Screw It, Let's Do It by Virgin Atlantic

“Screw It, Let’s Do It” is one of Virgin boss Richard Branson’s favourite sayings. It’s also the title of a book filled with the entrepreneur’s wisdom and life lessons. And it forms the basis of a recent marketing campaign by Virgin Atlantic.

The “Screw it, Let’s Do it” campaign was designed to shake consumers in Virgin Atlantic’s home market of the UK out of their post-Christmas January blues, and encourage them to do something adventurous.

Overall ‘Screw it, let’s do it’ was a hook, around which Virgin Atlantic built its January content programme. The #ScrewItLetsDoIt hashtag was used throughout all of Virgin’s social media channels over January, while a short film on January 8th encouraged people to “put some carpe into this diem”

The slogan and hashtag appeared in destination videos, Valentine’s themed promotions, and content about the airline’s January sale.

However, in addition to social media content Virgin added a number of additional elements.

Research shows that around ¼ of people have some degree of fear of flying, and Virgin Atlantic claims that there are four million Brits who miss out on vacations as a result.

As a result, Virgin Atlantic offered 50 people who booked a flight on 9 January, a free “Flying Without Fear” course, with the promise that if you weren’t cured by the time your holiday came around, then you’d get your money back.

Virgin claims that up to 3,000 people are helped on these courses every year, with participants ranging in age from four to 87. Normally these courses will set you back anywhere up to £375.

The ‘fear of flying’ promo got Virgin Atlantic a decent amount of press coverage, with the Daily Mirror newspaper, Cosmopolitan magazine and Business Insider being among the media outlets who covered it.

Meanwhile on 22nd January, Virgin Atlantic staff were on hand at London’s Waterloo station with 50 pairs of round trip tickets to Miami for £50 ($70). The catch? To get the tickets you had to say the magic phrase ‘Screw it, let’s do it’ (and hand over £50 of course), and leave the next day.

Virgin of course wasn’t the only airline running a January themed campaign. Almost every major airline regularly has some kind of January seat sale campaign, but the difference is in almost every case is that the campaign leads on price only (‘fly to destination X for Y’, ‘40% off if you book today etc). Virgin Atlantic happened to think of a more creative wrapper.

However our favourite January-blues travel campaign didn’t come from an airline, but from tourism authority Visit England, which on 15 January ran a series of ‘24 hours in the UK’ films under the heading ‘Join the world / discover the UK.’

Each film was produced by UK and international Instagrammers and bloggers and highlighted different things to see and do ranging from a street art tour in Bristol to early morning surfing at Scarborough in Yorkshire, from a torch-lit tour of the Roman Baths to exploring the wilds of Hampstead Heath in London.

It’s a nice campaign and there’s no reason why an airline couldn’t do something similar using its own route network.

Key Take-Away

January sales campaigns don’t have to be pedestrian or boring and well done for Virgin Atlantic for thinking of a way to bring it to life beyond just running tactical sales ads.

However if anything, Virgin didn’t go far enough. A far better ‘travel inspiration’ campaign was the one produced by Visit England, and which combined social media influencers, original film footage, a showcase of different things to see and do in the UK, and the mechanic of rolling out 24 films in 24 hours.