Don’t be stupid be crazy| Advantage zyaada

Is repositioning Virgin viable?

Richard Branson’s brat brands were never leaders in Low cost flying, credit cards or prepaid mobiles among other sectors it joined after launching itself as the imp icon of the new age, an Avatar to save the world from staid, mundane things like brands and winning ways that ranged from a youth stunt propelled Richard Branson in each launch to quick launches and purchases in disparate geographies in Europe, Asia and around the world.

While Virgin as a brand has become fairly consistent, with more meaningful characterisations of the same brand ethos in Delhi, Dambula and lastly even football fans in Detroit, it is now causing heartburn to its new owner in the US, Sprint. Sprint has already got a great thing going with a football inundated target audience, mobile NFL updates and more flip handsets than anyone else. It now also owns its own prepaid brand Boost with a distinctive campaign promotion and a simple enough takeaway. Apparently the Virgin portfolio may be destined for better ways with a rebinding that lets Sprint sell Boost as the prepaid card and gets back Virgin so that it can be made the mobile data option for the veritably largest data paying audience to tackle the iPhone revolution.

With an iPhone and an iPad, Apple has made up to $100 per month compulsory household data subscription spend, likely for more than 5 million households by the end of 2010. That means others not with iPhone friendly providers, like America’s largest Sprint.
The new Virgin Data unlimited campaign is apparently run by the old Virgin launch team from 2003. and the spend is less than $10 million

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To build its prepaid business, Sprint acquired Virgin Mobile to join its existing prepaid player, Boost. To differentiate the two properties, Virgin Mobile is going after data-obsessed mobile users.

“We saw a real opportunity to go after data, text and social networking that nobody was exploiting,” Mr. Stohrer said. “We had to shed the classic pay-as-you-go from the Virgin brand.”

Virgin Mobile is positioning itself as a prepaid service with a focus on flat-rate unlimited data, rather than minutes. Mother’s work, “Don’t Be Stupid, Be Crazy,” targeting 18- to 24-year-olds, launched late last week.