O2′s Giffgaff offering free calls, texts, internet for a year for viral marketers; launches tomorrow
November 24th, 2009
The O2-backed mobile network Giffgaff launches tomorrow and is offering customers free calls, texts and internet for a year if they produce and upload a video about Giffgaff onto Youtube.
What is Giffgaff?
Giffgaff calls itself a “people-powered mobile service”. The Giffgaff brand is supposed to be user-generated and all of the marketing for the network will be user-generated too. We’ve written about Giffgaff before.
How does Giffgaff relate to O2?
Giffgaff is a “mobile virtual network operator”. That means they run their mobile network on top of O2′s infrastructure (i.e. O2 runs the towers and the network, Giffgaff routes the calls). It’s also owned by O2 but run as a separate brand and with separate management.
How does this free calls, text and internet offer work?
According to the Giffgaff blog:
We’re also going to be “people powering” our launch advertising by asking members to help make us famous, by hiring and videoing themselves using one of our helpful giffgaff tools – you can get a look behind the scenes at the team who are building these here. In true giffgaff fashion our intrepid video stars will get rewarded – everyone who posts a video will become a V.I.g. (Very Important giffgaffer) and get a special V.I.g. SIM card that gives them free UK calls, texts and data for a year.
photo: NightRPStar
Doesn’t sound like a bad idea… unless you’re not camera shy.
How much does it normally cost to make calls and send texts on Giffgaff?
Giffgaff still haven’t announced their full pricing plan. We know that it’ll only be available on Pay As You Go and that everyone will get 100MB of free data every single day to start off with. Surely it’s worth getting a SIM card just for that…
How do I switch to Giffgaff?
Giffgaff don’t actually sell any phones so you’ll need to take your existing phone from another network and then insert a Giffgaff SIM card into it. You’ll need to make sure it’s an unlocked handset and then get a PAC code in order to port your number over.
We’ll be keeping a close eye on the launch of Giffgaff – watch this space.
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