This morning I stumbled across an interesting video of a Sri Lankan television ad in which Mobitel is promoting their new service which provides Facebook support. Interestingly enough it doesn’t appear that Mobitel is offering anything unique in that it simply integrates through Facebook’s mobile interface. I couldn’t tell you if Facebook was invested in this campaign or not but it appears that Mobitel is not the largest mobile provider in Sri Lanka.
Currently Facebook has over 220,000 users in Sri Lanka, which has a population of around 20 million. The style of the ad is pretty interesting in that it’s just a video recording of a live bus promotion. The funny thing about the advertisement was listening to the promoter yell about poking other people. I bet Mark Zuckerberg never expected that someone in Sri Lanka would be yelling on a bus about poking.
Anyways, I think it’s interesting to see the peoples’ reactions even though I have no idea what the promoter is saying most of the time. Check out the video below.
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Love it!
Comment by Christos Winter — April 12, 2009 @ 4:53 pm
that was hilarious…
it’s typical in srilanka for salesmen to just get into a bus and sell books just like the promoter is selling this book in this ad….. and, more interestingly, the verses by the promoter clearly match the verses said by a regular salesman on bus…
let me translate the promoter’s words for you…
“motherz, fatherz, elder brothers, elder sisters, younger brothers and younger sisters”
(Yeah, I know it may sound funny but it’s not that weird in srilanka. it’s just we call everyone with word suited for their age that denotes a relationship.)
“here has come the newest book. this is facebook-pocket size”
(yeah, that was analogous to the pocket size travel guides and dictionaries)
“earlier, the facebook you used to login from office, home and netcafe is now in pocket size through mobitel phone”
“what’s in this book, sir? even if this is pocket size, you can take it out from your pocket anytime and look at a friend’s profile, add a friend, update status, to poke, to wallpost, print a note or in an urgency, to find a friend’s number, here’s this book…”
(promoter opens and shows a page)
“see here, this is a picture, you can take it on your mobile phone and upload it on facebook right then”
(again he starts repeating as regular salesmen do)
“what’s this book… this is the newest book”
(now, the English dialog starts)
Thats it. Hope it helps. I translated in the simplest possible English and yes, direct translation to keep the humor if you can find any.
Comment by Facebook User — April 14, 2009 @ 6:00 pm
ya… this reaches out to crowd.
bit fast. but says it all.Only Mobitel can pull this off like this. nice.
Comment by samantha — April 15, 2009 @ 2:42 am
Superb commercial. Well done Mobitel!
Comment by Varuna — April 15, 2009 @ 11:22 pm
After reading this I checked their website out to see what the hype is.
http://www.mobitel.lk/services/facebook_on_your_m...
What i found was.. this is a cool easy tool to have as am on facebook all the time. Well most of the time lol i loose track of time. So this helps me manage time too!
They should give us more products like this.
BTW I think their site rocks. first time i visited. well done Mobitel.
Comment by nazim — April 24, 2009 @ 11:47 pm
ya, its still going around in emails!!
Mobitel is great yal!
Comment by gihan k — May 13, 2009 @ 1:07 am