Lifestyle marketing can take a company only so far. And in an economic environment where maintaining a lifestyle has become a challenge to say the least, Boost Mobile has found the limit. In response, it has remade itself in its own image.
Launched in 2000 in Australia as a brand for young thrill seekers — surfers, skiers and skateboarders to name a few — Boost, like a halfpiper hitting his or her 30s, has decided the establishment has merit. The company has re-discovered there is value in creating value and that perhaps it has something serious to say about the market in which it operates. And it now believes loyalty comes not from lifestyle branding but from a quality customer experience.
But while its new message is serious — if not the messaging — and its lifestyle branding may lose some relevance, Boost hasn’t exactly sold out to the man. The company seems to have traded in the surfer-dude for a little of that ‘60s “don’t trust the man attitude.” Its new-found respect for the establishment goes only so far. Boost is now standing in opposition to that establishment, burning the flag of wireless contracts and standing up for the rights of prepay customers everywhere.
And it is doing so with talking pigs that eat ham and red-haired gals who prefer things au natural — to the extreme. It you haven’t already seen Boost’s new ad campaign, you should. It’s Super Bowl worthy. The bottom line is that Boost is playing it straight with prepay customers and telling them that, like the situations in their commercials, hidden fees in an advertised pricing plan are just wrong. The company wasn’t first to offer a flat rate monthly plan, but it was the most adamant about the meaning of “flat rate.”
“Fifty dollars a month means 50 dollars,” said Kelly Owens St. Julian, vice president of customer management at Boost Mobile. And by that she means there are no hidden fees, no added taxes, and no surprises.
Boost is making it easier for customers to predict their costs by eliminating the potential surprise of a roaming charge, activation fee or other overcharges. In doing so, Boost is acknowledging and going after a growing set of potential customers now considering prepay as an option not because they are in a credit crunch or in a low income bracket, but because they have heard the clarion call of this economy and want to manage their money better.
“It’s not just the youth and low income [market] watching their wallets and trying to be more financially savvy... with this economy people are looking for better value-based options and they are starting to understand that prepay lets you manage your money with more flexibility,” Owens St. Julian said, adding that the U.S. market is starting to catch on to the mindset that using prepay doesn’t mean you have money management issues.
