Virgin Atlantic-Rekindle the Adventure

VIRGIN ATLANTIC - REKINDLE THE ADVENTURE

The fourth Thursday in April is ‘take your child to work day’ in the US. To mark the day, Forbes magazine published a helpful list of dos and don’ts, including “find out what line of work your child is interested in” and “make it real” (“it’s not a trip to Disney World.”).

Not included in Forbes’ tips are whether or not you should take your child on a transatlantic flight, which is exactly what happened when Virgin Atlantic arranged for a five year old girl called Lulu to accompany her mother to London for a business trip.

The video caries the hashtag #ReKindleTheAdventure and follows claims by Virgin Atlantic’s USA marketing team that ¾ of business class travellers do see business trips as an adventure.

According to Virgin Atlantic’s Jenna Lloyd, “We wanted to invite the 25% to rekindle their adventure and remember how stimulating business travel can be.”

The short video follows Lulu and her mother getting ready for the trip including packing, with a lengthy segment (of course) about both the lounge and the experience on Virgin’s Upper Class Cabin.

In the video, Lulu says of the lounge, “she has to have a ticket to go into the secret living room”, while her comment on Upper Class was “you just ask for food whenever you want and they just give it to you.”

The video then ends with Lulu persuading her mother to stop working and have fun in exploring London.

In its blog post, Virgin Atlantic followed up with tips on things you can do if short on time after business meetings in London, including ‘street art’ and the best places to have coffee.

AIR BERLIN ‘LOVE SUITES’

Though it’s a lovely and heart warming video, some comments in response were actually negative. This is because a number of travellers used the opportunity to take Virgin to task for its purchase of second-hand Air Berlin aircraft.

As we reported in our March issue, Virgin Atlantic received a lot of press coverage when it was announced that some aircraft would have so-called “Love Suites” in Upper Class.

In fact, the truth was a little less racy. The so- called Love Suite is actually just the old ‘honeymoon’ style centre seats already installed by Air Berlin, in the A330-200s sold to Virgin after the German airline went bankrupt.

At the time this turned a non story (or arguably even a negative one as “second hand planes” does not sound positive to a lot of ears), into a major PR sensation and the Virgin marketing team must have been pleased by how they were able to reframe this.

However, this could also be a case of a mismatch between the PR and the reality. Virgin has over the years built up a loyal customer base for its Upper Class product, and the fact is Air Berlin’s business class is not the same.

As a result, a number of passengers have been posting pictures of the less generous ex Air Berlin business class seats on social media.

One wrote in response to the “Rekindle the Adventure” video “Well that’s nothing like what our little boy is going to see. Stuck on an old Air Berlin plane.... #absolutelyfuming#olddatednotupper”.

KEY TAKE-AWAY

Many business class travellers are parents, and the video is effective as it gets them to look at how a trip would appar to their son and daughter. It reminds them that this is something special and extraordinary, when they may well already take it for granted.

By using five year old Lulu as the narrator, the film also does a good job of highlighting the various features of the premium experience on Virgin.

However, as a few social media comments (and the initial reviews we’ve read on sites like Tripadvisor) show, Virgin needs to plan for a possible backlash with regards to its two ex Air Berlin A330- 200s.

This isn’t only among frequent travellers, some people save up specially for the Virgin Upper Class experience, with the airline having done an excellent job in promoting it. If they then find that the seats don’t match up to what they saw on the Virgin website and in adverts, they will make themselves heard on social networks.