Market Penetration by a Virgin Enterprise

It takes an enormous amount of chutzpah to even attempt to make a splash and be noticed in an arena filled with players who are winners in their own right, but Virgin Mobile has done exactly that. Richard Branson has taken his brassiness and used it to cut through the very heart of Indian prudishness and no-sex-please-we’re-Indians façade to achieve success in his very first foray into the Indian mobile phone service industry.

India is home to one of the largest mobile phone user base in the world. The country is already saturated with providers who are vying with one another both to sign up new users and to steal customers from the competition with new and enticing offers. Some GSM operators have even tied up with handset manufacturers to offer bundled services with perks while the two biggest CDMA operators in the country, Tata and Reliance, use their financial clout to launch marketing strategies that are designed to buy them a significant chunk of the mobile customer base.

The new era of globalization has made the world take notice of India’s booming and inviting market place, with enterprises hoping to get their foot in the door and grab a piece of the action for themselves. Virgin is not the first player to set foot on Indian telecom shores though; Orange, which was the first foreign company to set foot in the Indian mobile service market, bought out local firm BPL and christened it Hutch, only to have it taken over by international telecom giant Vodafone.

What makes Branson’s brand stand out is that it does not have the head start that Vodafone enjoys in the form of an existing customer base. Virgin Mobile thought long and hard before designing the perfect ad campaign to shake up and rattle Indian consumers who already face a difficult choice from the potpourri of players already in the field. The penetration strategy seems to have worked for this Virgin (pardon the intentional pun) because:

• The commercials are bold and brazen – they are based mostly on hitherto taboo subjects in the Indian media, homosexuality and phone sex being just a couple of examples. A girl hinting to her parents that she’s a lesbian has them falling head over heels to get her to go on a vacation with a guy – exactly what she wanted them to do; an innovative idea that captures the essence of the Virgin brand’s concept based on flashiness.
• Even though they’re based on sex, the commercials are done so tastefully that you feel like applauding rather than condemning them. They’re classy, not crass, a difference that makes this company stand out from others who use sex to sell their range of products.
• Some of the commercials are so audacious that they make you laugh out loud rather than feel offended even if they involve sex.
• And last but certainly not the least, Virgin Mobile is treading on virgin ground by offering to pay consumers for incoming calls – a concept that seems so daring when you consider the fact that consumers in the USA and other countries are paying providers for incoming calls.

Marketing is an art, one that requires a spark of genius and the skill of a mind reader. Judging by the reception to Virgin Mobile, Richard Branson has proved he’s a genius, yet again, this time in virgin territory.




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Heather Johnson is a regular commentator on the subject of online college degrees. She welcomes your feedback and potential job inquiries at heatherjohnson2323 at gmail dot com.