The only thing sweet about Virgin Mobile is when Mel B. holds one.

What’s up Nation…I’m sorry but I gotta vent. Have you heard of Virgin Mobile’s Sugar Mama program? Virgin targets a younger demographic so I’d assume most of The Nation is a little more advanced than prepaid cellys (unless you have credit issues or sell drugs. ) In any event I only found out about it because today (Thursday) Virgin announced a partnership with Facebook to create a profile application that further leverages this Sugar Mama program.

Sugar Mama basically allows Virgin customers to earn pre-paid minutes for viewing a bunch of cheesy ad spots and answer market research surveys… basically pimping you as a focus groupie/ guinea pig. You might have heard ads on your local urban radio station for like freexbox360.com, or freethinlaptop.com, its the same concept. Instead of direct advertising they market to you through barter…you try and buy a truckload of useless sh*t and we’ll eventually give you a prize. Publishers clearing house on steroids basically.

Anyway, according to the press release over 700,000 Virgin Mobile customers have actually sold their souls in exchange for more than 26 million minutes of free airtime. Kids these days have no shame! Well now Facebook is jumping on board to pimp IT’S membership. They are adding a new “Fund My Phone” application that lets friends earn wireless airtime for other friends who are Virgin Mobile customers. The application allows Virgin Mobile customers to get their Facebook friends to help pay for their wireless minutes. Sounds like when you used bum lunch money off you’re homeboy back in high school.
Through the program, lazy Virgin Mobile customer can now get their friends to jump through the hoops FOR THEM. When a user’s friends agrees to watch ads on their Facebook page they earn the host Virgin Mobile airtime. On the profile page, the application displays thumbnails of silly ads. When a Virgin customer’s friends clicks on the application, an ad begins playing for them to view and rate.

Now perhaps I’m getting too old but this is really stupid. Have marketers gotten that lazy that they feel the need to BRIBE people with prizes to get them to watch their ads. Since when did that ever produce residual sales. If I were a company with a product participating in this advertising I would be ashamed of myself. And I thought Virgin was one of the smart ones…I guess the numbers don’t lie but how cheesy is this? With so many creative marketing concepts being conceived using the internet and technological advancements like text messaging why would ANYONE resort to this silly sh*t? I’m too through. Holla at me.