Skinny boss aims to widen appeal amid bloodbath

Paul Taylor says Skinny is aiming to win customers from rivals, particularly 2degrees. Photo / Dean Purcell

Youth market alone won't get budget brand to where it wants to be, says head of Skinny mobile

As cellphone firms fight for customers, the New Zealand market has become "a bit of a bloodbath", Telecom boss Simon Moutter said recently.

In the middle of that fray is Paul Taylor, chief executive of Telecom's low-cost mobile marque, Skinny.

Taylor, 41, is charged with ensuring it's Skinny's cellphone rivals which are haemorrhaging revenue and customers.

He has had just over a year in the job after taking over from founding Skinny boss Paul O'Shannessey.

It is now Taylor's mission to beef up the appeal of Telecom's "flanking" mobile brand.

Launched early last year amid social media and youth event-based campaigns - including sponsoring an attempt on the world skinny-dip record - Skinny has lately pulled back from this approach.

Taylor says the youth market, particularly in Auckland, had been the firm's core focus "and to be fair we did it".

"We've delivered on the targets that we've set but we have big aspirations.

"The long and the short of it is to hit those aspirations we need to have a much bigger breadth of appeal to New Zealand's savvy-based customers, end of story, and that is beyond New Zealand's youth."

Taylor says young people are often the first to find cheap deals and for the rest of the market Skinny is a "best-kept secret".

"If we had a failing, I think we've gone too hard towards the youth and maybe alienated ourselves to the rest of the market, so in a way it's a repositioning job."

Backed by a new bold orange logo, Skinny this week launched a quirky advertising campaign featuring identical twins Rick and Nick.

Customer plans have been altered to include monthly plans alongside the weekly plans the company introduced 18 months ago.

The goal is to take customers from competitors without cannibalising Telecom's flagship brand.

"The proof of the pudding, I guess, is in the results and we are winning almost 80 per cent of our customers coming from other networks," Taylor says.

Taylor's 13 years working at British telcos have not only influenced his accent - a Kiwi-English "mongrel" hybrid - but also his ideas on how the brand can work.

British mobile operator and former employer O2 gave him an appreciation of simple, consistent, clear messages and the value that can be added by a low-cost brand - in O2's case, sub-brand GiffGaff.

Headhunted to return home to a job at Telecom in 2009, Taylor says he has full autonomy "to have a crack" while running a lean operation reporting to Telecom's new Digital Ventures unit. Lean, says Taylor, has meant trimming a third of the staff, keeping costs low and efficiency high. It also means no company stores and a very small budget for capital expenditure.

Telecom has been coy about revealing exact numbers for Skinny, but Taylor says that at the end of the financial year in June it was on target.

In its sights are competitors, particularly 2degrees, which holds an estimated 11 per cent of the mobile market.

"To stop their momentum and start winning those customers back we'll be going fairly and squarely at them."

The goal for Taylor is to become a serious player in the marketplace.

"Ultimately success for me is hitting the numbers and gaining market share, particularly from 2degrees and then from Vodafone."