Virgin Mobile Australia

Virgin Mobile Australia Pty Ltd

Type	Subsidiary of Optus
Industry	Telecommunications
Founded	31 October 2000
Headquarters	Sydney, Australia
Key people	Sir Richard Branson, co-founder Sue Bailey, CEO Michael Seymour, CFO
Products	Prepaid and Postpaid Mobile Phones, Broadband
Employees	400 (2008)
Parent	Optus
Website	Virgin Mobile Australia

Virgin Mobile Australia (VMA) is a telecommunications company based in Sydney, Australia. They sell through over 3500 retail outlets, including flagship stores in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, as well as via telesales and web-based stores.

VMA offers pre-paid, monthly and CAP plans for mobile phones. It also has two wireless broadband products: Broadband At Home and Mobile Broadband.

History

VMA was founded in October 2000, as a 50/50 business partnership between Virgin Mobile UK and Optus. VMA was Australia's first Mobile Virtual Network Operator. In this case the arrangement was to use the Optus network infrastructure but with Virgin management of all aspects of the customer experience including branding of products, customer service and billing.

In 2002, Virgin Mobile UK increased its shareholding to 74.15 per cent after Optus refused to inject more cash into the operations. Optus was reported to have lost A$116 million from the operation since the joint venture began.

At the end of 2005, VMA claimed over 300,000 customers.

In January 2006, Optus bought all other shares in the business, and VMA became a wholly owned subsidiary of Optus. A long-term licensing agreement is now in place for the business to continue trading under the Virgin brand.

In April 2006, VMA was merged with SIMplus and M8, other Optus subsidiaries. The new entity, still trading as Virgin Mobile Australia, now claims a customer base of over 500,000 customers.

In April 2010, shortly after attaining 1 million customers, VMA made big changes by replacing former CEO Peter Bithos with new chief Sue Bailey and appointed Michael Seymour as CFO.

Products

VMA offers pre-paid, monthly and CAP plans for mobile phones. Their online-only prepaid product, Bean Counter has won Australian Money Magazine 2007 Best of the Best Gold Medal for Low-User plans.

These products include all modern telecommunications features such as mobile phone calls, SMS, Multimedia Messaging Service, voicemail, international calls, global roaming, ringtones and Java games.

In April 2007, VMA launched its 3G service including video calling, mobile web browsing, email and data services.

In August 2007, Virgin Mobile launched the Virgin Broadband (Australia) service, offering two products: Broadband at Home (a bundle service including a fixed phone equivalent plus broadband), and Mobile Broadband (a portable USB modem). Both products utilise the Optus 3G wireless network.

In August 2008, VMA became the fourth major telco in Australia to begin selling the new Apple iPhone 3G.

Advertising campaigns

Since its inception, VMA has been associated with several innovative and award-winning advertising campaigns, as perhaps expected for a company connected to a very strong international brand.

• Warren This campaign was set as a dodgy dating video in which 'lovable loser' Warren was desperately searching for a date - he struggled even tho it cost only 5c to text him. He got interest from a male called Richard, which was a fun poke at Virgin founder Richard Branson. This campaign won the Grand Prix Lion award at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival 2004.
• 5c Campaign This campaign introduced a character known as 5c, a rapper of small but rotund proportions, who by his name was clearly a parody of rap artist 50 cent. This campaign won the Titanium Lion award at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival 2005.
• Enjoy Our Rates Responsibly Campaign This campaign utilised the celebrity Jason Donovan in a guerrilla marketing style campaign. It began with deliberately planted internet pictures of Jason supposedly trying to sell his 4WD, with a sign on it clearly showing his personal mobile phone number. The campaign centered on the phrase 'Do Not Text Jason D on 0403xxxxxx', as well as the theme of 'enjoy text responsibly', with of course the exact opposite intention. It won several awards including the Lions Direct - Gold at the 2006 Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival.
• A Fair Go For All Campaign This campaign saw the introduction of both the 'Fair Go' mobile plans and the quirky character Robin Da Hood, definitely a parody of Robin Hood. Robin Da Hood has several adds on television and has so far been quite effective at drawing attention to Virgin's more relaxed, fun-loving side. This is an on-going advertising campaign and is yet to receive any awards.

Flickr advertising issue

VMA's 2007 national advertising campaign - 'Are You With Us Or What?' - has used images from Yahoo's popular image sharing site, Flickr, without the consent of the subjects, resulting in media speculation about the possibility of legal conflict. The uploaders did give permission for the use of the photo by assigning the Creative Commons license to the photos. One of the uploaders, Molly Herzschlag, stated on her weblog that, "What they (Virgin Mobile) failed to do was get permission from the people in the photos ... Not sure what the next step will be legal-wise, if any, but I'm looking into it ... This is not the kind of famous I had in mind."

Corporate sponsorships

VMA are the major sponsor of the Australian V Festival - a major music festival held in Sydney, Gold Coast, Melbourne, and Perth.

VMA also sponsor local community aid organisations Stretch-a-family and South Sydney Youth Services.

See also

• Virgin Mobile
• Virgin Broadband (Australia)

External links

• Virgin Mobile Australia
• Virgin Broadband