CAMPAIGN
Virgin Atlantic – Still Red Hot
This campaign was launched at the beginning of 2009 to cele- brate 25 years of Virgin Atlantic. Developed by London-based agency, Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe Y & R, it included TV, dig- ital, outdoor and press.
In line with the global recession, the airline industry entered a peri- od of unprecedented pressure towards the end of 2008, from which it has still not fully emerged. Logic would dictate that such market conditions are not best
suited to running high-profile brand marketing campaigns, which are difficult to measure in terms of effectiveness and are often accepted as loss-making initiatives. However, Virgin Atlantic’s 25th anniversary fell smack in the mid-
dle of the recession in 2009 and not only was the occasion cele- brated with a high-profile campaign, but in doing so Virgin gave the advertising community a lesson in brand marketing by exe- cuting what I consider to be one of the best brand TV creatives of the last decade. Crucial to the effectiveness of a brand campaign are a) to have
an engaging, cut-through creative that gets noticed, regardless of what the product is, and b) to enable the viewer to ‘experience’ the brand or product. The Dunlop Tyres advert from the 1990s (the one featuring lots
of freaky people and images in a desert, with The Velvet Underground’s Venus in Furs as the soundtrack) is a classic exam-
ple of one that engaged viewers brilliantly, but failed to give any knowledge or experience of the product. In contrast, the ‘Still Red Hot’ creative combines memorable
music and imagery from the 1980s with a stylish, humorous, and irreverent script, making it thoroughly enjoyable to watch, but with every aspect screaming ‘Virgin’ – what the brand stands for in terms of differentiating itself from competitors and consequently what a customer can expect to experience by using the product. The creative communicates Virgin as being a more relaxed and
fun airline than its competitors, who are depicted as stern, stuffy and frumpy. At the end of the advert viewers are left feeling that if they have not considered Virgin for their next flight, they risk miss- ing out on a fantastic flying experience. Overall this was a well thought out and executed campaign, not
only creatively but from an efficiency perspective, as campaigns like this have a low-key frequency, enabling higher coverage media buys. Also, the campaign will almost certainly have paid for itself in terms of attracting new Virgin customers and the resulting longitudinal incremental bookings this will drive over time.
Steven Rice is country manager at
ebookers.ie.
Judge these ads for yourself by clicking on Campaign Reviews on
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Volume 4 Issue 3 2010 Marketing Age 37
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