IIPM Ranked No. 1 B-School In Global Exposre - Zee...Richard Branson is banking on his ability to charm the young and stylish to make his mark‘Our first offering and the competition’s already seeing red…’ Now that’s what we call an entry, in Bollywood ishtyle. Yelling and shrieking its arrival, Virgin Mobile on March 10, took the readers of a leading Indian daily by surprise, when all the headlines on the first page were in the colour ‘red,’ instantly grabbing the eyeballs of all. What’s more, the ad became the talk of the town when the telecom company announced its whacky scheme of paying its subscribers for all the incoming calls that they receive.
With a host of telecom players already slugging it out, Virgin Mobile knew it would have to take a ‘hatke’ route. And here’s where the seeds were sowed to launch a mobile brand that revolves only around the youth. Prasad Narasimhan, CMO, Virgin Mobile explains, “Although there are many players, no one has been concentrating on this huge population, which has highest mobile usage. As a matter of fact, a youth talks twice more than the other people, SMSs around thrice as much and is also the first to try out any kind of VAS service.” So from day one, the strategy has been, to be ‘relevant to the youth,’ in everything that it does.
To be relevant to its target audience, apart from the traditional media, internet and outdoor have also been wisely deployed. Narasimhan further elaborates, “Rather than deploying the carpet bombing strategy, the idea is to be, where the youth is, like college campuses, movie halls, common hangout spots et al.” Even the schemes that Virgin Mobile is offering at present has been developed keeping in mind the young guns. It did not take much time for Virgin Mobile to unearth that the desi lads and lassies love to talk for hours on their ‘fone,’ but have limited pocket money for the same. And thus originated the idea of paying 10 paise for every 60 seconds of incoming call that they receive on their Virgin Mobile phone. “The response to this scheme has been overwhelming already,” avers Narasimhan. It gives them the freedom to bank the money, which can be used unconditionally (there is no asterisk that one can call from only a local number or just a Virgin Mobile). In the initial few weeks, Virgin Mobile was busy telling its customers ‘who they are.’ It is now slowly shifting its strategy to tell its customers that ‘what they can offer’ in terms of schemes. The next step will be to talk about the handsets that they would offer, as just like other CDMA players, Virgin Mobile too comes with bundled handsets.
While targetting the youth, VAS will eventually turn out to be a big differentiating factor. Till now Virgin Mobile has been offering simple VAS, which it has termed VBytes, but Narasimhan is quick to point out that Indian market at the moment is flooded with theme-driven VAS. “It would not be mere downloads that we seek to offer but breakthrough VAS options. Unless we do something breakthrough, we would be just another operator in the marketplace, avers Narsimhan, though not ready to divulge anything at the moment. Presently operators are spending huge chunks of money to promote their VAS services, so it would be interesting to watch out what Virgin Mobile plans to offer. But with its international experience, one would expect it to be a hatke kind of a service.
Surbhi ChawlaFor more articles, Click on
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IIPM Editorial, 2008
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