Virgin Australia-Here's to Looking Up

VIRGIN AUSTRALIA - HERE’S TO LOOKING UP

What’s “Uptimism”? It’s Virgin Australia’s play on optimisim. It’s a word that underpins the airline’s brand new campaign “Here’s to looking up.

”Developed by advertising agency DDB as a way to differentiate Virgin Australia more clearly from Qantas, the campaign aims to convey a sense of‘upbeat excitement’ and ‘opportunity.’

Or as the company’s new chief marketing officer Inese Kingsmill put it, “Our new brand platform, ‘Here’s to looking Up’, recognises the evolution ofVirgin Australia and captures the spirit and values of our people and our guests.”

To launch the campaign, DDB produced a television and YouTube ad filmed in the Blue Mountains, Melbourne and Sydney.It features a group ofso-called ‘Uptimists’, such as a 30 year old rock-climber and a 13year old Australian Football League (AFL) player who has been identified as a potential star of the future.

At the same time, the airline released a “Virgin Australia Fan Report”, which tracked the levels of fan enthusiasm and noise in a stadium to a team’s results. The idea again being to tie Virgin Australia into energy, enthusiasm and a can-do spirit.

The different campaign elements point to a ‘Here’s to looking up’ micro-site, which shows the different characters who appear in the ad before linking back to the main Virgin Australia website.

According to Virgin’s Inese Kingsmill, the ‘Looking Up’ campaign is a direct challenge to Qantas with it’s ‘Coming Home’ theme: “There are essentially two airlines in the market and one of them owns coming home. And coming home is very nice, but the Virgin brand is anchored in the possibilities of takeoff, and what going places can be.”

KEY TAKE-AWAY

The comment from Virgin Australia’s chief marketing officer about the campaign perfectly encapsulates its thinking. If a competitor brand is doing one thing, can you do the opposite?

So if Qantas is trying to own the concept of‘arriving’ then why not claim ‘departing’, and all the associations you can pin onto that, as something you own.