Fido advertising

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JF Mezei - 22 Sep 2004 05:59 GMT

Is it just me or are the frequent Fido ads still on TV really out of place now
?

For a company whose board of directors have thrown in the towel and announced
it was going out of business, shouldn't they immediately switch their ads to
Rogers ads ? Or at the very least have a message from the president
apologizing for the decision to allow Microcell to go out of business, thank
it loyal customers for years of support and apologize for selling them to the
big bad wolfe (Rogers).

Does anyone know what sort of infrastructure Rogers has in Québec ? Does it
have a call centre ? How many employees does it have in québec ?

I feel sad for the Microcell employees who will now leave in constant fear of
losing their jobs.

Oh, BTW, last weekend, I cycled past a FIDO billboard on a highway. It was
about that $25 for unlimited incoming package. It had small print that even I,
going slowly on a bike, couldn't read. Imagine car drivers !!! Not quite
ethical.

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Dan - 22 Sep 2004 14:10 GMT

I know that Rogers does have a call centre in mtl, but not sure how many
exployees. Since Rogers intends to keep Fido as an indepedent brand, Fido
will therefore not be changing their advertising to Rogers.

> Is it just me or are the frequent Fido ads still on TV really out of place
> now
[quoted text clipped - 24 lines]
> going slowly on a bike, couldn't read. Imagine car drivers !!! Not quite
> ethical.

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JF Mezei - 22 Sep 2004 20:16 GMT

> exployees. Since Rogers intends to keep Fido as an indepedent brand, Fido
> will therefore not be changing their advertising to Rogers.

That is what Telus said when it bought Clearnet. Where is the clearnet brand
today ? Didn't take long for Telus to zap "Clearnet" from everything. The
only thing they kept was the animal concept in the ads.

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Joseph - 22 Sep 2004 19:54 GMT

>For a company whose board of directors have thrown in the towel and announced
>it was going out of business, shouldn't they immediately switch their ads to
>Rogers ads ?

You sound as if the purchase is fait acompli. It was just announced a
few days ago. Companies would be silly to just stop operating based
on things that have not even been signed and sealed.

AT&T Wireless in the US continues to do business and continues to have
promotions even though cingular had bought them several months ago.
Until there's ink on a deal there's no reason for anything to change
from what's the norm right now. Change of a business will likely take
*months* not days anyway.

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JF Mezei - 22 Sep 2004 22:29 GMT

> You sound as if the purchase is fait acompli.

When a board of directors approve a deal so quickly, it is pretty much fait
acocompli. Remember that prior to making the bid public, Rogers probbaly had
lengthy discussions and got to see a totally naked Fido so it could judge the
value of the acquisition. This generally consists of getting a team from each
side who are sacrificial lambs should the merger fail. They get full access to
each other's information under strict confidentiality, and report back to
their respective boards what sort of value/arrangements can be made and where
cuts could and could not be made.

Should the merger fail, these teams generally must leave their jobs and not
work in the same industry again (since they know too much about a competitor).
Now that the bid is public, this team will grow and start working on actual
plans on how Fido will be assimilated into Rogers.

> few days ago. Companies would be silly to just stop operating based
> on things that have not even been signed and sealed.

Correct. But it is still strange to see all those Fido ads.

> AT&T Wireless in the US continues to do business and continues to have
> promotions even though cingular had bought them several months ago.

Correct. But you will find that this will abruptly stop when Cingular is
forced to stop using the AT&T trademark as per their deal. So they are going
full blast now to give AT&T enough momentum because soon, it will live only on
momentum. Also, it will take much longer to integrate AT&T customers into
Cingular since AT&T is so big.

> Until there's ink on a deal there's no reason for anything to change
> from what's the norm right now. Change of a business will likely take
> *months* not days anyway.

Correct. However, consider that since the Microcell board approved the deal,
you can espect Rogers to already yield some influence on Microcell decisions.

To give you an idea, when Digital was purchased by Compaq, Compaq's Pfeiffer
had been consulting with Digital's Palmer for *3 years* before the deal was
announced, telling him what Compaq wanted Digital to ditch and keep in terms
of products, divisions etc.

So expect that from now on, any Microcell decisions will be based a plan to
integrate Mcell into Rogers while giving regulators sufficient impression that
Microcell is still competing against Rogers.

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AndrewH - 23 Sep 2004 05:48 GMT

There was a piece in either the Globe or the Post that said Microcell
had negotiated a good deal in that the penalties are minimal for this
type of deal if another buyer comes along (my memory says 3%).

What this means is that other purchasers are still possible but I agree
not likely. In particular foreign carriers are on warning that if they
want into Canada, they had better move quickly on whatever deal they
need to do to meet the Canadian Ownership requirements.

3% penalty to Rogers is pretty small if somebody is really determined
and just holding out to the last minute.

Andrew

>>You sound as if the purchase is fait acompli.
>
[quoted text clipped - 41 lines]
> integrate Mcell into Rogers while giving regulators sufficient impression that
> Microcell is still competing against Rogers.

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JF Mezei - 23 Sep 2004 06:30 GMT

> There was a piece in either the Globe or the Post that said Microcell
> had negotiated a good deal in that the penalties are minimal for this
> type of deal if another buyer comes along (my memory says 3%).

Problem is that the Microcell Board has already approved the Rogers bid.
Hdnce, any other bid would be considered hostile. It isn't as if bids for
Microcell was something new. As soon as it emergend from bankrupcy, the word
was out that the new owners (big bad banks) would eventually want to cash in
their equity for real cash (eg: sell).

A foreign outfit had the perfect opportunity to buy Microcell prior to the
government lifting spectrum bands since neither Rogers, Bell or Telus could
have bought Microcell and used its valuable spectrum.

Branson would be the perfect suitor for Microcell. I think they would have
compatible philosophies. Would be a much better deal than his current attempt
at using Bell's incomatible network.

Vodaphone was looking to invest and almost got AT&T. But since they are
staying with CDMA Sprint, buying Microcell doesn't make much sense.

And since Rogers has GSM now, Microcell's former roaming monopoly is gone
(both inbound and outbound).

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