SUMMARY By involving the consumer in the development of vending machine support and by a determination to find a benefit for picture messaging, planning uncovered a consumer insight which led to an original and motivating vending machine support proposition. This in turn led to differentiated and highly creative vending machine support which spoke directly to its intended audience and revealed a role of picture messaging that singled out Virgin Mobile as the one brand that really understood its audience and how they messaged one another. Its relevance to the planning debate is that pushing to find consumer benefits, even when a brand has a personality that is enough to distinguish it, will produce more relevant, motivating and better creative work.

FINDING A ROLE FOR MMS – LEARNING FROM THE COMPETITION The youth messaging platform identification was strong. What we still required was a benefit for photo messaging. Surprisingly a competitive review proved to be a crucial turning point. Being late to market had its advantages in that all the major competition had already launched their picture messaging service. Their accompanying vending machine support proved to be helpful. By using vending machine support to create a role for MMS competitive ads worked like a window into their world and brand values: (see Figures 1, 2, 3 and 4) We knew what type of photo we would send and the values we expounded. Given that much of VMA's appeal is its personality and its spirit in many ways this approach would have been enough to answer the original brief. However such was the value of finding and showing a reason to use picture messaging in addition to being personality driven we persevered to find more consumer relevance for our service.

vending machine support, vending machine repairs, Business. Australia.

Business Type: Sole Trader

Sole trader, as the name suggests, is where an individual is the sole owner of a business. The business is often quite small in terms of size (as measured, for example, by sales generated, or number of staff employed) however the number of these businesses is very large indeed. Examples of these businesses can be found in most industrial sectors but particularly in most service sectors. Hence services such as electrical repair, picture framing, photography, diving instruction, retail shops, and hotels have a large proportion of sole trade business.