WARREN, N.J.—Virgin Mobile USA L.L.C. wants its users to have a sugar mama who will help them earn free airtime—and advertisers are stepping up to fill that parental role.
The youth-oriented prepaid brand is forging ahead where other service providers thus far have feared to tread, readying a service that will allow its users to earn free airtime by opting in to advertising. The deftly named Sugar Mama program is set to launch June 14, with three advertisers confirmed by Virgin Mobile USA: Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox, PepsiCo and Truth, the youth anti-smoking campaign run by the American Legacy Foundation. Virgin Mobile USA said it plans to continue to add to that line-up of “kindred spirit” marketers.
Users can sign up for the offering through Virgin Mobile USA’s Web site for three types of advertising: text messaging, video ads and questionnaires, and use those options to earn up to 75 free minutes of talk time per month. Customers will provide feedback on the ads themselves, which Howard Handler, chief marketing officer for Virgin Mobile USA, said was an important part of making the company’s young customer base feel as though they had a voice in how advertisers market to them.
“The very first thing we heard [from customers] was, `You’d better not spam me, you’d better not send any junk to me,”‘ Handler said. “We worked very, very hard to put something out there that we thought our customers would really enjoy.”
The exchange rate Virgin Mobile USA is using for mobile subscribers’ time is one free minute of airtime for watching a 30-second video spot; one minute for every two text messages received; and one minute for each minute spent answering a questionnaire-so a five-minute survey gets you five minutes of airtime. Depending the service, Virgin Mobile USA customers will interact with the ads on the PC or the handset.
“We’re basically trading attention span for engagement,” said Handler.
That engagement is guaranteed by a brief series of multiple-choice questions. In a demonstration of the video ad portion of Sugar Mama, the user answers one question about the content of the ad—which actor plays the main character in a movie trailer, for instance—then is bumped to a screen where the user can give feedback on the ad and answer a few questions related to the product, which could offer advertisers more insight into potential customers’ habits.
A demo ad for a wireless handset asked if the user owned a handset by the manufacturer, and which of four phone features they used most. A spot featuring a Virgin Mobile USA musical artist’s album asked users if they would buy the CD, and how they usually get new music (buying CDs or downloading them from online stores).
The users also get to rate the ad itself, on a scale ranging from “phenomenal” to “lame.” After the final available ad plays, a message pops up that reads, “Sorry honey, your Sugar Mama is out of sweets.”
According to the demo site, the text message component requires the user to read a text message and then send a reply with a short code in it; the user has three tries to get it right. The text messages sent and received are free. For the questionnaire portion, users are told ahead of time how long the questions are expected to take and, if they sign up for both video ads and questionnaires, will get a mix of the two.
The free minutes should show up in the user’s account in about an hour, according to the demo site.
Each of the components requires basic demographic information, such as age (users must certify that they are older than 13), gender and ZIP code of residence. Handler said that eventually, Virgin Mobile USA plans to provide advertisers with targeted access to users who have opted in: all of its female users, for example, or all its users in a particular ZIP code.
However, it doesn’t sound as if just anyone will be able to reach the Sugar Mama users—even if it’s likely that many advertisers will want to, given that Virgin Mobile USA has a customer base of about 4 million people, most of whom are younger than 34.
“There are certain advertisers that we really want to work with, and in some cases there’s probably some advertisers that we won’t work with because they won’t have a relevant message or relevant content for our customers,” Handler said. “We’re in a position to kind of allow some people and maybe not others.
“Not that we’re snobs,” he added judiciously.
Significantly, the service will not feature video spots streamed to handsets. Handler said that there were several factors in that decision, including the current state of streaming video as well as customer concerns. “We believe that the customer experience, even on the fastest of wireless broadband networks, is still spotty and poor, which really benefits neither the user or the advertiser,” Handler said. Virgin Mobile USA’s consumer research showed that its customers were “on their PCs all the time anyway,” Handler said, and they showed a distinct disinterest in signing up for a streaming-based service. They didn’t want streaming video to drain their batteries, and they “would rather watch a rich media experience on a bigger screen,” Handler said.
“The reality is that … this is a demographic that does not start with $300 to $500 video-streaming handsets,” he added.
