Krow Arrives in Style with Slowmo Spot for Virgin Trains

Founder of Virgin Trains, Sir Richard Branson today launched the travel operator’s latest advertising campaign, which seeks to drive acquisition from other forms of transport and rail companies. 

The campaign, which received an £8m integrated investment, will run across TV, print, outdoor, radio, online and experiential, and highlights the benefits of travelling with Virgin Trains over other operators, through its tag-line ‘Arrive Awesome’. 

Virgin Trains’ new campaign concept, which was the brainchild of agency TMW and activated by agency family of TMW, krow, Manning Gottlieb OMD, Lowe Profero and Hope&Glory, turns the heat up on competitors by focusing on its unique customer experience, which is synonymous with the Virgin brand. 

Central to the campaign is the TV ad created by krow, which launches online on Wednesday 17 September, and will be live on air from Friday 19 September. The debut ad will air on ITV during Piers Morgan’s Life Stories. 

The ad, which aims to encapsulate the feeling that travellers get following a journey with Virgin Trains, starts with scenes of a normal, everyday train station, with a Virgin Trains Pendolino pulling into the platform. When the train doors open the passengers get out smiling, laughing, looking relaxed and essentially feeling awesome. To convey this awesome feeling the travellers are all seen to be walking in slow motion. 

Viewers may think at first that the film itself has been slowed down, until we notice that pigeons and bemused looking by-standers are all moving at normal speed.

Manning Gottlieb OMD has utilised Virgin Trains’ customer and prospect data to deliver multichannel fame at not just regional, but local levels. It is the agency’s most detailed fusion yet of clever channel planning allied to hyperlocal targeting. Analysing elements such as drive times and typical road journeys means the launch will reach different audience segments across TV, cinema, OOH, print, radio and digital.

TMW has also created an exciting Twitter competition to launch the campaign online. ‘The Race to Awesome!’ pits two virtual trains (#TheNorth and #TheSouth) against each other, encouraging everyone to tweet the relevant hashtag to power their chosen train to victory. A landing page, created by TMW and Lowe Profero, shows the progress of the tweet-powered trains – with the first one to arrive at ‘Awesome’ winning two of its supporter’s unlimited First Class weekend train travel on the Virgin network for a whole year.

Danny Gonzalez, Virgin Trains Chief Marketing Officer, says: “Following recent events such as the bid, we’ve really challenged ourselves to get back to our roots and refocus not only our brand, but also our people, products and services entirely on the needs of the customers. 

“We are fully committed to understanding exactly what the customer needs and expects from us, and with the help of newly appointed agencies Krow, TMW, Manning Gottlieb OMD, Lowe Profero and Hope & Glory, we have repurposed our brand. 

“Ultimately our new vision is to offer great customer experiences that are true to what people expect from a Virgin company.”

The unveiling of the ad campaign coincides with Sir Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, pledging to put the customer at the heart of a £50 million investment in the passenger experience by Virgin Trains. This follows recent exciting developments such as the introduction of a customer reward programme with Nectar, a Priority Boarding service for vulnerable passengers, and even a Teddy Tracking [R1] service to reunite children with their lost toys Virgin Trains hopes the new campaign will position it as being brilliant when it comes to long distance travel rather than just being excellent at trains.