The judges felt there was no winning entry that met every single criteria for this category. But, they wanted to commend Virgin Atlantic's entry.

 

The airline invested £50m in developing a ' first class cabin at a business class price' and wanted to advertise the fact.

 

Start created a strategy for Virgin Atlantic's first-ever global below-the-line product launch and branding push, which aimed to associate the airline with quality and innovation. Start created, wrote and designed the direct-marketing and online launch campaign, and microsite.

 

The push integrated on- and offline direct marketing, tailored to key audiences. A showcase

brochure, styled on a limited edition 12in album, was sent to top corporates, members of the airline's loyalty programme - flying club' - travel agents and all companies in Virgin Atlantic flyingco.' loyalty programme. Recipients were invited to the microsite to explore the new Upper Class cabin experience.

 

Html emails were sent to 230 000 ' flying club' members in the UK, and some 118,000 members in the US, to attract them to the microsite.

 

In the first week alone, the microsite had 106 000 visitors, 46,000 of whom entered the competition. Visitors stayed for an average of 10 minutes. For an outlay of £750 000 , Virgin Atlantic says it achieved the kind of global launch impact usually associated with multimillion-pound campaigns.