Can Virgin Atlantic put people first in an industry that clearly doesn’t?

Who’d be an ad agency? You spend all that time and money pitching for a prestige account, eventually (as in this case) the product is finally up in the air but the problems airlines and airports are having make the NHS look like a finely tuned machine.

Lucky Generals beat Mother and Uncommon to Virgin Atlantic and here’s it’s first effort – ‘I am what I am’ described as a ‘love letter’ to its staff – presumably a way of differentiating Virgin from rival British airways which doesn’t send a love letter to anyone.

Annabelle Cordelli, vice-president of brand and marketing at Virgin Atlantic, says: “Whether it’s sustainability, disability, all of the issues that are relevant to travel, we can make a difference that’s going to leave a legacy in the world that will matter to customers over the long term and will matter to our people.

“People want to work for a brand and a business that’s making a meaningful contribution.”

Not quite sure how you get from this campaign to there but Virgin probably still has some residual goodwill, more than its great rival anyway.

Let’s see if the perennially-on-the-brink airline delivers.

MAA creative scale: 4.