When it was announced that Tony Fernandez was going into the mobile business, my immediate thought was to link his latest venture to Virgin Mobile. After all the man appears to be modeling his entire career on Richard Branson and his business empire.
Talks of cronyism and links to the Rembau man aside, Fernandez might do better modeling Tune Talk against Blyk, a ground-breaking UK mobile MVNO (mobile virtual network operator) that was launched in last September and was also covered in this blog.
In essence, Blyk provides 43 free minutes and 217 free texts to its subscribers and get this, it’s only open to 16 – 24 year olds; a year younger or older and you’re kicked out. How the service remains free for them is that Blyk sends them no more than 6 SMS’ a day from advertisers and brands that the subscriber wants to hear from.
Very interesting win-win concept. The young user gets to interact with his/her favourite brands and the advertisers reach their target market in a way no other traditional media can.
Doubtless Tony Fernandez must have had some sort of content plan in mind when he appointed local celebrity DJ/musician Jason Lo as its CEO last year. If he models Tune Talk after Blyk, it could even have the potential to overturn staid incumbents like Maxis and especially Celcom from whom it buys talk time.
