Meet Virgin Mobile’s highest ever Christmas connections target in a cutthroat market. Overcome perceptions that Virgin Mobile don’t stock the latest range of phones: 25% of consumers felt Virgin offered the most up to date handsets compared to 43% for O2. In a technologically driven market no new handsets means no new connections.

Perceptions of Virgin ‘having the latest handsets’ hit 30% for the first time in their history (higher than three of the other four networks). O2, the market leader, fell to 36%. The broadcast campaign generated 519,000 additional connections, a 12% increase in customers and worth over £6m in revenue per annum.

To create Virgin’s virtual store we partnered with Sky to build the UK’s largest interactive TV site. It was a total consumer experience. Viewers could interact with all of the latest handsets and their technical specifications; watch out-takes from the entertaining Busta Rhymes TV commercial (‘The Devil makes work for idle thumbs’); and enter competitions to win great new phones and free airtime. We wanted to put consumers’ idle thumbs to work with Virgin Mobile.

Our collaboration with handset manufacturers was unparalleled in the UK. This co-operation and co-funding allowed Virgin to stretch the bandwidth to its full potential. Along with the handset interaction, out-takes and competitions, viewers could click on one of eight mini-TV screens to watch each manufacturer’s TV commercial. Viewers added brand consideration to technical consideration and Virgin Mobile cemented relationships with the manufacturers. It was the first time an advertiser took programming’s technique of eight simultaneous feeds and applied it commercially.

A virtual phone company, Virgin Mobile lease airtime from T-Mobile to create their own network. With no physical high street presence, media must be their shop window. However, competitive communication is overwhelming. Orange spend £60m a year and Vodafone £50m. In comparison, Virgin’s £14m represents just 7.5% (source: MMS 2003). To change perceptions and stand above the noise we couldn’t wait for the consumer to come to us so we took the Virgin experience to the consumer. We created a virtual store for Virgin where consumers could spontaneously experience the brand first hand and interact with all the latest handsets.