The first enhancement: 9778

One of the difficulties with PSR was its "one text, one entry" format. Not many consumers bothered to text in the full complement of raffle entries their OR was entitled to.

Imagine, for example, if you had bought a P100,000 laptop entitling you to 1,000 raffle entries. You might text in once, maybe even a few more times, but after awhile, you just couldn't be bothered to keep texting.

We quickly realized the need for a "single text, multiple raffle entry" enhancement to PSR. We decided to call this 9778, as the texters would now text in to a different number from 9777.

Getting this implemented was more difficult than we thought. A new Service Description (SD) was necessary and this had to be approved by Smart's VAS, finance, legal, tax, etc. groups. The number of sign-offs was incredible.

The programming was by no means simple either. For the first time, Smart would have to deal with a variable charge per text, since the price would depend on the value of the OR being texted in.

Discussions were held on what to do if the texter did not have enough load for the charge. This wasn't a key issue at P1.50 per text, but became a debate considering the average texter's load is only P30.

The first raffle draw was scheduled for August 1, 2006 and with entries crawling in at the 9777 pace, it was critical to get the new enhancement started up quickly. Our 9778 print ads were already being developed even before we knew the service could begin.

Finally, on July 28, just three days before the draw, the service was opened up to the public. Amazingly, the volume of entries in 9778 overtook the 9777 entries within a couple of weeks of launch.

TV Ads

Can a TV ad be created in 3 weeks?

On July 4, I sat down for a meeting with B and D of blackpencil, a niche agency within the Burnett world. I described the need to get a TV ad for PSR up running and up running FAST. Both of them had this another-crazy-client look on their faces. After all, I was also working with Arc Worldwide on a print campaign and it just didn't seem feasible to commit to the schedule I needed.

Three days later, I approved their storyboards for two 15-sec TVC's. The concepts featured a maid and a driver - newly minted PSR millionaires. Originally, I was thinking of getting Kris A to be a celeb endorser, but blackpencil found a cheaper and quicker alternative.

By July 20, we were shooting the ad in a rented house in White Plains. We were super lucky. There had just been a typhoon but the sun broke through for the first time in three days when we did the shoot. We did the interlock the next day and broke the ads on July 23, just 19 days after our first meeting.

More importantly, we were just in time for the last week before the first draw and the TV ads fueled a nice spike in text entries. The TV ad made me think: with PSR, it was clear that everything would always be on a RUSH basis.

Do the Math

Let's do the math on PSR.

The original thought was to give away five P1 million prizes weekly, all funded from text entries. On top of this, we would need to add the marketing expenses of PSR, which we can estimate at anywhere between P5-10 million per month. This means that every month, at least 30 million text entries would need to be received, assuming that the PSR program received P1 out of every P1.50 charged to the texter. This means roughly 1 million texts a day to break even.

(I can't confirm this, of course, since this calculation assumes rev share is 2:1 in favor of PSR vs. the current 70:30 rev share that telcos receive for VAS services. Let's just say that this is a theoretical exercise to try and calculate how many texts need to be received to make the program self-sustaining.)

At any rate, when I arrived in PhilWeb on June 13, with text entries averaging 20,000 to 30,000 a day, it was clear to me that PSR was something that I needed to be very focused on immediately.

The first step was to lower the hurdle. We moved from a weekly draw to a monthly draw, thus saving P15 million in prizes to be given out. At these new levels, PSR profitability suddenly became attainable.

In the beginning, there was Smart...

When PSR was launched in June 2006, there was only one telco that accepted entries: Smart.

The rules were fairly complex:
1. Text "PSR (space) TIN # of establishment (asterisk) OR # (asterisk) OR Amount" to 9777. The text should not include commas, periods, hyphens or centavos, or this will result in an error. A typical entry, say for the Starbucks Grande Mocha Valencia I just bought, would look like this -
PSR 005215077016*182846*125
2. Each P100 in the receipt amount entitles the texter to one raffle entry, e.g, an OR for P525.00 is entitled to five raffle entries.
3. Minimum OR value is P100. OR amounts are rounded up to determine eligible number of entries (i.e., an OR for P550.00 is entitled to six raffle entries).
4. One text = one raffle entry = P1.50 (i.e., to get all the raffle entries, the texter must text PSR several times).

Despite these hurdles, in the first week of the program, PSR averaged 20,000 entries per day.

The Third Draw

It's pretty late in the evening and I just got back to the PW office. I thought I would move forward in this whole PSR "history" and make a quick post about today's draw.

The entire thing went off like clockwork. Finance Sec Gary Teves arrived at the PAGCOR Airport Casino about 12:45, just in time for the live airing of the draw. R came in right with him and the two sat with me at the head table. Press loomed about trying to get "exclusive" quotes - just about impossible considering the reporters were all beside one another.

At 1, the show went live on ABC5, with the two hosts - TG and JM - doing their spiel. The only real heart-stopping moment was when Teves was drawing the 5th and final millionaire. He was supposed to press F5 to start the electronic tambiolo. He missed and hit maybe F4 or F6. Since all the other keys were "dead," of course the tambiolo didn't start up. There was a pause - always a disaster on TV - since no one could see that Teves didn't hit the F5 key.

After what seemed a TV eternity, actually about a second, he leaned over again and hit the right button. This time the tambiolo did start up and when he pressed the space bar afterwards, the winning raffle entry number was delivered.

The total timing of the draw was 20:14, clearly more than the 15 minutes that ABC5 allotted for us, but I think they'll squeeze it all in.

PS - I found a blog that posts about gaming in the Philippines:
http://gamingphi.wordpress.com/

What's in a Logo?

When PSR was launched, the marketing was being handled by an advertising agency that I'll call "G." G had created an entire print-radio-centered campaign about PSR. When I first saw the materials and costs though, I was shocked because everything seemed to be billed at "rack rates." In two weeks, a total of P6 million had been spent on PSR marketing.

Worse, I wasn't happy with any of the creative. Even the logo they made (see pic above and compare to the current logo in my Sep 29 post) was unimpressive. On June 26, less than two weeks after joining PW, I met with G and asked them to stop all advertising and marketing. That same day, I sat down with my internal marketing team and changed the PSR logo to one that had been developed in-house. From hereon, we would take charge of all marketing for PSR.

The Whole Idea

How does one get people to ask for Official Receipts? In general, we rarely ever think about ORs. We accept whatever the storekeeper or restaurant owner or doctor or whoever gives us - whether that is an "official" receipt or just one of those "acknowledgement receipts" sold in a National Bookstore.

The BIR has been at pains to try and get people to ask for ORs - it's been one of their longstanding campaigns. Some years ago, they came up with a promo: send in your OR and they would then put all these into a tambiolo and draw out winners. They received so many entries that they had to put them all into a pool-sized corral in some mall and get a poor dignitary to swim through all the entries to pick out the winner.

Two years ago, they came up with a better idea: use an electronic tambiolo and get entries via text. The program was called "I-text Mo Ang Resibo" and it generated a few million entries. The dampeners were that texters were asked to register first and the prizes weren't too hot - P25,000 was the typical grand prize. After running for a few months, the BIR scuttled the program.

This year, R came up with the idea of increasing the prize money to a few million pesos plus lowering the text cost from P2.50 to P1.50. He got PAGCOR and DOF Secretary Gary Teves to support the idea - and voila! - suddenly Premyo Sa Resibo was being launched with all the print media fanfare one could muster.

The PLDT head honchos were some of the first to support the program, agreeing to the reduced text cost which was a total 180-degree flip from their usual VAS arrangements. Based on the estimates, millions would text in daily and the text revenue would provide enough funds to cover advertising and marketing plus enough prize money to fund five P1 million prizes weekly, starting August 1, 2006.