DiGi’s iPhone Plan Leak: Was it the Real Deal?

So did DiGi (or its ad agency) leaked out DiGi’s iPhone plans one day before the official launch date? And was it deliberate?

Short answer: DiGi leaked it out and it was very deliberate.

Today, DiGi’s going to give the official word on its iPhone plans. Although a whole lot of you have been eagerly waiting for the launch of this, the real humdinger was, and probably still is, DiGi’s purported leak of the said plans one day before its official launch.

Many were wondering as to how such a (alleged) major faux pas could happen. Some were quick to point fingers to DiGi’s ad and creative agency for the leak but we smelt something fishy…and boy was it rotten.

We were on to DiGi’s sneaky PR ploy…
From our observations, it is looking very likely that the whole leak thing was nothing more than a sham. Why, You ask? Allow us to present the following case.

First of all…the sources
The word of the leak first broke out HERE and then HERE and finally HERE. After that, the now infamous three FA JPGs have already made its way to every nook and cranny of the Malaysian cyberspace via Twitter, Facebook and some blogs with people running around the streets screaming “Leak! Leak! Leak!” (Ok, that last part was a lame joke).

You’ll quickly notice that none of these blogs have nothing remotely related to telco, they are not run by newspapers neither are they run by journalist. It kind of makes you wonder how three seemingly unrelated people with very different blogs have the same information. Ok, so maybe they knew somebody, who knew somebody, who knew somebody BUT to get this kind of material is like getting gold bullion from a complete stranger.

Why would the source leak such an important piece of information to unknown, unrelated bloggers? Why not go to the papers straight? Why not leak it to us?!

If we didn’t run this blog and we had this kind of info, the first thing we’d do is pass it to the papers. If we were like these three people who are not related to the industry, there would be very little to no implication to us, so if we wanted to be famous, why not go all the way to? Right?

Well, that’s because they’ve been told what to do. Furthermore, nobody questioned the credibility of these three blogs, in fact one blog just had a single posting and it was about the DiGi iPhone plans. So if you went out in the open declaring that this is legit info that you’re pedaling, you must have, to a certain degree a level of confidence that the info you got is the real deal. Given the situation, this level of confidence can only come if you were told from the get go what you need to do and what role you’ll be playing in this ploy.

Second…DiGi’s reaction
From its Twitter response to the chaos that ensues after the “leak”, we could almost see DiGi’s digital team, the marketing guys and the product development people falling off their chairs laughing at their prank.

C’mon guys, you’re obviously overdoing it in the dramatic shock department, next time if you want to do the same stunt, tone it down a tad ok.

Thirdly…the timing
To us leaking the information just one day before the launch date is too much of a coincidence. What’s the point? Let’s not kid ourselves here, there is really not much Maxis or anyone else can do at that point to counter DiGi’s plan.

It may be good for prospective customers to know but since DiGi’s pre-booking has also been closed, it’s really not much of a use to them as well; plus those who want to know will know about the plans today after the launch anyway. So what is the point?

Which brings us to one conclusion, that the information was leaked out as a PR stunt.

Bottom line…because we are already at the bottom of this blog post
It appears DiGi has a leg, an arm and then some over Maxis in terms of value and pricing for it’s iPhone plans – that’s a fact. There’s no denying that DiGi’s plan undercuts Maxis’ in terms of price and value by some margin.

But what DiGi did with the pseudo leak thing…we thought that was rather underhanded and misleading; and something that leaves a rather bad taste in our mouths (read: not nice of you DiGi to do something like this).

So DiGi, next time you want to pull a stunt like this, make sure you pay attention to the details ok.