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Virgin Trains changes ad strategy and refocuses on own brand in £8m ad campaign

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By Natalie Mortimer, N/A

September 17, 2014 | 3 min read

Virgin Trains has invested £8m in a new ad campaign, which aims to focus more on its own brand in a bid to acquire passengers from rival rail companies.

The campaign will run across TV, print, outdoor, radio, online and experiential, and highlights the benefits of travelling with Virgin Trains over other operators, through its tag line ‘Arrive Awesome’.

Created by TMW the campaign centres on Virgin Train’s customer experience and aims to communicate the feeling that people can expect when travelling with the rail operator.

A TV ad created by Krow will spearhead the campaign, and will appear online from today (17 September) and hit screens on 19 September during ITV’s Piers Morgan’s Life Stories.

Through a multichannel strategy, delivered by Manning Gottlieb OMD using Virgin Train’s customer data, different audiences will be targeted, incorporating drive times and road journeys, across TV, cinema, OOH, print, radio and digital.

To launch the campaign online TMW has created a Twitter competition, The Race to Awesome!, which pits two virtual trains - #TheNorth and #TheSouth - against each other, encouraging fans to tweet the hashtag they want to win.

A landing page, created by TMW and Lowe Profero, shows the progress of the tweet-powered trains – with the first one to arrive at ‘Awesome’ winning two fans unlimited First Class weekend train travel on the Virgin network for a year.

Danny Gonzalez, Virgin Trains chief marketing officer, commented: “We’ve really challenged ourselves to get back to our roots and refocus not only our brand, but also our people, products and services entirely on the needs of the customers.

“Ultimately our new vision is to offer great customer experiences that are true to what people expect from a Virgin company.”

The unveiling of the ad campaign coincides with the news that Sir Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, has pledged a £50m investment in the passenger experience by Virgin Trains.

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