In order to celebrate Virgin Atlantic being the first airline to launch transatlantic fleet-wide wifi, we created the #LiveFromVirgin Comedy Festival. The festival was the first of its kind, with comedians performing live on their social media channels from 35,000ft. We partnered with comedian and writer Abbi Jacobson, from hit Comedy Central show Broad City, to curate a selection of five comedians, who took to Twitter and Instagram to share their experiences from the sky. Each post was hashtagged with #LiveFromVirgin, so fans could follow along from home. And in keeping with the spirit of Virgin, each comedian was given complete control over the form their performance took.

On September 28th, our comedians took to the sky, and the internet, to perform their social media comedy sets. Each comedian departed from London Heathrow Airport on a different Virgin Atlantic flight, seamlessly passing the mic from one performer to the next over the course of the show, proving the fleet-wide power of Virgin’s transatlantic wifi. Each post on Twitter and Instagram was hashtagged #LiveFromVirgin, allowing fans to follow along from home. Thanks to an around the clock war room at Virgin HQ, Virgin Atlantic acted as emcee, announcing upcoming comedians and responding to their jokes in real time.

The festival exceeded KPIs, garnering over 84 million impressions of the #LiveFromVirgin hashtag. Paid media recorded a CMP of $0.16, 75% more efficient than Virgin’s 2017 average, and an engagement rate of 11%, 10 times higher than Virgin’s typical benchmark. Jump-started by an exclusive that launched in AdWeek, earned media goals were exceeded by 120%, bringing in an earned media value of $2,916,133.