The weather in Britain has been awful this winter, so we placed Virgin Holidays idents around ITV’s weather forecasts, directly comparing the grey skies here to the glorious sunshine abroad.

The solution was found in a clever media idea and a brilliant creative idea.

We bought media at either side of ITV’s London Weekday Weather forecast, and created a series of idents showing alternative weather forecasts from Virgin Holiday destinations.

With a different weather presenter giving a fun, tongue-in-cheek forecast in the local language, and reporting wall-to-wall sunshine, the reports could not be more different to the real UK forecasts they book ended.

Seeing the two forecasts side-by-side meant our message was absolutely clear – get your summer this winter on a Virgin Holiday

The long-haul holiday market in the UK continued to struggle throughout 2012, with long-haul holidays down 5% against 2011*. Against these negative odds, our campaign was able to increase bookings between November and February by 9% YOY, seeing more than double-digit growth in 4 of the 6 featured destinations, with Mexico increasing by an outstanding 159%. Additionally, this campaign considerably increased our 1st choice consideration by 86% YOY, while reaching 50% spontaneous awareness**.