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By Tony Connelly, Sports Marketing Reporter

October 2, 2015 | 3 min read

Virgin Media has taken a new direction with the latest advertising campaign for its broadband service, Vivid, by dialling down the humour as it adopts a more serious and emotional tone designed to convince people that its service is superior.

Vivid will now offer new ultrafast broadband speeds of up to 200Mbps and is rolling out the upgrades with its “Inspired” campaign fronted with a new TV ad which takes a more serious approach than what Virgin Media has traditionally used with its Usain Bolt ads.

The ad try to convey the message that “when you have a better internet connection you get more out of it” and shows a mother and daughter cuddled up watching video clips of strong female role models. Clips of famous women such as Comaneci, Billie Holiday, Emmeline Pankhurst and Paloma Faith appear in the spot, which also has a new version of Alicia Key’s track ‘Girl On Fire’ song, recorded exclusively by Fleur East for Virgin Media’s campaign

It has been created by BBH, with media planning handled by Manning Gottlieb OMD, and will also run in cinema, display, online search, social media, video on demand, print and out of home.

All of Virgin Media’s ultrafast broadband speeds- 100Mbps and above- will now be rebranded Virgin Media Vivid. Virgin will begin contracting its 4.6 million existing broadband customers and offer them the chance to upgrade from their current plans to Vivid which will be offered in 100Mbps, 150Mbps and 200Mbps.

The upgrades mark the third time in five years that Virgin has boosted customer broadband speeds. It promises that with Vivid 200Mbps speeds customers will be able to download an entire two hour HD movie in three minutes, two seconds and a music album in three seconds.

Chief marketing officer at Virgin Media, Kerris Bright, said customers’ broadband demand at peak times has “increased 60 per cent per year”. She added that the new ad campaign was built around the belief that “people are moved to do more as a result of the better connection we provide” and so it was important that it reflected the company’s establishment of “a new standard within the marketplace”.

Vivid will roll out to Virgin Media customers from October onwards.

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