Telecom-owned Skinny Mobile has had a fairly schizophrenic first few years, shifting from a youth brand with a big focus on events and social media to a value brand with more focus on traditional channels. It’s also had a few different big cheeses and launched a number of different brand campaigns through Saatchi & Saatchi and, most recently, Young & Shand. But now it’s appointed DNA as its lead brand and marketing agency after a “thorough review of its business and brand strategy”.
DNA’s existing digital customer experience relationship with Skinny will expand to include strategy, brand, customer experience and communications and the agency will lead a consortium including The Collective (creative), Platform 29 (retail/trade), Lily & Louis (PR and social) and Dynamo (media). It will not be working with Young & Shand anymore.
“Skinny is a brand with huge potential that we can convert into business growth with the right consumer engagement and experiences using this consortium of talented partners,” says Ross Parker, who was appointed as the replacement for Paul Taylor late last year.
Skinny does not release customer numbers or revenue figures, and when asked if they would now, Skinny spokesperson Charlotte White said “unfortunately I cannot disclose numbers or figures as that info is shareholder sensitive”. The closest it got was in a release about Telecom’s deal with JB Hi-Fi, where it said Skinny “continues to gain momentum in the prepay market after its rebrand in July last year”. But for Telecom Skinny is more than just a revenue generator. One of its main roles is to take some heat out of competitors’ offers, particularly 2degrees, which has taken a big chunk of the prepay market, and dropping the price for a relatively small part of the business like Skinny doesn’t cost Telecom anywhere near as much as it would if its much larger parent company had to drop its prices.
Last week, Skinny launched a new website developed by DNA in conjunction with Silverstripe.
