Skinny's new aggressive ad campaign

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Skinny's new aggressive ad campaign

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#1092616 20-Jul-2014 19:26

ajw:
sbiddle:
ajw:
sbiddle:
ajw: @sbiddle They're also creating growing discontent with their business customers who can't get unlimited calling for $40 per month per connection.

Please give details as a few friends were looking at this plan.

www.skinny.co.nz has them

I was referring to your statement that @sbiddle:They're also creating growing discontent with their business customers who can't get unlimited calling for $40 per month per connection.

I'm not sure what else there is to say other than what I posted above - there is dissatisfaction at Telecom from some business customers who are paying a lot more than $40 for flat rate connections and wanting to know why they can't pay that price with Telecom.

Them's the breaks, nothing preventing some of these smaller companies switching. Rather than being locked into a 24 Month contract for a subsidised handset I would prefer to be on prepay anyday. To each his own.

Yeah, If I had a (smaller) company I would probably switch to it

You can setup auto topups, and also get GST reciepts from their site, And with their new website with the 'Skinny Dashboard' You can control and view up to 9 accounts using the same login. Pretty nifty

NonprayingMantis

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#1092618 20-Jul-2014 19:35

sbiddle:
ajw:
sbiddle:
ajw: @sbiddle They're also creating growing discontent with their business customers who can't get unlimited calling for $40 per month per connection.

Please give details as a few friends were looking at this plan.

www.skinny.co.nz has them

I was referring to your statement that @sbiddle:They're also creating growing discontent with their business customers who can't get unlimited calling for $40 per month per connection.

I'm not sure what else there is to say other than what I posted above - there is dissatisfaction at Telecom from some business customers who are paying a lot more than $40 for flat rate connections and wanting to know why they can't pay that price with Telecom.

It's a little like going to a Porsche dealer and complaining that the Ford garage down the road was selling a car for $30k, so why can't I buy a new Porsche for that much!

the (obvious) answer from Telecom Buiness team would be something like

"sure, we could do it for $40, but then you'd have to give up the access to the business hub stores, personal account manager, shorter queues in the call centre/ You won't get an invoice each month either, making tax time a pain in the butt, you get less flexibility with payments, you'll often find your mobile runs out of credit halfway through the month. If that's cool with you then here is website you need to go to if you want to sign up. www.skinnymobile.co.nz good luck!"

Yabanize

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#1092619 20-Jul-2014 19:40

It's a little like going to a Porsche dealer and complaining that the Ford garage down the road was selling a car for $30k, so why can't I buy a new Porsche for that much!

the (obvious) answer from Telecom Buiness team would be something like

"sure, we could do it for $40, but then you'd have to give up the access to the business hub stores, personal account manager, shorter queues in the call centre/ You won't get an invoice each month either, making tax time a pain in the butt, you get less flexibility with payments, you'll often find your mobile runs out of credit halfway through the month. If that's cool with you then here is website you need to go to if you want to sign up. www.skinnymobile.co.nz good luck!"

Running out of credit shouldn't be an issue as they have an auto topup system which can top up at a set time each week or month, Or when the balance gets below a certain amount, You can retrieve invoices for all of the auto topups from the website, The $40 covers all your texts and calls to nz and australia and voicemail, The only other things are calls to countries outside NZ and aus and MMS. There is no such thing as data overage on skinny, if you run out you have to buy more, which is how it should be rather than getting a several hundred dollar bill

Yabanize

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#1092658 20-Jul-2014 20:20

Just saw a really short ad on TV before.

It was just the part about 'since telecom has a great network skinny just uses that, so its telecom but cheaper prices' Is telecom trying to push its prepay customers on to skinny?

eXDee

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#1092707 20-Jul-2014 21:39

Personally i'd consider skinny if:
1) They had carry over data like 2degrees - I suspect this will come soon since the copied the carry over minutes.
2) The telecom network stopped being so useless. Good example is last night in Ohakune, it wasn't even a very busy weekend at the mountain and yet the network was next to useless in the evening - i couldn't even send simple messages on IM platforms.
It worked for me when i got onto the fringe 4G coverage there, but thats barely receivable when you aren't outdoors.

sbiddle:
freitasm:

Their marketing probably bet a lot of people don't know about Skinny and Telecom's relationship.

They're also creating growing discontent with their business customers who can't get unlimited calling for $40 per month per connection.

Sub brands have always been a dumb idea from a marketing perspective, companies only create them out of desperation which in itself is an admission their a) business model or b) brand isn't a good one.

Funny you should say this, i know a family that runs a home business and has all members of the family on very expensive business calling plans with unlimited calling between all family members, and they pay heaps for it.

They are swapping to skinny after being informed that its the same network, they can manage multiple accounts now, get unlimited calling, get GST receipts and pay a heap less. Plus usage per month is a heap more flexible.

Telecom business tried to keep them by offering them a bunch of free phones on 24 month contracts (nothing special, just standard offers). Good example of a cannibalised customer that would have otherwise stayed with telecom business (they can't go with 2degrees or vodafone, fringe signal).

Yabanize

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#1092713 20-Jul-2014 21:45

eXDee:
sbiddle:
freitasm:

Their marketing probably bet a lot of people don't know about Skinny and Telecom's relationship.

They're also creating growing discontent with their business customers who can't get unlimited calling for $40 per month per connection.

Sub brands have always been a dumb idea from a marketing perspective, companies only create them out of desperation which in itself is an admission their a) business model or b) brand isn't a good one.

Funny you should say this, i know a family that runs a home business and has all members of the family on very expensive business calling plans with unlimited calling between all family members, and they pay heaps for it.

They are swapping to skinny after being informed that its the same network, they can manage multiple accounts now, get GST receipts and pay a heap less. Plus usage per month is a heap more flexible.

Telecom business tried to keep them by offering them a bunch of free phones on 24 month contracts (nothing special, just standard offers). Good example of a cannibalised customer that would have otherwise stayed with telecom business (they can't go with 2degrees or vodafone, fringe signal).

And Both the $16 and $30 have unlimited calling between other skinny mobiles. The $40 one is unlimited to NZ and AUS although it only has 250mb data which you could add 300mb on for $10 or $20 for 1gb

NonprayingMantis

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#1092714 20-Jul-2014 21:45

eXDee:
sbiddle:
freitasm:

Their marketing probably bet a lot of people don't know about Skinny and Telecom's relationship.

They're also creating growing discontent with their business customers who can't get unlimited calling for $40 per month per connection.

Sub brands have always been a dumb idea from a marketing perspective, companies only create them out of desperation which in itself is an admission their a) business model or b) brand isn't a good one.

Funny you should say this, i know a family that runs a home business and has all members of the family on very expensive business calling plans with unlimited calling between all family members, and they pay heaps for it.

They are swapping to skinny after being informed that its the same network, they can manage multiple accounts now, get GST receipts and pay a heap less. Plus usage per month is a heap more flexible.

Telecom business tried to keep them by offering them a bunch of free phones on 24 month contracts (nothing special, just standard offers). Good example of a cannibalised customer that would have otherwise stayed with telecom business (they can't go with 2degrees or vodafone, fringe signal).

The amount of people this would apply to (coverage for telecom but nothing else) would be minimal.
A much bigger volume of people would be those who could switch to vf or 2d and, by switching them to skinny, at least keeps some revenue instead of losing the whole thing.

I'm sure telecom can see how many customers are switching from telecom to skinny and how many coming/going to other networks. If it was too much, they would have shut skinny down a long time ago.

As Steve jobs said (paraphrasing) "better to cannibalise yourself than let someone else do it"

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insane

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#1092720 20-Jul-2014 22:05

sbiddle:

Sub brands have always been a dumb idea from a marketing perspective, companies only create them out of desperation which in itself is an admission their a) business model or b) brand isn't a good one.

Clearly these guys didn't get the memo

. Only posting as my wife use to do marketing for Kraft, and they have so so many sub brands.

freitasm

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#1092756 20-Jul-2014 23:19

But most of those are brand names, not company names.

pchs

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#1092775 21-Jul-2014 06:46

freitasm: But most of those are brand names, not company names.

Skinny/Bigpipe etc are all brand names of Telecom aren't they? They don't appear to exist as their own Company's on the company's website, and their seem to either report into the executive Team at Telecom, so all these company's ultimately report to the Telecom CEO.

Jetstar for example seems to be an entirely separate company just owned 100% by Qantas - it has its own CEO reporting to a board whereas Skinny/Bigpipe's CEO reports to Telecom's CEO (which would assume that they will need to work in a way that benefits the overall Telecom business) and have their own published financials. In almost all cases they will consume from their parent where possible, I.E Bigpipe uses Telecom International for internet bandwidth (Don't think it peers at the Citylink exchanges etc) and I suspect that TDV's WSA with Chorus would somehow be under the Telecom one (being part of Telecom they will be bound by separation agreements) They would need to be a separate company to have their own WSA

I would assume that Bigpipe and Skinny are brands just the same as Gen-I, Telecom International, Telecom Retail etc, all part of the overall Telecom Group.

As someone mentioned the goal (IMHO) would almost certainty pivot around not cannibalising their existing customerbase, a huge one here for Telecom is POTS, so it would not surprise me to see a Bigpipe or Skinny POTS discount service at some stage too.. The whole we can save by not spending on marketing is just that, marketing fluff...

Disclaimer! this is just what I can see from public info, so happy to be proven wrong (and I'm sure Bigpipe/Skinny will soon do this if I am!)

MikeB4

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#1092786 21-Jul-2014 07:26

I have had two dealings with, (and for want of a different adjective) Skinny sales staff and they were very unprofessional, rude and acted like complete numpty's. Would go near them for any reason.

sbiddle

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#1092788 21-Jul-2014 07:32

pchs:
As someone mentioned the goal (IMHO) would almost certainty pivot around not cannibalising their existing customerbase, a huge one here for Telecom is POTS, so it would not surprise me to see a Bigpipe or Skinny POTS discount service at some stage too.. The whole we can save by not spending on marketing is just that, marketing fluff...

That's not going to happen because POTS is a wholesale offering. Telecom selling a wholesale product to Skinny for less than the wholesale rate it sells it's POTS product to other telcos for would just be an open invite for a Commerce Commission investigation.

deadlyllama

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#1092790 21-Jul-2014 07:42

nigelj:
charsleysa: @sbiddle is skinny going to be another boost mobile?

Boost Mobile was AFAIK a 'virtual brand' at one point (actually was there two Boost Mobiles in NZ?)

During the 027/CDMA days I recall Boost Mobile was a Virtual Brand for Telecom where a couple of low-priced phones were dual branded and the $10 top-ups were printed as 'Boost Mobile' but worked on any Telecom prepaid connection.

During the 025/TDMA days (and this is where I'm fuzzy) was there another Boost Mobile (or was it named something else?) which was a The Warehouse operation??? That was kinda autonomous from Telecom? (Honestly I can't remember that far back)

Either way, Skinny is pretty autonomous from Telecom, Skinny is to Telecom Retail in Mobile, as what Bigpipe is to Telecom Retail is in Broadband... (i.e. both owned by Telecom and/or/via Telecom Digital Ventures, but like Bigpipe has to sign up to Chorus like any other RSP, I imagine Skinny has to wholesale agree to use Telecom Mobile equipment like any other wholesale user (like Digital Island etc) else face the wrath of the Com Com)

The 025/DAMPS brand was Pulse. The National Bank offered me a cheap Pulse phone when I was a student. I think The Warehouse sold prepay 025 phones too.