BT’s in the market for a low cost brand. What are the acquisition options?
This week the Financial Times reported that BT is weighing up the value of launching a new value sub-brand or making an MVNO acquisition. As stories go, this is significant for the market and indicates the growth potential of operator sub-brands and MVNOs right now, even in a busy market like the UK’s. BT ditched an excellent multi-brand strategy BT has been here before. At peak success, the stable included BT, EE, and Plusnet. The three brands represented three distinct opportunities to acquire more ‘traditional’ consumers (BT), to the more edgy and young (EE), to those prepared to go with a market challenger (Plusnet). But after a brand review last year EE became the lead consumer brand for fixed and mobile and Plusnet lost mobile from it’s portfolio. The original multi-brand strategy worked as BT, EE and Plusnet not only reached high numbers of consumers across different segments, but they also supported a multi-play strategy of fixed, broadband and mobile, something the other operator sub-brands such as SMARTY, giffgaff and Voxi could not offer at the time. But as we know, things change, resulting in BT walking away from a multi-play, multi-brand strategy and losing its low cost mobile offer...
