Search results matching tag 'Virgin'

The-'Paddock'.gif

917682 — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 11:30:00 GMT

The Virgin 'paddock' at Bluewater

Jenson-about-to-race.gif

917682 — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 11:29:00 GMT

Button gears up for his first lap of Bluewater.

The L shaped room

2427159 — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 11:41:00 GMT

This week I’ve been mostly helping Sir Martin Sorrell with his imagery for the Recession.

A few years ago, he came up with the “bath-shaped recession” all by himself – he got the idea, in fact, while lying in the bath.

And the image was a worldwide success.

T-shirts were printed in the Far East showing Sir Martin in a bath.

I take a certain pride in knowing that when a Recession hits this country, and even if advertising budgets get cut by 30%, the man we can rely on to get the image right is one of the most powerful men in the ad industry.

So everybody was looking to Sir Martin to see what he’d come up with this time.

Initially, we tried various other rooms to see if they’d work. I suggested a “spare- bedroom-shaped recession”. Because they’re horrible and uncomfortable and they always have a badly designed cupboard jutting angularly into the room and they just feel like whoever designed them didn’t have a f*cking clue what they were doing.

But then I made an instinctive leap, and said “Sir Martin, it’s a toilet”.

“Why ?”, he asked - in that narrow-eyed, perceptive way he has about him.

Several reasons, I said.

1. It’s not somewhere you want to spend an awful lot of time.

2. There’s a sense of somebody in the next cubicle papering over the cracks.

3. Nobody wants to really, deeply look into it. We’d rather just sit down and read the Sun.

I’m afraid Sir Martin pooh-poohed this straightaway. He told me he didn’t like the look of my number 2.

And then he came up with his genius insight of the “L-shaped Recession”.

(And, incidentally, talked about it all rather brilliantly on Radio 4's The Bottom Line.)

But the Recession also led me into thinking about brands and branding.

For instance. Say your Mum switches her weekly shop from one of the Big Four into Lidl or Aldi.

(And why she was doing her weekly shopping in a high street bank in the first place is anybody’s guess.)

But by doing this, she isn’t just loosening her tie with Tesco or Sainsbury’s. She’s potentially loosening her ties with 100s of brands which Lidl and Aldi do their own versions of.

Massive, household names that we've all lived with for years.

Because the trouble with a lot of those brands is that they’ve been content to build relatively loose ties with their customers. And that’s worked very well for them for the last 50 years or so.

(I think this is what Robert Heath is describing when he writes about Low Attention Processing. I.e. Nescafe works on the level of “there’s a bunch of coffees here, I trust Nescafe, I can’t be arsed to stand here all day weighing up the various merits and demerits of instant coffees, Nescafe it is.”)

But in a Recession, you start asking a different question.

To wit, how many brands are you REALLY loyal to ?

And probably the list wouldn’t extend further than 10.

So - what’s the secret of the ones you ARE deeply loyal to ?

Well, that would be a big question to answer, wouldn’t it ?

My view is that it tends to be brands that fight a battle on behalf of the consumer.

Apple vs Microsoft. Or Virgin vs BA. Or Nike vs the forces of obesity.

You get a sense that they’re on our side, against something else.

Which is probably why it’s worth asking this question when you work on a brand:

“What battle should this brand fight on behalf of the consumer ?”

Or:

“How can we put the brand unmistakably on the same side as the consumer ?”

Overall, I’m fascinated by how few genuinely sticky brands we seem to have created.

And the greatest minds in our industry are asking similar questions.

Russell Davies has talked about how “the branding machine has started to run out of steam”.

Mark Earls has written about “learning to live without the brand”.

John Grant has talked about how these days branding is essentially “voluntary” – people will only engage if they want to.

Compare that with the old model – which worked brilliantly for 50 years – and which I think is best summed up by this quote from Paul Feldwick. “Somehow”, he wrote, “ 30 seconds of entertaining nonsense leads to a situation where people pay 35% more for (PG Tips).”

But this approach to brand-building – which I might loosely describe as “create a brand personality, put it across with entertaining nonsense, and they will come” may well be found wanting as we flail around in the large L-shaped room.

Because the thing about an L-shaped room is that, from most positions within it, you have no idea what could be lurking around the corner.

Virgin virals and bloggy legal suits

255762 — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 12:47:00 GMT

Virgin is having a strange PR week. First the speculation that the "best letter of complaint ever" is a viral and now a legal suit against ad blog Adrants over a spoof Hudson river crash ad. Is any of that good PR

According to Agency Spy, Virgin America is suing Adrants in the federal court over a spoof ad featuring a picture of the downed US Airways Airbus with the copy: "The Hudson Crash: Just One More Reason to Fly Virgin."

It's alright as spoofs go, kind of obvious (easy to say after the fact, granted), but not earth shattering. Maybe it’s a little in bad taste? Maybe. But the thing is it would have passed pretty much without notice until Virgin got all legal gorilla on Adrants and now the spoof ad is all over the web. We've all seen it and we all know that Virgin is getting mean.

Weird thing is Virgin is always doing spoof ads of its own. It ran for instance the Eliot Spitzer and Hillary Clinton themed ads last year. It usually has a fine sense of humour as brands go. So what's that about?

Apparently it wasn't the picture so much as the copy that offended Virgin. The copy sort of implied that the brand was good at turning ugly situations to its own advantage. The Spitzer ad is just that.

Virgin asked Adrants to take it down. The blog's editor, Angela Natividad, responded by adding this above the post: "UPDATE: Clearly, this ad is fake. A spoof. Virgin America has confirmed this. We were always suspect from the get go and didn't mean to mislead or misrepresent. So we'll clearly state now: the ad is a spoof. It's not real. Virgin America had nothing to do with its creation."

Oh hindsight. It's at that moment you take it down as the clarification was not enough for Virgin who wanted it deleted. I was in this mess myself recently and, well, it is quite scary when lawyers from large corporation send you emails and demand you call them back urgently (tip: leaving your phone on voicemail doesn't really help). At BR we deleted said post immediately and that was it.

Virgin America is suing for punitive damages and fees. That could get expensive. It is a ridiculous suit, clearly Virgin is trying to scare other blogs and websites to ensure people do not post this kind of material again. It could also put the little independent Adrants out of business. Shame.

Which brings us to the "best letter of complaint ever". Well that's what people are calling it. Personally, it goes on and on a little too long for me – I mean who has six pages of complaint in them? Not me.

But that is not to attract from the achievement of Oli Beale at WCRS who wrote the letter. Stand-up job Oli. You're like a web star. Question here though is the letter genuine? I mean really?

It has been so widely covered, spreading across the online world earlier this week and now today it appears as a double page spread in the Sun.

Beale has said it is not a viral. Hmmm. Maybe. Against it being a viral is that the impression it leaves you with is not totally a positive one.

In favour of it being a viral is that it feels like a joke waiting a punch line. I mean everyone knows airport food sucks, which has given rise to the rumour that Virgin is about to sign a top chef. Or something.

Also against it being genuine is that the timing is too good coming as it does in Virgin Atlantic's 25th anniversary. I'm guessing we will know soon enough one way of another.

Vote in BR's poll - Is Oli Beale's six-page letter of complaint giving Virgin Atlantic good PR?

Follow me on Twitter

Goodbye Bush......by Veet

812253 — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 18:20:00 GMT

Every now and then the role for good old fashioned advertising is reaffirmed - either by inspirational creative (Honda's impossible dream or Cadbury's Gorilla) tapping into a zeitgeist (see the new Virgin Atlantic ads) or fantastic media placement which I think the Veet ad placed in the Sydney Herald last week achieved perfectly - Nuff said !

Re: What brands do you most associate with Bond?

758513 — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 01:11:45 GMT

Virgin Atlantic

Re: Does Absolut Vodka have a case against Absolute Radio?

1363416 — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 07:21:34 GMT

While technically they may not have a case, as a member of the public when I first heard about Absolute Radio I immediately assumed that the vodka brand was involved. It is not a difficult mental leap to make these days, after all we all knew Virgin as an airline and then when it also became a vodka brand, among other things, we did not question it. Will we be getting Easy Vodka next?

The easy way to customer relationship management, not.

322703 — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 01:22:00 GMT

When you fly on a cheap airline you can expect to be travelling cattle class but that doesn't mean that brands like EasyJet and Ryanair (especially given their profit warnings) can afford to treat customers like cattle. In today's consumer dominated marketplace and credit crunching times, the customer may want cheap prices but still expects to be treated well.

Our railway system may be one of the worse in Europe but it could still teach brands like EasyJet a few things about customer service. I don't usually use blogging as a way to publicly moan but then this piece is all about customer experience and my recent joyless trip on EasyJet wasn't a good one. If I were Andy Harrison (Chief Executive of EasyJet) I'd get a team of customer relationship consultants in very quick.

This is one area they are failing at, given my experience and almost 200 passengers who travelled from Madrid recently. I've always wondered in this modern age why check in desks are so slow? Why have technology if you can't use it? If McDonalds ran check-ins we'd all be through them in seconds not hours. If there's two thing that many pieces of research have told brands it's queuing and lack of information really upsets customers. Especially when they are waiting in stressful situations.

It was this customer insight that motivated the Underground to install the dot matrix system to inform passengers of train arrivals and got Tesco's to put more check outs in. It often pays just to have someone walking about reassuring customers and keeping them informed. Yet with this wisdom freely available, why do so many airlines go one step worse - even their own staff haven't a clue what's going on. Instead you get rumour and passengers soon start to voice their frustrations to each other, just adding fuel to the fire.

I'd planned to use the waiting area to do a survey into attitudes towards flying and the environment but instead all I got was a lot of moaning about customer service. After several hours of having my ear bent all I'd established was that most people agreed that we needed to fly less but somehow they didn't feel part of the problem. Finally, almost 4 hours later, we were on the plane. It's that point when you think, "oh well at least we're on our way home." But there was another problem.

We had one too many passengers. How can that happen with modern computers you may well ask? Well the staff didn't know either. I suspect human error. Now there's a saying that ‘it's not how hard you fall buy how high you bounce'. When a Virgin customer complained that a bag had fallen on his head (through no fault of the airline) Branson rang him up personally and offered him a pair of free flights anywhere in the world. You can imagine the situation in the office, "John, there's a call for you and it's some guy called Richard."

Even if that was a PR stunt it worked, many punters know the story and it's one that gives Virgin a good image. We probably all suspect BA's response would have been less than friendly, whereas Rynair would probably have found a way to charge the customer for the pleasure of getting bashed. Having worked on several airline marketing accounts, including BA, the one thing that makes or breaks a brand is not the advertising or the lure of cheap prices but the customer experience.

A brand isn't a nice colour scheme, typeface and slogan, a brand is what people feel and say about it - reputation is all. And in these times of social networking and blogging, word travels fast (the fact I'm writing to a potential audience of 300,000 proves it). It was Branson who said (referring to BA's big ad spend) "instead of spending millions trying to tell people I have a better airline, I spend my money on making it a better airline. My satisfied customers do the rest."

Branson has always put his customers first - value the customer and they'll value you. It's a good warning to all brands that in these credit crunching times you need to keep focused on the customer. Now with the extra passenger problem solved (no one knew what happened to him) we finally take off. Surprisingly we aren't offered free drinks or food, unlike GNER or National Express who give it free after any major delay (and a refund on your fair).

After much wrangling I finally got a free coffee but having missed my evening meal the only way I was going to get a bite was by paying for it. That option didn't last long. A short while later we're told all the sandwiches have run out so no food. Thank goodness I'd packed an Eat Natural bar, always a life saver. I can't say that there was a lot of enthusiasm from many passengers I spoke to after we landed for flying EasyJet again.

"Easy? it was anything but," commented one irate passenger. The few parents on board were especially frustrated. Yet it would have been so easy to have made them happy customers. In my free copy of the EasyJet in-flight magazine Andy Harrison invites his passengers to write in with suggestions. So I did. That was over a week ago (you can't say I didn't give them a chance to reply). I waited. Two days passed. Four. Six. Eight days...no reply. So much for customer relationship marketing.

US TV networks return cash to advertisers

255762 — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 10:05:06 GMT

The future of advertising is starting to arrive in the US this week and it could be here soon as well. TV networks there are returning cash to advertisers as the impact of digital video recorders start to bite.
US TV networks are facing a ratings decline and the three major networks -- ABC, NBC and CBS -- are compensating advertisers mostly with extra commercial time, while NBC is actually giving cash back. It seems like an anathema and is all down to the growing use of digital video recorders like TiVo.

NBC is reported to have begun reimbursing advertisers for fourth-quarter prime-time ratings shortfalls, averaging about $500,000 per advertiser, marking the first time in years a network has taken such a step because it had already sold much of its available commercial inventory.

It could happen here next, just take a look at the numbers. Last month BSkyB hit a record 14% quarterly growth in subscribers to Sky+, up 323,000 on the previous quarter to 2.7m, and the service is now in almost a third of Sky homes.

That figure will grow again next year as Virgin Media starts pushing its own DVR service although its marketing to customers is generally so poor that most probably don't even know that the service is available (plus it has an onerous installation cost, double that of Sky+).

I'm a big fan of Sky+. It is Television how it was mean to be. And when I say I don't just mean television without the advertising (although it’s a major bonus), but also TV when you want it.

Video on demand is alright and Virgin Media's catalogue of programmes and films is extensive, but it is not necessarily want you actually want to watch. It's not what I want to watch at least, but then I have already gone through the pain of getting rid of my service if not the box (I can not for some reason get Virgin Media to take it away for love nor money; nor indifference and loathing for that matter either).

If you happen to be in and there is something you want to watch it's much more pleasant to go off and do something more useful for ten minutes and then return to the programme and skip through the ads.

Of course, even fast forwarding at x30 you don't miss the messages. You see the logos, recognise the brand trimmings and have taken on a message all the same. Just not all of them and just not in the same way as before.

Everyone knew that the 30 and 60 second broadcast ad spot would have to change and this is only more confirmation of that.

For US networks this problem will be exacerbated next year for other reasons as the writers' strike continues to run and schedules are loaded up with reruns and reality shows. That will have an impact as well on British schedules and some channels will be harder hit than others.

Branson in sex romp viral

255762 — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 11:26:34 GMT

Exactly how do you launch a home loan product these days? Well there is the way most corporations would do it and then there is Richard Branson's way, which naturally involves three models in a hot tub.
In a bizarre new viral from the world's wackiest billionaire, Branson is seen sitting in a hot tub with his arms around two models while sipping champagne to promote the launch of Virgin Money loans in Australia.

While its almost impossible to hear what there are saying (Branson has the bubbles turned right up, of course) one of the models takes a call for the entrepreneur from a Ming like emperor. Branson tells the model he's rather too busy to talk just now.

Wrong answer. Branson is zapped by a Flash Gordon-like beam of death. It is only at this point we realise why he was so busy. A third model bobs up from under water.

Boy oh boy. Branson takes one for the team. Who came up with the idea? Was it Branson? You can imagine that it might well have been.

No one else in the world would do this. It is up there with his dressing as a woman and many many other crazy antics, but then he seems to know what he's doing and having a rather good time at it as he does.

The viral is intended for the Australian market only. Take a look for yourself.