In today's fast-evolving telco industry, a tech company known as Circles is daring to rewrite the traditional rules and customer experience standards. Unlike conventional operators, Circles has introduced a fully digital telco experience to the market. By leveraging innovative technology and a rebellious spirit, they have prioritized customer satisfaction above all else. This approach has disrupted the norm, shifting expectations on service delivery and marketing strategies within the sector.

The company, founded in Singapore, aims to be more than just a local disruptor; it seeks to revolutionize telecommunications globally. Its unique end-to-end technology platform facilitates significant reductions in costs while maximizing customer engagement. This platform aids local partners in different regions to upgrade their offerings efficiently. Circles also stands out for its bold and sometimes provocative marketing campaigns which capture the essence of their brand—bold, unconventional, yet consumer-friendly.

Main takeaways from the video:

Please remember to turn on the CC button to view the subtitles.

Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. telco [ˈtɛlko] - (noun) - Short for telecommunications company; businesses that provide communication services such as phone and internet. - Synonyms: (telecommunications company, carrier, telecom provider)

It's a tech company with an ambition to shake up the telco industry.

2. disruptor [dɪsˈrʌptər] - (noun) - An entity that causes significant change in an industry by introducing innovation or groundbreaking methodologies. - Synonyms: (innovator, pioneer, game-changer)

Based in Singapore, Circles was founded in 2014 with an ambitious goal of becoming a disruptor in the telco space.

3. legacy [ˈlɛɡəsi] - (noun) - An inherited set of outdated computer systems or technologies that are difficult to adapt to modern needs. - Synonyms: (outdated technology, antiquated systems, obsolete setup)

...legacy over legacy, and that ended up being, for them, not being able to compete.

4. proprietary [prəˈpraɪəˌtɛri] - (adjective) - Relating to the ownership of exclusive rights to an idea, product, or process. - Synonyms: (exclusive, patented, owned)

All this is possible thanks to its proprietary technology, which is also called circles.

5. agility [əˈdʒɪləti] - (noun) - The ability to move quickly and easily; often used metaphorically to describe a company’s ability to quickly adapt to changing conditions. - Synonyms: (nimbleness, flexibility, responsiveness)

The company says the eponymous operating system gives it the agility to launch new products quickly and operate more efficiently...

6. cheeky [ˈtʃiːki] - (adjective) - Sassily bold or disrespectful, often in an endearing or humorous way. - Synonyms: (impudent, insolent, audacious)

From the three dollar baller campaign in Singapore to the middle finger sculpture in Australia, the company's cheeky campaigns have become synonymous with the brand provocative, unconventional

7. guerrilla marketing [gəˈrɪlə ˈmɑːrkɪtɪŋ] - (noun) - An advertising strategy that uses low-cost unconventional means to promote a product or an idea. - Synonyms: (unconventional marketing, ambush advertising, stealth marketing)

We went to market with a guerrilla marketing stunt where we said, anybody who comes to circles, we freeze their prices...

8. eponymous [ɪˈpɑːnɪməs] - (adjective) - Named after something or someone; giving one's name to something. - Synonyms: (self-titled, titular, name-giving)

The company says the eponymous operating system gives it the agility to launch new products quickly and operate more efficiently with less infrastructure

9. polarizing [ˈpoʊləraɪzɪŋ] - (adjective) - Causing a group or population to be divided into opposing factions or groups. - Synonyms: (divisive, controversial, contentious)

...it is polarizing. But the important thing here is to understand our core consumers very well...

10. rebranding [ˌriːˈbrændɪŋ] - (noun) - The process of changing the corporate image of an organization, including its name, logo, and marketing strategy. - Synonyms: (re-launch, makeover, corporate change)

The company also recently went through a rebranding.

Meet the Singapore-based telco disruptor with the knack for a viral campaign

It's a tech company with an ambition to shake up the telco industry. I think for the longest time, you know, the telco industry has been talking about the same challenge, but not doing much. Their customer support is very inaccessible. Contracts are very inflexible. They don't get the value that they should get from, you know, telco operators.

We've tried to bring people and help them imagine or reimagine. How do you do marketing and how do you engage customers in a different way? We will always be unconventional in the market. Unconventional meaning we don't want to look like any other telco brand per se, so we want it to be genuine, but yet a little part rebellious. Of course, we cannot please everybody. If you're putting out something that has to please everyone, we'll only have vanilla in the world. And vanilla is a boring flavor.

So how does a young company take on the big guys? Well, let's find out. Over the years, modern technologies and customers expectations have redrawn the landscape of telecommunications. And now one company is looking to tear up the rule book yet again. I'm Lin Lin. And for this edition of Marketing Media Money, we'll be exploring the strategies behind tech company circles.

Based in Singapore, Circles was founded in 2014 with an ambitious goal of becoming a disruptor in the telco space. Divided into two key units, a mobile network and a software. As a service department, both look to revolutionize the customer experience, which circles believes for most telco consumers is still not a satisfying one. I caught up with co founder Ramee's answer as the company celebrates its ten year anniversary.

Ramee, so great to speak to you today. I wanted to start off by asking you that as the founder, what was the intention? Why did you start circles? Well, thank you for that question, because, you know, ten years in, that's one question that keeps us coming back to work. Something we put on the walls. If you remember the time when you'd get billed $100 and not know why you're paying for it, you'd queue up in a long queue just to get your bill paid. So it's really the customer experience.

When you look deeper, it's actually to do with the industry structure and it really boils down to the technology that they have actually built over time, legacy over legacy, and that ended up being, for them, not being able to compete. And that meant they didn't serve the customers better. So it's a vicious circle. And we started in Singapore because it's home, but reality is, this problem exists everywhere else.

How has the company been able to disrupt the telco industry in the last decade? You know, in a traditional, typical telco, you need to use 250 pieces of software stitched together, you know, in a clunky way to give you the experience as a customer. That doesn't work, especially in a world where people expect much more from a customer experience perspective. We made people understand that if you want to transform an industry, it goes down to changing your entire way you think about your technology. So if you want to compete in this tech overlay from telco, you have to compete with the right tool.

In 2016, the company launched its first product, Circle's life in Singapore, and made waves for their unconventional marketing strategy. One of its unique propositions is the lack of a physical store. Customers are instead presented with a fully digital telco experience where all the interactions are done via the companys website or mobile app. When we launched in Singapore, we didnt even have a phone call.

And I have to say it caused panic in the industry, among the regulators. And how is it possible that a telco company is going to launch without a phone line to call in? And we said, actually what does a phone line really do? Makes you wait and makes you wait for a long time and doesn't really address your problem. And then you have to repeat your problem three times. So we launched with a chat service and actually it was a big success.

And actually customers preferred that over talking on the phone. So that's just an example. And what I mean to say is, as we've scaled and grown, how can we just rethink every part of the value chain? So we started from a totally digital world, but even when we touch retail, we're trying to reimagine that part. What is the purpose of retail and what should it do?

All this is possible thanks to its proprietary technology, which is also called circles. The company says the eponymous operating system gives it the agility to launch new products quickly and operate more efficiently with less infrastructure. Our biggest value proposition is that it's an end to end technology platform, that you will only need one system to be able to do all the jobs that you need to do and it's easily configurable.

So we take away a lot of the usual typical system integration complexity and, you know, system silos from the telco operator standpoint to allow them to really rapidly test the market, launch new features and serve their customers in a lot more flexible way and transparent way, which is quite different from how traditional telcos will operate.

Leveraging on Circle's life and circles as the blueprint. The company has taken its digital and technological expertise to other regions, partnering with local telcos to help them launch new products. The companys partnerships include KDDI in Japan, eand in Pakistan. With more in the pipeline, the technology platform is now its core business.

If you think about circles as a software provider, our proposition is really about saying hey, youve got to take out this legacy infrastructure and then bring this full stack technology SaaS solution. And what it does is it allows you to compete but actually get some real outcomes in terms of net promoter scores so the customers are more engaged and happier in terms of revenue.

So for each revenue you should get more, ten to 20% more revenue but also radically reduce your cost structure. Because running clunky software is expensive, maintaining it is expensive. And these are real meaningful value proposition because it not just makes you leaner but better. And only technology helps you achieve those two things right. How can you compete better at lower cost?

Circles often gets people talking with its tongue in cheek and sometimes provocative ad campaigns. It's important that we are bold, provocative in what we do and we stand out from the rest. So we're really talking to customers in a language and tone they understand and I they resonate with.

And what are the key elements here when we talk about bold and provocative? I think if I were to put our marketing playbook in one word, I'll call it fun. It's an acronym for being fast paced in our speed of execution, being unconventional in our approach. How we solve problems and being numbers driven is the end in everything that we do.

From the three dollar baller campaign in Singapore to the middle finger sculpture in Australia, the company's cheeky campaigns have become synonymous with the brand provocative, unconventional. These are some of the words that are used to describe your marketing strategy. Has there ever been any kind of backlash or concern around some of the marketing campaigns?

We had to take a sight for us being provocative or unconventional, as I think, as what you put. But we have, I guess, managed to phase out bad pr as to what they usually call it, right? To turn them into positive messages for our audience. I think that's more important. We of course acknowledge that not every campaign is going to resonate with everyone, but that's also where we are also different, where circles life is ready to take a stand.

We're ready to say what people don't want to hear. How do you respond, though, to campaigns that perhaps might generate some criticism? Or does the old adage apply that all publicity is good publicity? You're getting people talking see, that's absolutely right. I think fundamentally, in a noisy environment that we live today, it is important that our message cuts through the noise and the clutter.

So, yes, we do have to say something provocative, something that cuts through from time to time and it is polarizing. But the important thing here is to understand our core consumers very well and make sure what we say resonates with the values of our core customers. Of course, we cannot please everybody. If you are putting out something that has to please everyone, we will only have vanilla in the world and vanilla is a boring flavour, so we do need other varieties to prove that it's a telco that prioritizes the customers.

The company launched the award winning big price freeze campaign to help support its australian customers who are feeling the pinch from the rising cost of living. Was that really about kind of just reading the room of everyday Australians dealing with inflation, dealing with the cost of living crisis and sort of capturing that side of the market? Yeah, you hit a nail on the head. Interest was July 2022 and inflation was surging around the world, including in Australia. And it was a huge topical point in social media.

And interestingly enough, the big telcos in Australia, the biggest telcos, who are also the biggest employers in the country, they were raising prices, quoting inflation as the main reason. And we saw a consumer backlash against it because Australia already is one of the markets with the highest telco price plans in the world. We said we thought we could do something siding with customers. Within a span of three weeks, we went to market with a guerrilla marketing stunt where we said, anybody who comes to circles, we freeze their prices for the next 18 months and we are able to do it because we are technology enabled, we are able to absorb that cost because of our efficient operating model and we are freezing our prices.

And that had a huge sort of positive reflection in the market and we were covered by national media and we saw actually a business surge for the next few months coming from that activity. For us, I think as a business, when we can advocate for campaigns like the price freeze. Right. It just kind of sends, I think, a broader message to the wider audience that circles is there for you. Right. We've got your back.

While circles life is more market centric, the company's other product, Jetpack, targets global travellers and its marketing strategy is aimed at a broader demographic. Although we started in Singapore, we actually quickly expanded into a global audience pretty fast. And hence the angle and the marketing strategy behind Jetpack has to be a little bit different because we weren't just talking to like a single country anymore. We were actually talking to a universal audience.

That being a universal audience, we have to take care of the cultural nuances, the diversity, the languages, and the types of messaging that would actually resonate versus just talking to Singapore or talking to Australia. So how do you do that? And does the playbook change? We have lifted a huge part of circles marketing playbook. Fast paced, unconventional, numbers driven, for sure.

Jetpack then crafted our own version of our playbook, which is relatability, reliability, as well as part rebellious. For its launch, the company joined forces with an unconventional partner. We were brainstorming about how to go about getting jetpack to the market. The idea was to do something that's associated with travel and exploration, and all the Pokemon fans out there will know a big part of Pokemon is about discovery, exploration, and adventure.

So the Pokemon company approached us for a partnership. They really resonated with circles as a brand, and they thought it'll be a good partner, and it aligns with the Pokemon core audience. We did actually a full on event together with Pokemon that was called dare to room, and dare to room was actually a competition almost where we ran experiential activities around key areas where our target market was. And that was pretty well received, not just for our generation of millennials or Gen Zs. We even had, like, kid activities, family activities. So I think that was a very holistic campaign.

All in all, speaking more generally across jetpack as well as circle life, you guys started off right, being bold, being unconventional. But I'm just wondering, in all of these years, does it get harder and harder to be bold and unconventional? Of course, as the market evolves, we know that if we continuously go down the same route of what we were doing from 2016, it will not work today. So I think as a brand, whether it's a chatbag or circles life, we have to continuously now re innovate ourselves to find new ways to be bold.

The company also recently went through a rebranding. What was the thinking behind that? The thinking was really about this next five years, and we wanted to come to the world and say, look, we are really here to set the agenda for this telco industry. You know, everyone talks about telco to tech core transformation, where we're the ones leading it, we're the ones doing it, not just ourselves, but also working with different operators in the world.

And we want to do it at a global stage. So that's how we wanted to come to the world and represent ourselves differently, given what we had achieved, especially in the last five years. So circles now, tech company or telco company or both? I would say that it starts with what do we want to do with this industry?

We are here to reimagine this industry. And I think the key part of reimagining this industry is actually the software. The telco companies have not been able to compete with the Netflixs and YouTubes of the world is because their technology is outdated. And unless you take out the technology and build a modern Internet architecture, you can't really compete.

So it sounds like you're saying tech company. Yes. Ten years. Now, what does the next ten years hold for you? What is the goal? So, ten years. Next ten years, we want to be called the company that was launched in Singapore with a very ambitious agenda of changing the industry.

And we're now the undisputed leader in actually doing this digital transformation of this industry. You know, if you pick up the phone, call anyone in this industry, if they say that, then we would have achieved our mission for the next ten years.

Ramese, great to speak to you. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for having me.

Technology, Innovation, Leadership, Digital Transformation, Customer Experience, Disruptive Marketing, Cnbc International