Virgin Mobile (Canada) pokes fun at Eliot Spitzer

Kudos to Virgin Mobile Canada for its latest series of ads mocking disgraced New York State governor Eliot Spitzer; they are clever and appropriately tasteless. The ads, which are set to appear in national commuter newspapers this week, depict the governor with a thought bubble over his head that reads “I’m tired of being treated like a number…”. Hilarious.

Mr. Spitzer last week of course, was pegged by U.S. federal officials as “Client 9” after wiretaps revealed him to be a customer of an international call girl ring. The news prompted him to resign last week.

Virgin Mobile is known for its provocative marketing tactics, which are designed to get people talking about its wireless service; it’s a tactic that usually works (Note to Andrew Black of Virgin Mobile Canada; too bad your prices are more or less in line with the rest of the wireless industry in Canada. Lower prices would really get ‘em talking).

Anyway, you’ll recall founder Richard Branson introduced Virgin Mobile service to Canada three years ago by traipsing about town with scantily clad nurses. The booth babes, uh, nurses were props to show people that Virgin Mobile could “cure” the country of its wireless ills.

Ironically, the governor, who will leave office tomorrow, may have been able to avoid the public humiliation had he used a phone line from a VoIP services provider such as Skype. This type of line, as the Economist pointed out last week, is much harder for authorities to tap – as Spitzer’s line was – in part because of the sheer volume of packet data incurred during a “lawful intercept” process. That’s of course assuming the authorities can even intercept a call, a next-to-impossible task if someone is using service from Skype for example.