Skip to main content

Virgin Holidays Live Advert

“The tension in the room was unbelievable”

Virgin Holidays recently produced a live advert for TV something to be shown once to a captive audience that had to flow perfectly and required months of planning. The advert did feature some errors and mistakes but I feel this actually helped reinforce the point that the video at each location is live, this isn't something that's been filmed in advance and edited nicely together in a cosy studio, it's raw, it's new and it doesn't always go as planned.


I pulled this quote from Creative Review who themselves wrote an article on the ad. “The tension in the room was unbelievable,” says Ratigan of the broadcast moment, which took place at ITN Productions’ Master Control room in London. “There was a fair amount of noise from the gallery director and technicians, but the client, agency and production company people, including myself, were silent. There was nothing we could do except wait and watch.” I think what Ratigan says perfectly sums up the advert from a inside point of view, the audience aren't aware of what is about to be shown and traditionally the client, agency and production cast would know the exact film whereas with live all you can hope is that timings are perfected, scripted dialogue is narrated correctly.

I personally do not feel the effect of the ad, it does not encourage me to want to spend money on a holiday with Virgin Holidays any more than it does any other holiday booking company / travel agency. This is partly down to the underwhelming effect of the live video, I don't know what I was expecting but this seems too simple, too plain for Virgin, I appreciate the effort that has gone into the technology of making the ad 'live' but I feel this will be lost on the general public and will not be able to connect with the advert in the same way they connect to other Virgin brands, specifically Virgin Atlantic who offer sophisticated advertising with Virgin humour.


References

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

EE Rebranding Process

UK mobile phone operators Orange and T-Mobile who merged to become Everything Everywhere, later simplified their name to EE. As of 2016, EE is soaring in profits, seeing a 10% increase to over £6.5bn in revenue in the three years from 2010 to 2013. More recently EE was purchased by the UK communication giant British Telecom Group more commonly known as BT. The success of EE’s new status as a highly successful mobile phone operator is underpinned by that of their successful rebranding strategy. This sentence itself is a relative contradiction as from the two years that followed from 2010, when Orange and T-Mobile merged the company traded under the brand name ‘Everything Everywhere’ this didn’t appear to catch on, rollout of this brand was slow, and to many people Orange and T-Mobile were trading exactly as they always have. Small trial concept Everything Everywhere stores were launched and the predicted feedback came back that the company was struggling to get the new bran

The Anemones

The packaging was developed to suit to the appeal of a younger generation using bright, contrasting colours to create a lasting impact and one that will stand out from the other toys on the shelf. The window design is a unique element, representing bubbles underwater these windows allow the younger target market to see into the packaging and view their chosen Anemone! It was important that the characters developed for the project were instantly likeable and contained similarities that allowed them to be different whilst also maintaining the same design style, through the use of shape and colour to connect them thematically. The two main characters developed; Woodle and Yoodle are both are designed with large round eyes and large grinning mouth to reflect the friendly, funny nature of the harmless sea creatures.

Chronology

For my final major project, I developed a brand identity for a theme park, called Chronology based in Stoke-on-Trent. Materials produced in association with this concept include tickets and vouchers alongside a range of promotional print such as leaflets and guides. In addition to these developed products I produced a vertical wall poster displaying a general advertisement for the Chronology theme park / attraction. I looked at ways I could reach my target market through the development of a mobile app, and an interface that can link the park real time with the application. I developed concepts for the Exhibition Space including to scale representations of the artwork I would include. I wanted to give the Exhibition Space a theme so I thought of different textures of wallpaper to use and the inclusion of lighting. The logo was crafted from drawing done by hand. I wanted something that looked handwritten and at the same time incorpor