Eulogy!

• Consumers
• Businesses
• Everyone

Virgin 1

Virgin Media's 'shock and awe' success

Objective

This was the first time Virgin Media Television had offered a major channel on Freeview, and the move would significantly increase the potential size of its audience for advertisers.

The aim was to drive interest and long-term commitment from advertisers and commercial sponsors. The campaign had to succeed against the backdrop of an ongoing high-profile dispute between Virgin Media and Sky, over Sky's refusal to make the Sky One channel available to Virgin Media customers.

Description

Eulogy! identified that the main challenge was to go beyond generating short-term media interest in the new channel. The strategy was to build momentum, correctly positioning Virgin 1 over the prolonged period from the initial launch announcement in June 2007 until the channel's opening night in October, especially in light of the dispute with Sky.

Virgin Media's target was to be one of the top three most-viewed non-terrestrial channels on the night of the launch. The communications and business objectives of the trade media campaign were:

• Highlight the channel's launch on satellite, cable and Freeview
• Raise the profile of the Virgin Media Television business and its senior managers, and place two profile pieces in target trade media
• Position the channel as a fully developed general entertainment channel rather than as an opportunistic competitor to Sky One
• Launch the channel to advertisers and their media agencies
• Support the sales team in securing high-profile advertisers and sponsors for launch night.

Eulogy! worked with Virgin Media Television's in-house PR team and senior management to develop messaging and positioning for the new channel.

The key messages included:

• Virgin 1 will be a noisy, unconventional, general entertainment channel aimed at all 20 million digital homes
• V1 will be a breath of fresh air on Freeview
• The audience will be aged 25 to 54 with a slight male bias. They will be identified more by their attitude than age or gender
• V1 has been in planning for nearly a year and is not connected to the dispute with Sky – V1 isn't a replacement for Sky One
• Launching a Freeview channel is the best strategy for Virgin Media Television to grow its audience and advertising revenue.

Results

On 1^st October 2007, Virgin 1 launched with a peak audience of 422,000 viewers.

The first showing of The Riches made it the number one non-terrestrial channel on opening night

Eulogy!'s campaign helped the Virgin 1 sales team secure programme sponsorship deals with Vauxhall, PC World, British Airways, L'Oreal and Lexus.

Between the announcement and launch night, Virgin 1 was in the news every week. The roundtable helped the campaign generate 122 pieces of coverage in the target media, reaching a total readership of 17m.

Eulogy! beat the target of two profile pieces by securing positive and detailed profiles of Virgin Media directors in five key trade publications: Campaign, Marketing, Televisual, Revolution, as well the media supplement of The Independent newspaper.