It’s been a while since we’ve had a big ambitious campaign any other time than Christmas but Virgin Holidays and new agency AMV BBDO are pulling out all the stops this Saturday with what’s claimed to be the world’s first live-streamed global ad from different locations around the world.
These include Hawaii, San Francisco, Orlando, Barbados, Dubai, New York, Johannesburg and Bangkok, where we’re promised an exploration of the local night life in a tuk tuk – which sounds diverting.
The ad, directed by Simon Ratigan, involves over 90 production crew filming simultaneous scenes while it is edited live into a 60-second video at ITN Productions’ Master Control Room in central London. It will be broadcast during ITV’s X Factor with what’s called a ‘bespoke’ voiceover – which sounds like Simon Cowell.
The aim, apart from making a splash, is to launch Virgin Holidays’ new marketing platform, ‘Seize The Holiday,’ which takes over from ‘Unleash Your Mojo.’ As well as TV there’ll be video on demand, out of home, press, radio, digital, mobile, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
Virgin Holidays VP of Customer and Marketing Claire Cronin says: “This is the single biggest and most ambitious brand exercise we have ever undertaken. We have looked at everything from our business purpose to our brand platform to what channels we use to communicate with customers.”
“If you’re spending your Saturday night on the couch, or trudging to work on the Underground and we’re able to show you the wonderful adventures thousands of other people are enjoying with us at that very moment, we’re confident it will strike a chord.”
AMV BBDO MD Richard Arscott says: “This has been such an exciting campaign for us to work on with Virgin Holidays. It has been a great opportunity to explore such an innovative way to reach the consumer, in the most direct way possible, by airing the first-ever ad streamed live from around the globe.”
Virgin says its profits have increased five-fold after a restructure of its business and is now going for flat out for growth. It’s good to see a big TV campaign playing centre stage.
