Cell Firms Woo Gays, Potheads

You gotta like the headline from this article in the RED HERRING about a survey from Danish firm Strand Consult that recommends mobile operators need to target narrower audiences with multiple brands to stay competitive.

The report said, “For the largest mobile operators in the world, it has even been a goal to create one single super-brand that should work across national, regional, and global areas—in the same way as the major religions that exist across the world today. But this infatuation in a single-brand strategy seems to be losing momentum.”

Examples of further segmenting the audience include Sonofon, a Danish mobile operator, which has a discount brand, CBB Mobil, a women’s brand, Kvinders.net, and on Thursday launched Gaymobile. In addition, earlier this month, Dutch PhoneMe launched a sub-brand targeted at cannabis users — PePtalk —w ith the motto: “Pep Your Addiction.”

Charles Golvin at Forrester Research, said “When a technology or service begins to reach some kind of saturation level, then the providers start competing on a very different level, having to go after their competitor’s market instead of trying to acquire new customers. We’re going to see a lot more separate brands launching under the same service providers.”

“Larger carriers tend to think in segments like value or high-end, consumer or enterprise. And those are much bigger segments than what MVNOs are targeting,” added Golvin.