AME: Bates & Virgin Mobile on building a youth brand in India

Dheeraj Sinha, chief strategy officer at Bates 141 India, and Prasad Narasimhan, chief marketing officer at Virgin Mobile India, are presenting the case study titled 'Building a youth brand in a youthful country' on the first day of the AME Festival.

India has one of the youngest populations in the world with over 200 million people below the age of 25. Despite the sheer size of this market, Virgin Mobile found there were no established mainstream youth brands and took advantage of the opportunity to give the Indian youth a brand to call their own.

In appealing to their ability to tweak the rules and manoeuvre the country's traditional system to their advantage, Virgin Mobile positioned itself as a ‘partner in crime’, exhorting them to cleverly bypass the firewall of sanctions. In doing so they provided the country's youth with a real choice in mobile services.

Within two years, Virgin Mobile managed to establish itself as the first true brand for the youth market in India. In the process the campaign won many awards including Silver at the AMEs last year.

Click here for a list of confirmed AME speakers and their topics.

The AMEs is now in its eighth year and hailed as the region’s premier recognition of excellence in marketing effectiveness. A highly influential list of leading industry executives, brand pioneers and globally acclaimed marketing experts will take part in an unparalleled programme of challenging keynotes, dynamic panel discussions and informative breakout sessions. The AME Festival is Asia’s premier forum to discuss, debate and celebrate results driven marketing and innovation.