Less than three months after playing an integral part in Wind Mobile’s launch as a mobile service provider, Chris Robbins, chief customer officer, has left the company.
Robbins, who has been with the company for nearly two years and oversaw its transition from Globalive Wireless to Wind Mobile by instituting its first mass market ad campaign, announced his departure yesterday in a blog post.
The post at WindMobile.ca said the company’s “ambitious growth” plans required internal shifts.
“Those shifts, combined with my desire to develop wireless [and] technology opportunities globally, mean that I’m leaving Wind,” he wrote.
Robbins’ role gave him oversight of sales, marketing and communications with Will Novosedlik, vice-president, brand and communications, and Melissa Clark, vice-president sales, reporting to Robbins.
Both Novosedlik and Clarke now report directly to president Ken Campbell on an interim basis.
Wind CEO Anthony Lacavera told Marketing that in the short term, Robbins’ role will remain vacant.
“In terms of getting this brand off the ground, we felt this chief customer officer [position] was very important in terms of bootstrapping everything, but now we’re moving to an operational phase and it’s not exactly the same fit for Chris.”
Lacavera said the company is leaning toward discontinuing the position, though no final decision has been made. “We may end up with a chief marketing officer.”
Calls to Robbins for comment were not returned.
Comments from industry analysts suggested Wind’s launch has faltered somewhat in its early stages.
“While Wind Mobile has not reported subscriber results to date, this move may reflect that results have been disappointing,” said Dvai Ghose, principal, equity research at Genuity Capital Markets, in a note.
When asked if Robbins’ departure was tied to business performance, Lacavera said no.
“We knew that would be the interpretation,” he said. “We’re doing our best to keep up with the strain on a very new network, filling the dark spots as fast as we can. We’re trying to prove to Canadians that we’re a good choice for wireless. Is this a signal that we’re somehow behind? No.”
Wind’s launch campaign from Toronto agency Cleansheet Communication hit the market in mid-December. It carried the grassroots “customers are heroes” concept forward from the company’s pre-launch outreach program, which invited Canadian mobile users to WirelessSoapbox.com to share their thoughts on what could be done to improve cellphone service.
Lacavera said he is pleased with how the brand is presented in the current campaign, but there are communication challenges going forward.
“We’re taking some of the hard data to heart. When we hear ‘We don’t know what a home zone is,” we’re certainly taking that very seriously. We’re finding ways for our marketing and in-store experience help to clearly explain that it doesn’t just mean when you’re at home, it means anywhere you’re on our network anywhere in Canada. Those kinds of things we’re reacting to proactively.”
Wind is not making subscriber data available at present as it is in the midst of a financing process.
“Broadly speaking, I can say that our business plan has not changed from that target of 1.5 million subscribers in three years,” Lacavera said.
