Virgin USA - Not dying a virgin

MOST READ
LATEST NEWS

Compare broadband and
mobile phone deals at Top10.com

EVENTS

4G World 2010 October 18 - 21, Chicago

4GWE Conference, Oct 4-6, Los Angeles

The Location Business Summit USA, 14-15 September, Crowne Plaza, San Jose

Advertize your telecoms job

JOBS

Mobile Industry & Technology Journalist - freelance

HOT TOPICS

Virgin USA - Not dying a virgin

By GUEST AUTHOR

Published: 25 April, 2003

This week, Virgin announced that just nine months after setting up operations in the US, it had attained a very respectable 500,000 users, thus quashing any hopes of detractors that its highly successful brand and 'brand based' UK MVNO operations could not be exported, especially following the failure of its Asian efforts last year.

At a Mobile Wholesale Conference in London only last month, a prominent consultant and analyst pronounced that he was expecting Virgin's US venture would fail, as many more did at a similar conference back in January 2002: They all cited the inability of Richard Branson and Virgin to export the so called, and all important, 'brand'.

And this is where Virgin US operations successes are not just a personal success for the group, but one for the mobile market, more importantly consumers, as a whole. It is not a well kept secret that most mobile operators hope the whole MVNO concept will just die a spontaneous death and somehow go away, just as they do Wi-Fi, 3G debt, churn and the continuing problem of possibly the consistently worst customer service experience of any industry, ever.

Ever since Virgin's UK success we have heard nothing more than how MVNOs are all about and nothing more than brands. Brands around the world have blindly considered going mobile, MNOs have started throwing millions on branding, and whether one attended an industry conference back in the furore-filled times of 2000 and 2001, the conferences mentioned above, or read virtually any mobile wholesale business plan in existence, the consistent message is branding. Brand is, if you like, the bug bear of mobile telecoms, that intangible that drops into every conversation and investors need to hear, yet none have the slightest idea what it means if you scratch the surface. It's a bit like 'holistic approach' for consultants, or the concept of 'torque' for motor journalists; it is this intangible enigma no-one understands.

For mobile operators and other detractors, this is not important, in fact they prefer it that way; they can pass off Virgin's success as something 'inexplicable' and avoid the embarrassing issue of disastrous customer service and 3G with shareholders, and even get them to approve a few hundred million to throw on Formula 1 and football sponsorship; all in the name of the brand. They can also assume that a brand will only have niche appeal, and not be transferable or replicated elsewhere. What is more, anyone in the related industries who read the Virgin press release this week would have ignored the 20 references to its success based on customer service, 10 references to existing 'boring' technologies (CDMA, ringtones, messaging), and the many references to the success it has made of the pre-pay, youth market. Yes, the only reference most industry observers would have seen is the one reference to brand. They would then have gone back to musing about MMS, 3G, drive on business customers and getting all those pre-pay customers onto a contract, in a blind effort to solve the industry crisis. Oh, yes, and make a note to Dictaphone: "must spend more money on brand".

Pages: 1 | 2