{"id":1537,"date":"2007-06-05T08:24:24","date_gmt":"2007-06-05T13:24:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/brand-unawareness-part-2\/"},"modified":"2007-06-05T08:24:24","modified_gmt":"2007-06-05T13:24:24","slug":"brand-unawareness-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/brand-unawareness-part-2","title":{"rendered":"Brand Unawareness, Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Gentlemen, our target market is. . . young people who don’t bother paying their bills!<\/a>”<\/p>\n

Apparently, those free-spending youths don’t care much for paying their cell-phone bills. A court motion filed on June 4 explains that Amp’d “experienced an unprecedented growth of subscribers” between November, 2006, and February after running ads on MTV about the wireless phone company’s lineup of mobile music and video content.<\/p>\n

Collecting payments from these subscribers proved to be a challenge, however. “Approximately 90% of the debtor’s customers were on 18-month service contracts,” according to the filing. “The debtor began to find a host of credit and collections problems (that) contributed ultimately to a liquidity crisis.” By May, the number of nonpaying customers reached 80,000. That’s nearly half of Amp’d’s current customer base of 175,000 subscribers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Funnily enough, the writer doesn’t quite the grok the contradiction in the following statement:<\/p>\n

Here’s why Verizon may want to pick up Amp’d on the cheap: Amp’d has been exceptionally successful in getting its subscribers to use data services, which are expected to become the wireless industry’s growth engine in the coming years. In the first quarter of 2007, Amp’d users downloaded twice as many videos, songs, and games as in the fourth quarter of 2006.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Which sounds great, except their customers didn’t bother paying their bills<\/em>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Gentlemen, our target market is. . . young people who don’t bother paying their bills!” Apparently, those free-spending youths don’t care much for paying their cell-phone bills. A court motion filed on June 4 explains that Amp’d “experienced an unprecedented growth of subscribers” between November, 2006, and February after running ads on MTV about the … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Brand Unawareness, Part 2”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-oN","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1477,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/strange-correspondence","url_meta":{"origin":1537,"position":0},"title":"Strange correspondence","author":"Gil","date":"April 27, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"This was waiting in my mail when I got back to the office this morning: At first, I thought it was one of the collage envelopes I receive from official VM buddy Paul Di Filippo. Then I noticed the postmark and thought, \"I don't remember Paul saying he had a\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":964,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/anti-midas","url_meta":{"origin":1537,"position":1},"title":"Anti-Midas","author":"Gil","date":"May 24, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Great (lengthy) article about the messed-up-edness of Paul Allen's Charter Communications. I think Paul Allen's greatest skill was his ability to be friends with Bill Gates back in the day. From a financial perspective, Charter has turned into one of the ugliest U.S. companies still in solvency. 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When Howard first announced his move to satellite radio, many asked me if I'd buy a receiver and pay $12.95 a month to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "suburbs"","block_context":{"text":"suburbs","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/suburbs"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5504,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/ad-it-up","url_meta":{"origin":1537,"position":3},"title":"Ad It Up","author":"Gil","date":"August 5, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I enjoyed this article about Cond\u00e9 Nast's new digital publishing guru\/savant, Scott Dadich. 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If the sutures hold up (read: if we\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Adventures in Rufus and\/or Otis"","block_context":{"text":"Adventures in Rufus and\/or Otis","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/adventures-in-rufus-and-or-otis"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5621,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/desk-jockey","url_meta":{"origin":1537,"position":5},"title":"Desk Jockey","author":"Gil","date":"October 6, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I keep ibuprofen and deodorant in my desk at the office. At Merrill Lynch, things worked a little differently: As he was being escorted out the door, according to an H.R. executive, Semerci asked that someone retrieve some money taped inside a drawer in his desk. 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