “capture the essence of Sri Lankan youth or any of Airtel’s values which are to be Alive, Inclusive and Respectful” while also being original content.
Commenting at the media launch of the 2014 Airtel Digital Calendar, officials of the company opined that the Internet was being used for mostly social media. They also noted that in terms of Facebook alone there were almost two million Sri Lankan users. Out of these, many were between the age of 13 and 25 years old, with each spending about five hours a week on Facebook alone. And, since Airtel was a youth-centric brand, it was offering this innovation to showcase the talent of the youth of Sri Lanka across the world. It was also noted that the calendar will be disseminated to 20 countries, in both digital and printed form.
| India’s Economic Times says Etisalat acquiring Airtel SL ops
India’s Economic Times reported last week that an acquisition of Bharthi Airtel Lanka was in the works by Etisalat Lanka, with the aid of Standard Chartered Bank. These high level talks would mean that Etisalt would acquire Airtel’s 1.7 million local subscribers and automatically leapfrog to being the celco with the second largest subscriber base behind dominant player Dialog which has approximately 8 million subscribers. In Colombo, responding to this media speculation, Bharthi Airtel Lanka chief Suren Goonewardene said it was “business as usual”. Additionally, prompted by a specific query from the media present at the event which noted that, not only had any of the parties to the negotiations confirmed, but they also had not denied these alleged negotiations, Mr. Goonewardene indicated that he was not in a position to comment any further. |