At an event today at Cell C’s headquarters in Johannesburg, the company’s Chief Commercial Officer Jose Dos Santos presented a new branded pre-paid offering from the cellular provider. Launching in partnership with Red Bull Mobile, a mobile offering which launched with Cell C in 2011, is a pre-paid SIM card which carries an unusual range of benefits for its target market.
The first unusual part of this package is the pricing of the SIM card. At a time when most cellular SIM cards cost less than a Rand, Cell C will be rolling out the Red Bull Mobile offer for an introductory price of R99, after which it will rise to R149 per SIM card. The rationalisation for the pricing is in the extra content that users will be offered.
The Red Bull SIM card will not be receiving any pre-paid airtime but it will get 200MB of data per month over a period of 12 months. The package also comes with two physical music CDs from Red Bull Studios Cape Town, reflecting the intended target market for this product. Throughout the presentation Dos Santos emphasised that the new Red Bull Mobile offer is aimed at the younger sector of the market, notably those in the 19 to 24 year old age bracket, even though, Dos Santos said, this would represent a “very niche market”.
Other benefits to go along with the Red Bull Mobile package will be: the same Supa-Charge bonuses Cell C pre-paid customers receive on recharging their accounts, free access to music downloads, apps, wallpapers and other content through Red Bull Mobile’s online portal (though users will still be charged for data required to conduct the downloads) and then “exclusive” competitions and discounts.
An example given of the discounts that users would receive was 40% off merchandise and clothing from Red Bull’s online store, while users will also be eligible for competitions. The first competition’s prize was let slip by Dos Santos and it entails sending two couples to the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix event in November this year. Also mentioned was a chance to attend the Winter X-Games in Aspen, Colorado.
Whether this offer will net Cell C additional pre-paid subscribers remains to be seen but the company appears very confident in the new offering, hinting that there will be further changes to their offerings down the line. A Red Bull post-paid offering will supposedly be introduced in November this year and there may be other, unspecified, alterations on the way.
