Branded entertainment is prevalent throughout the United States, with little regulation beyond FTC disclosure guidelines. On the Internet, in films, and pretty much everywhere, brands are constantly finding new ways to integrate themselves into conversations. But in the airline industry, branded content seems to be limited to safety videos. Though these can be incredibly entertaining, it seems like every airline in the U.S. has jumped on the safety video bandwagon. We knew there were opportunities beyond that to tell the Virgin America story.

We created a fake airline, named BLAH Airlines, to embody everything that’s wrong with generic carriers. We launched it with a 5-hour and 45-minute recreation of a cross-country flight onboard BLAH, from takeoff to landing. It captured all the reasons why flying most airlines is so painful. The film lived on YouTube as the longest pre-roll video ever and let viewers exit BLAH to go to the Virgin America website.

Throughout the film, we seeded ways to be in touch with BLAH online and brought them to life. So viewers who dug deeper could interact with BLAH through various channels.

Together with its trailer, our web film garnered over one million views—with no paid media. We were reviewed along studio films and compared to Warhol, Buñuel, Lynch, and Dalí. The campaign was spotlighted across news outlets such as CBS, NBC, ABC, and FOX, generating 138 million earned media impressions. The campaign resulted in a 621% increase in Virgin America conversations. And despite people’s short attention spans, the average viewing time for our film was over five minutes.