Ypulse Youth Marketing Mashup East: The Virgin Mobile Festival & Other Pro-Social Initiatives
Posted by meredith on 11-12-2008
Breaking News: Earlier today Virgin Mobile USA launched HY-TV, a new campaign to raise awareness of the one million homeless teens living in America today. This effort is the latest from Virgin's RE*Generation initiative, a movement to "empower a generation to help its own." We were lucky enough to hear all about HY-TV first-hand last week as part of a keynote presentation given by Ron Faris, Virgin Mobile's Director of Brand Development and Partnerships. See below for more details on the innovative campaign. And now on to the recap…
During Ron's truly dynamic presentation on Virgin Mobile’s latest pro-social initiatives, Mashup attendees were not only treated to exclusive insights on upcoming projects (more on that in a bit!), they actually got the chance to give one a test drive. Before his talk, Faris asked attendees to text the word "karma" to 68405. He then informed us that every message sent equaled a hoodie sweatshirt donated to a homeless youth care of American Eagle. The simple instruction and its big altruistic payoff (read: warm and fuzzy feeling) served as a perfect demonstration of the strategic thinking that's clearly behind all of Virgin's ongoing and upcoming plans…
The Brand: Virgin Mobile USA
- Joint venture between Sprint and Virgin
- Over 5 million subscribers
- Focused on 14-34 year olds male and female
- Fun, irreverent
- Alternative to contract plans
The Strategy
- Providing "superservice"
- Surprising and delighting customers at every turn
- Counting on the power of viral
The Virgin Mobile Festival
- 2 days, 40 bands, 35K attendees per day
- Over 25K branded giveaways
- Comprehensive onsite experience that included domes of activation where attendees could recharge (literally and figuratively), refresh and renew. Also onsite– hospitality angels dedicated to providing helpful info and "surprising and delighting" fans (i.e. providing sunscreen, spraying them with mist to help beat the heat)
- VIP Treatment: Virgin partnered with mobile social company Buzz'd to provide participating attendees with exclusive info and possible prizes (over 12% of attendees downloaded the app)
- RE*Generation/Pro-Social factor: fans could visit a Pro-Social Charity Dome featuring an art gallery of various artists’ visualizations of homeless youth. 20 charities were represented and over $180K was donated
More on HY-TV
- To demonstrate how Americans need to shift their priorities from reality TV to real issues, Virgin has taken popular shows and spun them with a homeless youth angle
- HY-TV shows include "American Idle," "Meal or No Meal," "The Simple Strife," "Life Swap," "My Street Sixteen" and "Project Runaway"
- Similar to the KARMA demonstration, viewers can text their donations to homeless youth programs that will receive 100% of the proceeds
Final Thoughts
To say the least, Virgin Mobile has done an impressive job of dreaming up innovative ways to reach their target audience. This can only bode well for their ability to leverage those same mobile marketing strategies that made the Virgin Mobile Festival such a booming success (in the face of a downward trend in music festival ticket sales to boot!), and spread awareness for a deserving cause.
Categorized under: 2008 Mashup East, Mobile