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Strategy that delivers
Celebrating a key milestone in Virgin Atlantic’s history
VIRGIN ATLANTIC'S 25TH BIRTHDAY
We recreated the first Virgin Atlantic flight from London to New York. The flight took off from Heathrow with a number of passengers from the original flight including Sir Richard Branson, Sir Ian Botham and pantomime star Christopher Biggins. The aircraft was specially named Birthday Girl and also took off with Vivienne Westwood and Keven Pietersen onboard. Kate Moss and Sir Richard Branson took part in a photocall on the wing of the aircraft prior to take off.
125 journalists and photographers accompanied the trip with an itinerary in New York including a 25th birthday party. Coverage of the birthday flight and celebrations was widespread. The photo of Kate Moss and Sir Richard Branson was in every national newspaper and on every national broadcast programme of the day. We also arranged profile interviews which took place onboard the aircraft en route to New York with Sir Richard Branson.
THE BIRTHDAY FLIGHT AND TRIP
In January 2009, we launched a £6m campaign to celebrate our 25th birthday with a retro TV ad harking back to 1984. This campaign also went across other channels and we used this in our PR activity.
We executed numerous media activations around the 25th birthday campaign including media interviews with the Marketing Director itself and various stunts associated with it. One of the most impactful included sending cabin crew and a pilot wearing the uniforms from the advert to deliver birthday cupcakes to newsrooms across London on the day of launch. The crew also visited various London locations, photos of which appeared across multiple media outlets and social media platforms. The entire campaign received much fanfare including a number of ASA complaints which were dismissed.
STILL RED HOT NOSTALGIC CAMPAIGN
