Mark Bridge writes:
Yesterday I spotted a new blog page from O2-supported MVNO giffgaff. The company’s head of digital marketing Rob Gotlieb announced the finished version of a promotional film – and mentioned the official voice of giffgaff, voiceover artist Tom Oldham (who, interestingly, was also the voice on Vodafone ads at one point). And for a moment I thought “Official voice? You what?”
And then I remembered that kingdoms had been lost for want of a horseshoe nail.
Of course, if giffgaff was little more than an off-the-peg MVNO with a nice voice and an animated film, it wouldn’t be worth talking about. But there’s much more going on behind the scenes. Not only does it plan to reward its customers for contributing to the 'giffgaff community', it’s already listening to those potential customers before a call has been made, a SIM card registered or a phone unlocked.
Initial thoughts about a fixed per-minute and per-text tariff rate are being reconsidered. Ideas about sharing company data via an application programming interface (API) infrastructure are being invited. giffgaff could even end up with a call centre where customers answer queries from other members.
At this stage, giffgaff doesn’t look like an organisation that’s polishing a... er... the unpolishable. It looks like a community that’s trying to think of everything – and is asking potential members if it’s forgotten anything. I can’t imagine it really wants any comparisons with Blyk… but it looks as though giffgaff could be the Blyk that works.